Skip to Content


Matthew J. B. Lawrence (Academic Fellow)
Fordham Law Review, Vol. 84, 2015, Forthcoming

Download the Article

Academic Fellow Matthew J. B. Lawrence has a new article forthcoming in 2015 regarding the use of procedural triage in addressing the administrative crisis faced by Medicare.

Abstract:

Prior scholarship has assumed that the inherent value of a “day in court” is the same for all claimants, and so that when procedural resources (like a jury trial or a hearing) are scarce, they should be rationed in the same way for all claimants. That is incorrect. This Article shows that the inherent value of a “day in court” can be far greater for some claimants, such as first-time filers, than for others, such as corporate entities, and that it can be both desirable and feasible to take this variation into account in doling out scarce procedural protections. In other words, it introduces and demonstrates the usefulness of procedural triage.

The Article demonstrates the real-world potential of procedural triage by showing how Medicare should use this new tool to address a looming administrative crisis that it is facing. In the methodological tradition of Jerry Mashaw’s seminal studies of the Social Security Administration, the Article uses its in-depth study of Medicare to develop a theoretical framework that can be used to think through where and how other adjudicatory processes should engage in procedural triage. The Article concludes by applying this framework to survey other potential applications for procedural triage, from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Reviews of this article are available here and here.

Download the Article

Tags

health care finance   health care reform   health law policy   public health