Why Health Lawyers Must Be Public-Law Lawyers: Health Law In the Age of the Modern Regulatory State

Health law is not often framed as part of the "public-law" landscape, and my goal is to explain why it should be. My aim is to convince the next generation of health lawyers, policymakers, and health-law scholars that they must see health law as a field that is intimately related to Congress, federal statutes, federal agencies, and federalism, in order to have an impact on it. I will then apply this public-law framework to some current events involving the 2010 health reform statute-the Affordable Care Act ("ACA")-to illustrate how shaping health law today requires an understanding of the central roles now played in the field by the quintessential players in the public-law domain: Congress, federal agencies, the states, and the federal courts.