JCRSJ Symposium to Explore Socioeconomics and Regulation of Healthcare

By Peter Jetton
October 27, 2017

On Friday, November 10, 2017, the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice (JCRSJ) will host its annual symposium in the Millhiser Moot Court Room, Sydney Lewis Hall on the campus of at Washington and Lee University.

The symposium will begin at 8:30 a.m. and conclude at 12:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

The symposium is titled “Taking the Pulse: Understanding the Complexities of Healthcare Law” and will explore the legal issues and social complexities of healthcare law. The symposium will bring together professionals, scholars and academics to discuss timely issues surrounding health law and healthcare regulation.

Following the opening remarks, Zachary Shapiro will discuss savior siblings, children who are born to provide an organ or cell transplant to a sibling affected with a fatal disease. A graduate of Harvard Law School and the London School of Economics, Shapiro was the 2016-2017 Presidential Scholar of Law at The Hastings Center, where he focused on the intersection of law, neuroscience, and bioethics.

W&L Law emeritus professor Timothy Jost, one of the nation’s top health law scholars and frequent media analyst on the Affordable Care Act, will deliver the symposium keynote address. Professor Jost is an expert in healthcare financing and is coauthor of the casebook “Health Law,” used widely throughout the U.S., and of a treatise and hornbook by the same name. He is also the author of “Health Care Coverage Determinations: An International Comparative Study”; “Disentitlement? The Threats Facing our Public Health Care Programs and a Rights-Based Response”; “Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics”; and “Health Care at Risk: A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement.” Jost is a contributing editor at “Health Affairs,” a peer-reviewed journal and blog dealing with health, health care, and policy.

In addition, the symposium will feature two panel discussions. The first panel will explore disparities in healthcare law between socioeconomic classes. This panel will include W&L sociology professor Lynn Chin, W&L philosophy professor Erin Taylor, and RegionalCare Hospital Partners’ Executive Vice President, CAO and General Counsel Howard Wall.

Mr. Wall will join the symposium’s second panel as well, which will examine healthcare regulation and health policy, focusing on regulatory burdens across different populations, including healthcare providers. Joining Wall will be Professor Rachel Suddarth from the University of Richmond School of Law and Professor Jonathan Klick from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

The symposium is co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean, the Class of 1963 Scholars in Residence Program, the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics, and the Class of 1960 Professorship in Ethics endowment.