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Can Moral Framing Drive Insurance Enrollment in the US?
Get PDFTo encourage health insurance uptake, marketers and policymakers have focused on consumers\u27 economic self-interest, attempting to show that insurance is a good deal or to sweeten the deal, with subsidies or penalties. Still, some consumers see insurance as a bad deal, either because they rationally exploit private risk information (“adverse selection”), or irrationally misperceive the value due to cognitive biases (e.g., optimism). As a result, about 30 million Americans remain uninsured, including many who could afford it. At the same time, polling suggests that Americans view health insurance through a moral lens, seeking to protect those with pre-existing conditions especially. In other markets, “green halo” and “noble edge” frames have been shown effective. As part of a broader research agenda on private law solutions to healthcare policy, we test whether moral framing could support insurance uptake. We report four phases of research. First, to understand current health insurance marketing in America, we collected the universe of advertisements from the state and federal exchanges and coded a 10% sample for themes of economic self-interest versus three moral themes: helping others, helping community, or responsibility. In the 199 ads in which any theme appeared, 191 ads centered on economic self-interest. Second, we enrolled 344 uninsured Americans in an online, vignette experiment where we offered various insurance plans. Over a baseline where 43.6% were willing to purchase insurance, we found that framing an economically identical plan around generosity yielded an 11.8% higher uptake. Third, we conducted five focus groups with 32 adults, including two groups in Spanish. We explored variations in the frames and probed for resistance, to prepare for the next phase of research. Fourth, using an online advertising platform (Google), we purchased 5.6 million advertising impressions in English and Spanish, targeting higher-income Americans nationwide during the 2021 open-enrollment period. Consumers saw advertisements from a control group (highlighting economic self-interest, with real ads collected from the field) versus three experimental groups (helping others, helping community, or responsibility). We measured whether consumers clicked to “shop now” on the HealthCare.gov website (1.01% click-through rate [CTR] in English and 1.38% CTR in Spanish at baseline). Helping community ads increased CTR over the control by 14.5% in English and by 33.7% in Spanish. Ads emphasizing responsibility increased CTR by 30.3% in English, though reduced CTR by 14.7% in Spanish. Helping others ads increased CTR by 9.8% in English but decreased CTR by 13.9% in Spanish. All of these results were significant at the 0.01 level and were robust to demographic controls and subgroup analyses, using individual and county-level covariates. Although the optimal approach varies, the status quo self-oriented message of economic rationality was not the top-performing approach for either language group. Scaled up to real-world advertising budgets, back-of-the-envelope extrapolation suggests that under moral framing, millions of additional Americans could be driven to shop for health insurance
Interpretation, Remedy, and the Rule of Law: Why Courts Should Have the Courage of Their Convictions
Get PDFThe Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Arthrex opens a window on a set of issues debated in different contexts for decades. These issues—how to interpret statutes and constitutional provisions, what sources to look to, whether so far as possible to adopt interpretations that avoid declaring actions of coordinate branches unconstitutional, and where such actions are deemed to have been unconstitutional whether to provide remedies that cabin the most significant implications of such a declaration—go to the heart of the judicial role and the division of responsibilities among the branches of government.
Our principal focus, however, is on the question of remedy. When the Court’s members find that a plausible—really, the most plausible—reading of a law would make it unconstitutional, what should the Court do? Many Supreme Court pronouncements and much academic commentary suggest that courts should interpret statutes to be consistent with the Constitution whenever possible, even if that requires some degree of judicial creativity. That instinct has a long and distinguished pedigree, but it is ultimately a much-overstated direction to the courts.
Following an introduction, Part II of this article reviews the background and opinions in Arthrex. Part III describes the precedents respecting remedies for structures that the Supreme Court has found violate constitutional requirements. We return in that Part to the reasons that Arthrex’s remedy is at odds with generally accepted, and well-grounded, approaches to dealing with separation-of-powers problems. Part IV considers arguments for different approaches to interpretation and remedy when the Supreme Court faces potential constitutional concerns. This Part concludes with discussion of pragmatic problems that Arthrex-style remedies pose for decisionmaking by Congress and the Court
Professional Responsibility for Business Lawyers
No full textProfessional Responsibility casebook with a focus on business and transactional lawyers.
Authored by Nancy Moore, a highly visible and respected scholar and teacher in Professional Responsibility, this new casebook covers the fundamental components of a traditional Professional Responsibility course with a focus on how these issues arise in a transactional business law practice. It is designed for use in either a two- or three-credit basic course in Professional Responsibility course or an advanced course or seminar specifically on PR in business and transactional law. The traditional pedagogical approach uses a mixture of narrative and descriptive content, edited cases and ethics opinions, discussion questions, and problems.
Professors and students will benefit from: A basic introduction to professional responsibility, with a focus on business and transactional lawyers Thorough explanations of rules and concepts Cases carefully edited to clarify the court’s discussion of ethical issues relevant to the chapter topics Textual material provides a foundational understanding of the fundamental topics, allowing the instructor to focus on more difficult material during class time Notes and questions highlight important aspects of each case and prepare students for class discussion Review problems at the end of each chapter – provide a brief overview of material already covered and help students prepare for the exam Appropriate not only for future transactional lawyers, but also for future litigators The instructor can choose to place or more or less emphasis on the transactional components of the casebook
Teaching materials include: Teacher’s Manual PowerPoint slides (available from the author upon request)https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1342/thumbnail.jp
A Private-Law Framework for Subdelegation
No full textAlthough the nondelegation doctrine has lain dormant since 1935, some Supreme Court justices have recently called for its return. As the Supreme Court takes up the doctrine in current cases, this volume makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the separation of powers and the Constitution.
