The Mitchell Hamline School of Law Health Law Institute is
pleased to welcome Professor John Jacobi, Dorothea Dix Professor of Health Law and Policy, and Faculty Director of the Center for Health and Pharmaceutical Law and Policy, from Seton Hall School of Law. This event has been approved for 1 elimination of bias CLE credit (code: 232547).
People with behavioral health conditions are sicker and die younger than their peers for reasons largely remediable by current clinical methods. This health deficit is attributable in part to a legacy of regulation that frustrates attempts to employ those clinical methods. Some legal avenues of redress, premised on administrative and antidiscrimination laws, are available and should be employed. But a more systematic remedy to the regulatory overhang is needed, lest the same problem be faced over and over again.
The social disadvantages of people with behavioral health conditions have many causes. Some spring from explicit bias, some from unconscious bias or aversion, and some from engrained habits of social interaction and governance rooted in now-discarded or outdated assumptions. This talk focuses on the third of these types of disadvantage: legacy laws and policies that endure beyond all reason, and that frustrate attempts to alleviate some of the social disadvantages of people with mental health and/or substance use conditions. This talk first briefly describes the social disadvantages faced by this population, and in particular their dramatically poor health status. This poor health status is partially caused by limited access to appropriate health care services, and in particular physical health care services. One reason for that access deficit is the lack of integrated health services. The reason, in turn, for the lack of such services is not the failure of clinical understanding, but the persistence of laws and policies forbidding the integration of those services.
The second part of the talk describes some legal avenues available for addressing the burden these legacy legal standards impose. Administrative law can be used to require regulators to justify outdated regulatory standards, and to reform those standards to meet current needs. Disability discrimination law, and in particular “reverse application” of Olmstead principles can also be employed. The third part of the talk examines the underlying problem of regulatory lag in this area. Outdated regulations were once justified by paternalistic concerns for people with behavioral health conditions, but have clearly outlived their time. Yet the regulations endure. This regulatory lag is harmful, but a systematic remedy is elusive. The state has a substantial interest in protecting the health and safety of its residents with clear positive law, but the enduring nature of that law causes problems that increase over time. This part considers notions such as “entrepreneurial government,” and new governance theory. It argues for a shift in health regulation that recognizes the virtues of nimbleness and innovation while maintaining central state power to protect the vulnerable.
- Thursday, March 30, 2017
- 4-5pm Presentation; 5-6pm Reception
- Room 125, Mitchell Hamline School of Law
- Remote participation available via live webcast (webcast link sent with registration confirmation)
- Free for law students to attend (please register in Symplicity)