The Law and Ethics of Consumer-Directed Health Care

Award Year: 2004	Investigator: Carl Schneider, Mark Hall	Budget: $274,827	Categories: Health Care Law
Abstract: New developments in health insurance, designed in part to contain costs, require patients to take greater responsibility for making medical spending decisions. The mechanisms of this new "consumer-directed health care" model - health savings accounts, high-deductible catastrophic coverage, and tiered provider networks and pharmacy benefits - have broad policy implications that may challenge the doctor-patient relationship, the doctrine of informed consent, the medical malpractice standard of care, and other tenets of health care law and ethics. Co-investigators Mark A. Hall, J.D., and Carl E. Schneider, J.D. seek to better understand how law and ethics can and should respond to consumer-directed health care. Their project, The Law and Ethics of Consumer-Directed Health Care, probes a range of possible effects on medical practice and treatment relationships when cost-sharing by patients plays a greater role in medical decision-making.