This book examines the current shortcomings and potential virtues of private contracts as
instruments defining the legal
rights of patients and the obligations of health plans and providers. The author is the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke University. A summary of the book follows.
Although written at a time when the nation was looking to Washington for critical decisions about health care, this book is principally concerned with private health care choices--specifically, with the effectiveness of private contracts as
instruments memorializing the choices that
consumers make. Its primary objective is to inspire organized health plans to write contracts with their subscribers that more directly address the cost problem that so bedevils U.S. health care. Only by so doing can they give consumers a full range of explicit health care choices. Without better contracts, consumers can choose only different versions of the same costly product--state-of-the-art, American-style medical care. This book suggests how health plans could offer to consumers contracts that authorize providers to take efficient, responsible cost-saving measures that are deterred by legal risks today.