Allison K. Hoffman

Academic Fellow and Lecturer on Law

Allison Hoffman is a 2004 graduate of the Yale Law School, where she was Submissions Editor for the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics.  Following law school, she practiced health law at Ropes & Gray, LLP, where she counseled academic medical centers, insurers, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and private equity firms on health care regulatory issues.  She has also provided strategic advice to health care companies and to nonprofit organizations and foundations as a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group and The Bridgespan Group.  She graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College.  

Allison’s current research focuses on exploring the role of regulation and the welfare state in promoting health and well being.  Her scholarship asks how different models of regulation can create both intended and unintended consequences at the intersection of individual health, financial security, and equity concerns.  She explores, in particular, how different models of regulation can shape the way we organize what is individual versus collective risk and responsibility, drawing on political science, sociology, psychology, and economics methodologies. 

Allison is currently working on an evaluation of the effectiveness of an individual mandate as part of health reform, drawing on evidence from the use of an individual mandate in 2006 health reform in Massachusetts.  She is also writing an article that argues for long-term care reform that can simultaneously alleviate unmet needs for care and the burden currently borne by “informal caregivers,” who suffer financial and emotional harm because of caregiving responsibilities. 

Selected Writings

• This paper reveals a critical element missing from national health reform debate regarding inclusion of an individual mandate that requires all Americans to carry health insurance.  It does so by offering a novel framework that recasts the debate by disentangling three distinct goals a mandate might serve: (1) paternalism – facilitating greater health and financial security for the uninsured; (2) efficiency –eliminating inefficiencies in health care delivery and financing; and (3) solidarity – promoting collective financing among healthy and sick of the risk of poor health with the end goal of distributing care based upon need, not ability to pay.  The article contends that solidarity, largely missing from the discussion to date, motivates most people who support the mandate; yet, it shows that even with universal coverage, the mandate will fail to promote solidarity when implemented in the fragmented American health insurance market. 

• This publication argues that a reduced workweek would alleviate work-family conflict without exacerbating the sex-based division of labor in paid work and unpaid family work.  Reducing long hours required for higher-paying, full-time jobs and increasing hours associated with lower-paying, non-standard jobs can create opportunities for men and women to participate fully in paid employment and parenting. 
  

Research Interests

• Health Law and Policy (including Health Care Finance and Delivery, Health Policy, Insurance Law, and Public Health Law)
• Legislation
• Contracts
• Antidiscrimination Law
• Administrative Law
• Employment Law
• The Welfare State
  

Education

• Yale Law School, J.D., 2004
  Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics, Submissions Editor
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• Dartmouth College, summa cum laude, A.B., 1998

Previous Experience

• The Bridgespan Group
  • Non-profit Management Consultant, 2007-2008
• Ropes & Gray, LLP
  
  • Corporate Health Care Associate, 2004-2007
• National Partnership for Women and Families
  • Health Policy Associate, 2003
• Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs
  • Law Clerk, 2002
• The Boston Consulting Group
  • Management Consultant, 1998-2000