Health and law

Health and law

Paper details:

CHAPTER TEN

Should there be a limit on the amount of damages permitted for non-economic pain and suffering, as distinguished from economic damages for costs, lost wages, etc.?
Should medical malpractice claims be permitted at all, or should physicians be permitted to make mistakes along with everyone else?
Should medical malpractice claims be permitted when the patient’s initial need for medical care arose from the patient’s own negligence or misconduct, such as an illegal drug overdose, an accident caused by driving under the influence, cancer due to smoking, etc.?
Should a physician’s duty to warn patients of the side effects of prescribed drugs extend to non-patients foreseeably put at risk by a failure to warn?
Will medical review panels withstand a constitutional challenge? Almost half of the states have adopted medical review panel laws similar to the state of Wyoming. Three state supreme courts and three federal circuits found the review panels are constitutional.
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Why does the Conference Board survey of HR directors report job satisfaction [among employees] in the U.S. health industry at its “lowest level ever”?
Why does pay equity [between male and female employees] remain one of the most violated HR standards in the health industry?
Should labor standards be legislated to address these new industry practices?
It might look good to vigorously enforce labor standards, but will it end up backfiring if it is not done fairly with transparent accountability? Why or why not?
Should the health industry commit itself to a stakeholder system of corporate governance, such as providing its employees additional protections from dismissal through measures that are counter to the general fi re-at-will fl exibility of U.S. labor law?
CHAPTER TWELVE

What types of medical interventions are permissible for preventable behaviors and conditions triggered by voluntary lifestyle choices made on a day-to-day basis?
Having an unusually high number of children is also a lifestyle choice resulting in higher health care costs for employers; would charging such employee-parents just as much as smokers and obese employees without children be permissible?
Should employers be permitted to penalize employees for smoking behavior and obesity conditions that increase employers’ health care costs? If so, when? If not, why not?
Should the federal government prevent employers from steering employees toward healthy lifestyles?
Small businesses who have to obtain health insurance from insurance companies rather than selfinsure are faced with various add-on policies that provide lesser costs to non-smokers and those who are not obese, how could employers use the availability of such policy add-ons to encourage better lifestyles by their employees, or could they?

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