Unwanted Medical Treatment Harms Patients: Taxonomy of Healthcare Consent Infractions

I posted here a prepublication draft of my article forthcoming in the University of Illinois Chicago Law Review: "Unwanted Medical Treatment Harms Patients: Taxonomy of Healthcare Consent Infractions"   

Patients in the United States are subject to an ever-growing “avalanche” of unwanted medical treatment (UMT).  This is ethically, economically, and legally wrong. First, UMT constitutes a serious violation of patient autonomy and self-determination.  Second, it is waste (and often fraud or abuse) of scarce healthcare resources. Third, but for rare exceptions, administering UMT contravenes settled legal rules and principles around consent and battery.

This article describes four types of unwanted medical treatment and how the law addresses (or fails to address) them. The four types of UMT are 

1. Treatment over patient objections
2. Treatment with zero consent 
3. Treatment with coerced consent
4. Treatment with uninformed consent

This legal taxonomy highlights the full scope and scale of UMT.