Gift Establishes Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School

View of YLS building and stonework owl

A new center focusing on the governance, business, and practice of health care in the United States will celebrate its launch with a conference this fall. The conference, The New Health Care Industry: Integration, Consolidation, Competition in the Wake of the Affordable Care Act, will be held on November 13, with the celebratory launch of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School on November 12.

“The Solomon Center will make Yale Law School the go-to place not only for prospective law students interested in health but also for those currently working in the health-care sectors, looking for partners to collaborate on new health challenges,” said Professor Abbe R. Gluck, faculty director of the center. “There has not been enough focus on the institutions of health care, and how they interact. You can’t understand health care today without understanding Congress and federal regulation, but at the same time—and this is what other programs miss—industry and the medical profession also always have to be front and center.”

The Center will devote new academic and legal-professional discipline to the rapidly evolving environment of health care and its centrality in the nation’s economy and government. It will bring together leading experts and practitioners from the public and private sectors to address questions of health law and policy and to train the next generation of health lawyers, industry leaders, policymakers, and academics.

The New Health Care Industry conference will address the recent and dramatic consolidation of the healthcare industry. This trend has spanned all sectors of health care, from hospitals and medical practices, to pharmaceuticals and insurance companies. The conference will be an opportunity for in-depth academic or interdisciplinary analysis of how consolidation has changed health care markets, financing, and the practice of medicine. Another important question examined will be how the Affordable Care Act has contributed to these developments, with its encouragement of health care integration and "accountable care."

The conference, which is co-sponsored by the Yale School of Management, will bring together voices from the health care industry, government, and academia to evaluate the legal, economic, and medical effects of consolidation. Kathleen Sebelius, former secretary of Health and Human Services, will give a keynote on November 12. On November 13, William Baer, Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and Maura Healey, Attorney General of Massachusetts, will deliver opening remarks and Steven Brill, author of America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deal, and the Fight to Fix America's Broken Healthcare System, will give a lunch keynote. Other co-sponsors of the conference include Yale Health Law and Policy Society (YHeLPS); Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics; Yale Law and Business Society; Yale Medical Student Council; and Health Affairs.

The Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School is supported by a leadership gift from Howard Solomon ’52.