Justice for Human Right Violators

Thesis Statement

US health insurance industry should be brought to justice for health insurance denial to 'pre-existing condition patients.'

Annotated Bibliography

Owen, L. “Consumer-Driven Health Care: Answer to Global Competition or Threat to Social Justice?” Social Work: 54(4): (2009): p307-315

Health planning in the United States is rapidly approaching a fork in the policy road, with one direction leading the nation toward a universal plan with strong government involvement and the other direction strengthening existing market-based reforms and preserving a commercial health insurance industry. "Consumer-driven health care," a slogan that captures a range of market-based approaches to preserving patient choice and increasing cost savings, is most commonly implemented in the form of individual health savings accounts. These accounts are offered to employees as a means of increasing the cost sharing of personal health care expenses. The author provides an overview of health insurance history and discusses some implications of abandoning earlier practices of risk pooling health care expenses across a wider community. Access and affordability issues connected with the adoption of a consumer-driven health care system in the United States are addressed. Parallels are drawn between the expansion of community-based insurance in the United States following World War II and social work's historic commitment to social justice and economic inclusion. Suggestions are made for social workers' involvement in health policy discourse and activism during this critical time of national reflection on universal versus market-based reforms for the U.S. health care system.

Jost, T. “Health Insurance Exchanges: Legal Issues”: Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics: 37(2): (2009): p51-70

Health insurance exchanges (HIEs) can organize the market for health insurance by connecting small businesses and individuals into larger insurance pools. HIEs have been proposed as a possible means of making insurance more accessible, increasing competition among health plans, and promoting choice of insurer. President Obama's campaign proposal and various congressional leaders have proposed establishing insurance exchanges through federal legislation. However, whether the federal or state government, or even a private entity, can organize an insurance exchange to connect health insurance sellers and buyers under the law is the question explored in this paper. Specifically, the paper addresses legal restraints or limitations to such an exchange at the federal, state or private entity level, and offers solutions. Although exchanges implicate many design and policy issues regardless of whether they are implemented at a federal, state, or private entity level, the paper concludes that are no absolute legal bars to the establishment of health insurance exchanges.

Record, L. “Wielding the Wand without Facing the Music: Allowing Utilization Review Physicians to Trump Doctors' Orders: Protecting them from the Legal Risk Ordinarily Attached to the Medical Degree”: Duke Law Journal: 59(5): (2010): p955-999

Searches at airports and public buildings-searches which continue to this day. During the second period, the imminent danger of these terrorist actions abated, but courts continued to reject challenges to the searches, and suspicion-less searches spread to other contexts far removed from the terrorist threat. Finally, in the third era, which began in 2001 and ...