The Fragmentation of U.S. Health Care: Causes and Solutions

Why is our health care system so fragmented in the care it provides patients? Why is this the case even within a single hospital, where errors or miscommunications often seem to result from poor coordination amongst the myriad of professionals treating any one patient? The Fragmentation of U.S. Health Care: Causes and Solutions approaches these broad questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. The authors demonstrate that fragmentation worsens outcomes while raising costs. They explore what causes fragmentation and propose reforms that can make our health care less fragmented, more efficient, and medically effective.

Einer Elhauge is the Petrie Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics. He served as Chairman of the Antitrust Advisory Committee to the Obama Campaign and member of Various Health Policy Advisory Committees to that campaign. He teaches a gamut of courses ranging from Antitrust, Contracts, Corporations, Legislation, and Health Care Law. Before coming to Harvard, he was a Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, and clerked for Judge Norris on the 9th Circuit and Justice Brennan on the Supreme Court. He received both his A.B. and his J.D. from Harvard, graduating first in his law school class.

He is an author of numerous pieces on a range of topics even broader than he teaches, including antitrust (monopolization, predatory pricing, tying, bundled discounts, loyalty discounts, disgorgement, petitioning and state action immunity, and the Harvard v. Chicago schools of antitrust), public law (statutory interpretation, legislative term limits, the 2000 Presidential election, and the implications of interest group theory for judicial review), corporate law (social responsibility and sale of control doctrine), patent law (patent holdup and royalty stacking), the legal profession (the value of litigation and counseling advice), and health law policy (medical technology assessment, how to make health law a coherent legal field, and how to devise a morally just and cost effective medical system). His most recent books include Statutory Default Rules (Harvard University Press 2008), U.S. Antitrust Law and Economics (Foundation Press 2008), and Global Competition Law and Economics (Hart Publishing 2007). Currently he is working on books about Contract Theory, Health Law Policy, and Re-engineering Human Biology, as well as articles on sundry other topics. To access his website and publications, visit http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/elhauge/.