Despite civil and criminal sanctions, elder abuse is a prevalent, underreported, and underprosecuted event in the United States. Traditional reporting legislation and common law remedies have had minimal effect on the incidence and prevalence of elder abuse. The epidemic nature of elder abuse is...

Elder abuse is legion in the US. This issue will become even more severe as the population ages as well as under the continued limited funding for programs that attempt to address this social plague. However, elder abuse represents a symptom of social discordance - a symptom of the disease of...

The elderly population has specific needs that include coordination of complex chronic disease, diverse social services, and non-health care assistance. However, the Medicare program, the primary insurance program for the elderly, only provides incentives for disjointed, uncoordinated care that...

The malpractice tort system functions upon the assumption that the medical profession defines its own standard of care. Hence, clinical assessments should theoretically mirror legal ones. However, if there is a conflict between the two, this conflict may reflect a perceived bias of the system...

Off label promotion occurs when pharmaceutical manufacturers engage in promotion of unapproved, or “off label” uses of their drugs. Off label uses often lack adequate clinical data to substantiate marketing claims, may endanger the public health and have led to corporate investigations and...

Organ transplant candidates are often denied life saving organs on account of their medical marijuana drug use. Individuals who smoke medicinal marijuana are typically classified as substance abusers, and ultimately deemed ineligible for transplantation, despite their receipt of the drug under...

Access to drugs means both availability of the authentic drug and access at prices patients can afford. Unfortunately, current public policy does not effectively address either. The result is the worst of all worlds: neither goal is accomplished. Policymakers focusing on price fail to address...

Regulating copies of originator biotechnology drugs, i.e., follow-on biologics, has become a major policy agenda item. With high prices and low access, biotechnology drugs are in the position that chemical drugs occupied 20 years ago. At that time, the Hatch-Waxman Act was passed, which speeded...

Importation of medicines from Canada and other countries has been proposed to provide relief from high drug prices in the US and greater access for underserved patients. Yet importation necessarily raises the issue of counterfeit drugs. The latter are a worldwide problem that have affected even...