This seminar will examine how other countries provide, pay for, and regulate health care. The seminar will use examples from other countries with vastly different legal and health care systems to compare and contrast U.S. health care policies and practices. Understanding how different countries regulate costs, quality and access to health care -- and the strengths and weaknesses of those different approaches -- will provide students with a window into how to improve the weaknesses in our own system. The seminar will examine, in a comparative context, such issues as medical malpractice, health insurance and coverage, and organ transplantation. In addition to examining laws and regulations governing these issues, students will consider how different cultural perspectives affect policy and legal decisions on these topics. Students will prepare and present research comparing and contrasting two countries’ responses to a particular issue.

A paper written for this seminar may be used to satisfy the Advanced Writing Requirement.