FRAGMENTATION AFTER HEALTH CARE REFORM.

In this Article, I argue that while the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA and the Act) addresses health care fragmentation, it does not go far enough. In doing so, I further develop my theory of health care fragmentation--the disjunction between the legally-represented and lived experience of patients--as well as examine the meta-level issues absent from legal scholarship about the social assumptions that shape health care legislation and contribute to fragmentation. These social views fail to recognize vulnerability to illness as universal and constant across a lifetime and are reflected in legal responses to health care delivery. I examine fragmentation both before and after PPACA and offer suggestions to bring the lived and legal experiences of patients into alignment. My conception of the lived experience fits within the public policy debate about patient-centered health care, since vulnerability to illness-- while universal--is experienced and often best addressed on an individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]