Health Policy, Politics Law

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Master of Laws, Undergraduate

This course, available to students in both the McCourt School of Public Policy and Georgetown Law, explores health policy, politics, and the law by involving students in issues related to critical debates on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), private employer-sponsored health insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. In this class you will learn: ● How politics has shaped our public-private mix of health financing arrangements–with significant consequences for access and costs; ● How our legal system increasingly affects our policy choices and their implementation; and ● How politics in the Congress and the courts together pose significant hurdles to reforming health financing that will assure access to affordable quality care. The class will begin with an overview of the U.S. health financing system—its policy failings and how they came about—and the political efforts to improve it–as handled in the Congress and the courts. Drawing on national expert “guests” as well as on assigned readings, we will then explore specific policy and legal issues related to Medicaid, the ACA, employer-sponsored health insurance, and Medicare. In two exercises confronting real-world challenges that policymakers are currently grappling with, teams of policy and law students will collaborate on oral briefings, followed by written memos, to guide “policymakers” (faculty who will role-play members of Congress) in making decisions. Students will leave the course with a better understanding of the policy choices and legal strategies that play a role in whether people can benefit from meaningful health insurance protection and affordable health care costs. Through this course, students will also learn key concepts in administrative law and constitutional law, and how past and future legal clashes will affect the implementation of the ACA, the private employer-sponsored health insurance programs, and the major public health care programs. By the end of the course, students will develop a greater awareness of the constraints that politics and the judicial branch place on meaningful health care reforms and of the trade-offs associated with varying approaches policymakers could adopt in the years ahead.