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The Collective Fiduciary

Authors: Roth, Lauren R.;

The Collective Fiduciary

Abstract

Can fiduciaries be made to serve public goals? The movement under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) towards universal access to health insurance requires us to focus on the fiduciary relationships between large organizations providing access to healthcare and the populations they serve. These relationships have become a collective undertaking instead of a direct, personal relationship. In this Article, I introduce the concept of the collective fiduciary in response to the shift towards uniform, national goals in the realm of health insurance and healthcare. Only through a collective approach can we hold fiduciaries accountable for the welfare of many instead of one or a few individuals. While other scholars have focused on the individual whose fortunes or health are controlled by a fiduciary, this has made it difficult to collect information about fiduciary actions and obtain consistent and coherent decisions from fiduciaries. My argument here is that this is not a problem that can be fixed at the level of the individual fiduciary or individual beneficiary. I examine the expansion of the role of the fiduciary as a result of growing demand for private welfare benefits in the United States. My concern here is with the expansion of health insurance and the administration of health benefits. If patients are denied benefits, then they are effectively denied access to service providers. In a space where the government has been, until now, largely absent both by choice and because of a lack of agreement on policy direction, individual decisions by fiduciaries add up to the only large scale policy existing for private benefits. Fiduciaries can and will undo the goal of expanding access to healthcare under the ACA unless ERISA’s fiduciary regime (the example I focus on in this Article) is altered. Though I explore several possible solutions, I ultimately argue that fiduciary duties are only meaningful when denials of benefit claims are supervised and capped by government actors.

Country
United States
Keywords

Fiduciary Duties, 360, ERISA, individual beneficiary, Roth, 330, Social Welfare Law, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Congress, pension, Health Law and Policy, Retirement Security Law, ACA, collective fiduciary, health insurance, right to healthcare, workers, Insurance Law, health benefits, Lauren Roth, Law, welfare benefits

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
1
Average
Average
Average
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