Promotional materials to follow.
In a Common Good press release, Howard states: “This is a huge breakthrough. … Special health courts should provide quicker justice to patients injured by mistakes and give physicians confidence that they will not be dragged through years of litigation when they did nothing wrong.”
Howard was also featured in HealthLeaders Media. “I think it’s very important as we build American healthcare,” Howard said an the interview, “to create a reliable system of justice that all parties can trust.”
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TED Curator Chris Anderson has the following to say about Howard’s talk (via Twitter):
[TED]
[Twitter]
[Huffington Post]
]]>A partner in the New York-based law firm Covington & Burling, Philip Howard is a crusader against the excesses of his own profession. Howard, author of “Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law,” gave a blistering talk at TED about how “the land of the free has become a legal minefield.”
He cited the Florida school district that banned running at recess as an example of how “people no longer feel free to act on their best judgment” for fear of getting sued. “People are acting like idiots,” he said. “For law to be a platform for freedom, people have to trust it.”
Howard pushes for policy changes in health care, education and other fields through an organization he founded, Common Good, which describes itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan legal reform coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America.”
[Huffington Post]
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Promotional materials to follow.
Watch the video below:
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“Strong leadership, respect for authority, and perception of fairness are essential to create a positive, productive school culture,” Philip K. Howard writes in a piece for EducationNext. “And yet the encroachment of due process into daily discipline decisions has undermined all three.” Citing a 2009 study by Richard Arum and Doreet Preiss showing “that the threat of litigation is a real presence in the lives of educators, one that casts a shadow over their decisions,” Howard suggests that educators “reverse course” by re-enforcing the role of teachers as leaders in the classroom, and by fostering a culture that will “encourage all members of the school community to participate in promoting the values and discipline protocols in schools.”
]]>Referencing Common Good’s December 10th forum, “Fulfilling the Promise” – organized with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – to aid the Administration’s efforts, Howard reminds us that, despite the trial bar’s opposition to reform, “patient safety experts, consumer groups, providers, as well as editorial boards and the public at large, all overwhelmingly support trying to create a reliable foundation of justice.” Howard concludes by paraphrasing Martin Hatlie, President of the Partnership for Patient Safety and a “Fulfilling the Promise” speaker: “the question is not whether healthcare justice will change, but when.”
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