In The Administrative State Before the Supreme Court: Perspectives on the Nondelegation Doctrine, leading scholars consider a revival of the Constitution’s nondelegation doctrine—the separation-of-powers principle that bars Congress from transferring its legislative powers to the administrative agencies. Although the nondelegation doctrine has lain dormant since 1935, some Supreme Court justices have recently called for its return. As the Supreme Court takes up the doctrine in current cases, this volume makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the separation of powers and the Constitution
Comments of the Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine & Law at Washington University in St. Louis
Get PDFThe Federal Trade Commission—with its broad, independent grant of authority and statutory mandate to identify and prevent unfair and deceptive trade practices—is uniquely situated to prevent and remedy unfair and deceptive data privacy and data security practices. In an increasingly digitized world, data collection, processing, and transfer have become integral to market interactions. Our personal and commercial experiences are now mediated by powerful, information-intensive firms who hold the power to shape what consumers see, how they interact, which options are available to them, and how they make decisions. That power imbalance exposes consumers and leaves them all vulnerable. We all share data concerning ourselves with these platforms, often unwittingly, and we leave ourselves at the risk of their manipulation and control. The Commission envisions “[a] vibrant economy fueled by fair competition and an empowered, informed public.”1 But, this vision cannot be realized in the absence of meaningful consumer trust. Trust is the oxygen necessary for consumer choice to survive. Where trust is present, consumers are empowered to invest in companies and share their data knowing they are not going to be betrayed, manipulated, deceived, or treated unfairly. But where trust is weakened or absent, the marketplace breaks down and becomes a fertile ground for the development of market failures that are contrary to the interests of consumers and competition. Recognizing the importance of trust in digital markets, our comments are organized around three arguments: (i) commercial surveillance is the correct label for the data practices observed in the market; (ii) notice and choice, centered around the fiction of consumer consent, has failed as a regulatory regime; and (iii) the Commission should ground its future data privacy rules in concepts of trust, loyalty, and relational vulnerability
Seila Law: Is There a There There?
Get PDFIn Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, invalidated the provision of the Dodd-Frank Act restricting the president\u27s removal of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to cases of inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. The Court\u27s decision leaves the director subject to removal by the president for any reason or no reason at all.
This Essay on the Seila Law decision makes three points. First, because there is no legal or historical support for the Court\u27s distinction between independent agencies headed by multiple members and independent agencies headed by single officials, Seila Law creates a novel constitutional prohibition: Congress may not create an independent agency with significant regulatory power headed by a single director. Second, when rejecting the argument that it could interpret inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office to include the director\u27s refusal to execute lawful presidential commands, the Court declined an opportunity to take a major step toward presidential control of independent agencies. Third, the dissent\u27s argument that multimember independent agencies may actually be more difficult for the president to control than independent agencies headed by single officials provides the Court with a possible basis to invalidate the entire independent agency form. Whether this will actually happen, only time will tell
Contracts scholarship beyond Materialisierung
Get PDFThis comment aims to show how Klaus Eller\u27s paper on ‘The Political Economy of Tenancy Contract Law’1 raises the stakes of private law scholarship and contributes to the larger project of remodeling legal institutions in a progressive direction. The comment starts by contextualising the rapid spread of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) movement; illustrates through examples the generative impact of LPE on contemporary contracts scholarship; and highlights two strands of Eller’s original contribution to such literature: a welcome reflection on the value and limits of Materialisierung, and a radical widening of the private law inquiry to include institutional dimensions of legal reform. The point of fostering such new directions is not to ditch the very logic of private law and its endogenous mechanisms of justice, which are still essential to progressive legal work. What is no longer tenable is to keep seeking socially oriented solutions exclusively within the private law arsenal of possibilities, even when it has become obvious that only a synergic approach can produce accurate diagnoses of – and perhaps cures for – the structural predicaments of the market economy
The Party Attacking Affirmative Action Just Made the Case for it
No full textTwo cases before the U.S. Supreme Court involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) could end affirmative action and upend higher education
Public Carry versus Public Health — The Harms to Come from the Supreme Court’s Decision in Bruen
Get PDFIn June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that the Second Amendment provides a constitutionally protected right to carry firearms in public. The decision is already creating turmoil in the form of political and public backlash and a scramble by policymakers to find new ways to combat the growing gun-violence epidemic in the United States. The majority opinion in Bruen, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, will have a devastating impact on efforts to mitigate gun violence and address racial disparities, but the reasoning used in the decision could cause even more havoc moving forward
The Role of Data for AI Startup Growth
Get PDFArtificial intelligence (“AI”)-enabled products are expected to drive economic growth. Training data are important for firms developing AI-enabled products; without training data, firms cannot develop or refine their algorithms. This is particularly the case for AI startups developing new algorithms and products. However, there is no consensus in the literature on which aspects of training data are most important. Using unique survey data of AI startups, we find that startups with access to proprietary training data are more likely to acquire venture capital funding