Health Care Law

Catalog description

Health Care Law is a survey course that examines a broad range of issues related to the delivery, financing, and regulation of health care in this country. The field of health law revolves around very personal matters of quality of life, independence and autonomy, and death and dying. This course will explore how the rules and structures that govern our health care system affect outcomes and potential avenues for reform. Relationships discussed will include those between patients, providers, and payors (i.e., insurance companies, government entities, and patients). Topics addressed will include rights to health care, inequalities in access to and quality of care, financing of health care, the physician-patient relationship and licensing requirements for health providers, conflicts of interest, privacy issues, billing fraud, federal preemption, and regulation of drugs, devices, and health facilities. Students will leave the course with an understanding of the rules that govern how people access and pay for health care, as well as the restrictions placed on health care providers and facilities to keep the population safe and protected in a public-private system of health care and financing.