Affordable Care, the Supreme Court, and the Wisdom of Crowds

By David Orentlicher

[cross-posted at HealthLawProfs blog and orentlicher.tumblr.com]

How will the Supreme Court rule on the challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies that help millions of lower- and middle-income Americans afford their health care coverage? According to FantasySCOTUS’s court watchers, who have correctly predicted more than 70 percent of Supreme Court decisions so far this year, Obamacare should remain intact.

This result is not surprising. The arguments in favor of the government are much stronger than are those for the challenger. To be sure, the challengers cite to two lines in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that authorize subsidies for insurance bought on state-operated health insurance exchanges, without mentioning federally-operated state exchanges. Hence, argue the challengers, subsidies should be provided only for insurance purchased on state-operated exchanges, which means in only about 1/3 of states. But other language in ACA indicates that the subsidies are available for insurance purchased on all exchanges. When a statute’s language is ambiguous and there are reasonable alternative interpretations, courts are supposed to defer to the executive branch’s interpretation, not substitute their own interpretation. Read More

The FDA’s Determination On Artificial Trans Fat: A Long Time Coming

By Diana R. H. Winters

[cross-posted at Health Affairs Blog]
On June 16, 2015, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its final determination withdrawing the generally recognized as safe (GRAS) designation for partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), which are the main source of artificial trans fat in processed foods. The agency gave the food industry three years, until June 18, 2018, to phase out the use of PHOs. The FDA’s order was expected based on the agency’s tentative determination that PHOs were no longer GRAS, published in November 2013.

This action is a milestone in — although perhaps not the culmination of — the FDA’s decades-long attempt to grapple with increasing scientific recognition that trans fat poses a serious health risk to consumers. The action is also unusual, in that it is quite rare for the FDA to withdraw GRAS status from a food product, a move that most likely will mean the ingredient is no longer used in foods.

What is not unusual, unfortunately, is the lengthy timeframe of this regulatory trajectory in the context of FDA action. To be sure, this action will lead to a dramatic reduction in the use of PHOs in processed foods, which in turn, will lead Americans to eat less trans fat – a good thing. What this regulatory action does not do, however, is speak to problems with the GRAS process as a whole.

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New York Times Op-Ed on the A/B Illusion & the Virtues of Data-Driven Innovation

By Michelle Meyer

I have an op-ed with Christopher Chabris that appeared in this past Sunday’s New York Times. It focuses on one theme in my recent law review article on corporate experimentation: the A/B illusion. Despite the rather provocative headline that the Times gave it, our basic argument, made as clearly as we could in 800 words, is this: sometimes, it is more ethical to conduct a nonconsensual A/B experiment than to simply go with one’s intuition and impose A on everyone. Our contrary tendency to see experiments—but not untested innovations foisted on us by powerful people—as involving risk, uncertainty, and power asymmetries is what I call the A/B illusion in my law review article. Here is how the op-ed begins:

Can it ever be ethical for companies or governments to experiment on their employees, customers or citizens without their consent? The conventional answer — of course not! — animated public outrage last year after Facebook published a study in which it manipulated how much emotional content more than half a million of its users saw. Similar indignation followed the revelation by the dating site OkCupid that, as an experiment, it briefly told some pairs of users that they were good matches when its algorithm had predicted otherwise. But this outrage is misguided. Indeed, we believe that it is based on a kind of moral illusion.

After the jump, some clarifications and further thoughts.

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Human Rights Tribunal Upholds France’s Policies on Ending Life Support for Permanently Unaware Patients

By Norman L. Cantor

France recently confronted its version of America’s 2005 Schiavo case (in which the Florida Supreme Court upheld a spouse’s determination to end life support to a permanently unconscious patient despite the patient’s parents’ objections). In 2014, France’s Conseil d’Etat ruled that artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) could be withdrawn from a permanently vegetative patient based on oral statements that the patient had made, while competent, indicating unwillingness to be medically sustained in such a condition. The patient’s objecting parents then sought a declaration from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that such termination of life support would violate the European Convention on Human Rights. On June 5, 2015, the ECHR rejected the objecting parents’ contention, finding that France’s approach met human rights standards both in the process and the criteria followed by medical personnel in deciding to end life support.   Lambert v. France, #46043/14 (ECHR 2015).

Vincent Lambert, then 32 years old, was grievously injured in a 2008 traffic accident. He suffered massive brain trauma and was hospitalized for the next 7 years at Reims University Hospital. His precise medical status was initially uncertain. In July 2011, a medical evaluation found him to be “minimally conscious plus.” Over the next year and a half, he underwent 87 speech therapy sessions which failed to establish any code of communication between Mr. Lambert and his surroundings. In early 2013, the attending physician, Dr. Kariger, initiated a process to review Mr. Lambert’s condition and to determine whether the ANH sustaining Mr. Lambert should be withdrawn.

The process that followed was extensive. During 2013, Dr. Kariger consulted with 6 physicians concerning the patient’s mental status and held 2 family meetings at which Mr. Lambert’s wife, Rachel, his parents, and 8 siblings were present. In January 2014, Dr. Kariger announced his determination to end artificial nutrition and reduce hydration. Dr. Kariger’s written report explained that Mr. Lambert had become permanently unaware of his environment and, according to accounts of Mr. Lambert’s prior oral expressions, he would not wish to be medically sustained in such a debilitated condition. Five of the six medical consultants agreed, as did the patient’s wife and 6 of his 8 siblings.

