Event: The Emergent Logic of Health Reform

December 15, 2008

University of Minnesota
Deinard Memorial Lecture on Law & Medicine
The Emergent Logic of Health Reform
Prof. M. Gregg Bloche, JD, MD
Georgetown University
Thursday, January 29, 2009
11:30 am-1:00 pm
Theater, Coffman Memorial Union, University of Minnesota

In his lecture, Dr Bloche will argue that the American health care system is on a path to ruin.  Health spending has become exorbitant and the number os uninsured Americans is approaching 50 million.  Can law help to divert our country from this path?  There are reasons for deep skepticism.  Law governs the provision and financing of medical care in a fragmented and incoherent fashion.  Commentators bemoan this chaos.  Prof. Bloche will argue that pessimism about health law’s prospects is unjustified.  The law of health care provision is best understood as an emergent system.  Its contradictions and dysfunctions are not the fault of some failed master designer.  By quitting the quest for a single, master design, we can better focus our efforts on emergent possibilities for legal and policy change.  Prof. Bloche will suggest emergent approaches to the most urgent challenges in health care policy and law – the crises of access, value, and cost.

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