{"id":1831,"date":"2017-02-27T20:53:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T20:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/health-law-institute\/?p=1831"},"modified":"2017-03-31T17:21:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T17:21:47","slug":"government-more-or-less-overcoming-legacy-barriers-to-behavioral-health-integration-cle-on-march-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mitchellhamline.edu\/health-law-institute\/2017\/02\/27\/government-more-or-less-overcoming-legacy-barriers-to-behavioral-health-integration-cle-on-march-30\/","title":{"rendered":"Government, More or Less: Overcoming Legacy Barriers to Behavioral Health Integration CLE on March 30"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mitchell Hamline School of Law Health Law Institute is \"MH<\/a>
\npleased 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).<\/p>\n

People with behavioral health conditions are sicker and die younger than their peers for reasons largely remediable by current clinical methods.\u00a0 This health deficit is attributable in part to a legacy of regulation that frustrates attempts to employ those clinical methods.\u00a0 Some legal avenues of redress, premised on administrative and antidiscrimination laws, are available and should be employed.\u00a0 But a more systematic remedy to the regulatory overhang is needed, lest the same problem be faced over and over again.<\/p>\n

The social disadvantages of people with behavioral health conditions have many causes.\u00a0 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bias or aversion, and some from engrained habits of social interaction and governance rooted in now-discarded or outdated assumptions.\u00a0 This talk focuses on the third of these types of disadvantage: legacy laws and policies that endure beyond all reason, and that frustrate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.\u00a0 This talk first briefly describes the social disadvantages faced by this population, and in particular their dramatically poor health status.\u00a0 This poor health status is partially caused by limited access to appropriate health care services, and in particular physical health care services.\u00a0 One reason for that access deficit is the lack of integrated health services.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The second part of the talk describes some legal avenues available for addressing the burden these legacy legal standards impose.\u00a0 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 \u201creverse application\u201d of Olmstead <\/em>principles can also be employed.\u00a0 The third part of the talk examines the underlying problem of regulatory lag in this area.\u00a0 Outdated regulations were once justified by paternalistic concerns for people with behavioral health conditions, but have clearly outlived their time.\u00a0 Yet the regulations endure.\u00a0 This regulatory lag is harmful, but a systematic remedy is elusive.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This part considers notions such as \u201centrepreneurial government,\u201d and new governance theory.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n