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Tackling Medicaid In Massachusetts

This new post by Jeffrey Sánchez appears on the Health Affairs Blog as part of a series stemming from the Third Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 30, 2015.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides a number of tools to address longstanding problems in our fragmented health care system. At the national level, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are redefining Medicare through initiatives that promote payment and delivery reform, such as Shared Savings and Value-Based Purchasing. States are also seeking their own opportunities to move away from inefficient systems that reward volume over quality. In particular, state Medicaid programs have the potential to play a major role in these efforts.

Given the number of individuals Medicaid covers, it has the biggest potential impact in improving health care. Medicaid covers more than 1 in 5 Americans, funding more than 16 percent of total personal health spending in the United States. With ACA Medicaid expansion, enrollment increased in 2014 by 8.3 percent and led to an increased overall Medicaid spending growth of 10.2 percent. Total Medicaid spending growth in 2015 is expected to be 14.3 percent with a 13.2 percent enrollment growth. This is not an insignificant portion of both state and federal health care dollars. Thoughtful and concerted reforms to Medicaid have the potential to reduce spending and improve care quality. […]

Read the full article here.

Military Medical Malpractice in Baby Delivery and Prenatal Care

By Alex Stein

When Congress enacted the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) in 1946, it did not envisage that its formulation of the federal government’s liability will allow members of the military forces to sue the United States for service-related noncombatant injuries. The Supreme Court closed this gap in Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950). It held that FTCA did not waive the government’s immunity from tort liability for members of the military and supported that interpretation by a number of reasons. First and most important, FTCA made the government liable in torts according to state laws that do not – and are not authorized to – govern the distinctly federal relationship between the government and its armed forces. Second, Congress has established a uniform compensation scheme for injured and fallen soldiers (the Veterans Benefit Act, 38 U.S.C. §§ 301, et seq.). Four years later, in United States v. Brown, 348 U.S. 110 (1954), the Court rationalized Feres as protecting military discipline as well.

Based on these rationales, the Court subsequently decided that Feres also protects the government against suits for derivative harms sustained by civilians. Specifically, it held that when a military person’s “injury incident to service” is the “genesis” of a civilian’s  harm, the civilian cannot sue the government. Stencel Aero Engineering Corp. v. United States, 431 U.S. 666 (1977).

These decisions did not envision the present-day inflow of women into the military and that pregnant servicewomen will be receiving obstetric care at military facilities. For these women and their newborns, the implications of Feres in the event of medical malpractice are unclear. Read More

‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast

By Nicolas Terry

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This week we are joined by Nick Bagley. Nick reminds us how King v. Burwell should be decided before we discuss his fascinating new article on public utility regulation of healthcare. We end with some brief updates on 21st Century Cures, TPP, and the EU privacy regulation. It’s a fun-packed 40 minutes!

The Week in Health Law Podcast from Frank Pasquale and Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in Health Law & Policy.

Subscribe at iTunes, listen at Stitcher Radio and Podbean, or search for The Week in Health Law in your favorite podcast app.

Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find us on twitter @nicolasterry @FrankPasquale @WeekInHealthLaw

The Impact of Broccoli II and Tomato II on European patents in conventional breeding, GMO’s and Synthetic Biology: A grand finale of a juicy patents tale?

By Timo Minssen

I am pleased to announce our recent paper entitled “The Impact of Broccoli II & Tomato II on European patents in conventional breeding, GMO’s and Synthetic Biology: The grand finale of a juicy patents tale?”, which is available on SSRN, and forthcoming in Biotechnology Law Report, Vol. 34, Number 3 (June 2015), pp. 1-18.

Our analysis deals with a seminal judgment on the controversial and sometimes even emotionally debated European “Broccoli” and “Tomato” patents, which has captivated the European patent and plant science communities for many years: On March 25, 2015, the EBA of the European Patent Office (EBA) finally issued its much awaited decisions on the consolidated referrals G2/12 (“Tomato II”) and G2/13 (“Broccoli II”), clarifying the exclusion from patentability of essentially biological processes, such as conventional crossing and selection, and in particular its impact on the patentability of claims for products resulting from such processes. The so-called “Tomato II” case concerned an invention entitled “method for breeding tomatoes having reduced water content and product of the method,” whereas the so-called “Broccoli II” case involved an invention of a “method for selective increase of the anticarcinogenic glucosinolates in brassica species”. Read More

Mini-conference on antibiotic incentives

If you will be in DC on Thursday, we have a great meeting about economic incentives for antibiotic innovation. Location is Capitol Hill. Register here.

Panelists include Rep. Peter Roskam (House Ways & Means), Sir Jim O’Neill, head of the UK AMR Review, Dr. Susan Coller Monarez, National Security Council and Christine Ardal, coordinator of WP2 (economic incentives) in DRIVE-AB.  I will present the first look at the long-awaited Chatham House report.

@koutterson