Catching flies with vinegar: a critique of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid self-disclosure program

This Article argues that the current approach of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to enforcement of the Ethics in Patient Referrals Act (the "Stark Law") is unnecessarily punitive and discourages health-care providers from self-disclosing even very minor violations of the Stark Law. This Article suggests a number of specific changes to encourage provider self-disclosure and proposes that CMS create a demonstration project under the authority of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to test the reforms. A demonstration project provides the perfect vehicle to prove that increased self-disclosure protocols for the Stark Law can decrease the government's costs of enforcement, improve program integrity, and encourage providers to deal responsibly with the inevitable minor lapses in compliance that arise in such an enormous government program as Medicare.     

Next-Level Friendship

On a hot September night in 1984, I set foot in China for the very first time. After a long wait at Beijing International Airport, I decided, out of sheer despair, to hail a taxi, even though my Chinese was very limited. On the way to the (then) Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages, I started an alarmingly hesitant conversation, more body language than anything, with the driver.     

Resistance to Chronic Violence in Informal Workplaces: The Strategies of Domestic Workers in Brazil (2003–2018)

This article analyses the repertoire of individual strategies utilised by domestic workers to resist routinised workplace violence in the cities of São Paulo and Ilhéus, Brazil. Findings suggest that domestic workers favour two strategies of resistance: exit (quitting work without prior notice) and voice (negotiating workplace conditions). The latter strategy is divided into two subtypes: voice-pleading (appealing to decency) and voice-confrontation (warning and rights-claiming). Voice strategies appear more effective than exit in ameliorating patterns of chronic workplace violence, particularly when they incorporate labour rights claims and when emotional ties exist between workers and employers.