Application of the HIPAA privacy rule to employer benefit plans and a compliance theory of statutory interpretation

The application of the federal privacy regulations promulgated pursuantto the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to employer benefit plans is arguably the most conceptually difficult area of a complex law. A purely textual reading of the Rule, when applied to employer plans, results in varying interpretations on some significant issues and puzzling results on others. This Article offers a practical approach for interpreting the rule when clear-cut answers are not provided by the text and DHHS guidance is nonexistent or unclear. In addition, this approach can be applied to the interpretation of other statutes and regulations.     

Rewriting the future? Biomedical advances and legal dilemmas

Developments in medical science have sparked public debate about the legal and ethical implications of new technologies. Within these debates a number of distinct discourses are evident, including discourses about the positive and negative implications of technological advances, the influence of globalisation on regulatory choice, and the challenges of articulating common values in a pluralistic society. This article argues that an understanding of these discourses is an essential part of understanding the nature of contemporary regulatory dilemmas.     

Economic performance and U.S. Senate elections: Reply

Major criticisms made by Chressanthis and Shaffer (C-S) are addressed: the authors' failure to include noneconomic variables in the regression model, the inclusion of open elections in the sample, and the use of variables other than the state unemployment rate as economic performance measures. Errors in C-S's interpretations are noted. Additional regression results are reported using modifications of the authors' original model. These suggest that the change (notrelative change as in C-S) in state unemployment rate is superior, and that the authors' model yields a stronger effect of state economic performance on election outcomes than does the C-S model.John Beck contributed helpful comments.