The Petrie-Flom Center & Coalition to Transform Advanced Care Launch “The Project on Advanced Care and Health Policy”

The Project on Advanced Care and Health Policy will foster development of improved models of care for individuals with serious advanced illness nearing end-of-life, through interdisciplinary analysis of important health law and policy issues.

March 28, 2016 – The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) today announced a new collaboration, The Project on Advanced Care and Health Policy.

This initiative is prompted by the fact that current health law policy and regulation, developed largely in a fee-for service environment with siloed providers, creates barriers that may impede widespread adoption of improved models of care for those with advanced illness. The Project will seek to address this problem through policy and research projects that will identify and analyze these barriers, and propose policy solutions that promote development and growth of successful programs. This may entail developing proposed regulatory approaches for the advanced care delivery model that could be adopted by policymakers at the state and federal levels, as well as exploration of potential payment methodologies for this model of care.  Read More

The Economist on Contraceptive Coverage and Misleading Metaphors

By Gregory M. Lipper

The Economist is not buying the challengers’ claim that the provision of contraceptive coverage—by third parties—is an act of “hijacking”:

When the government arranges for contraceptive coverage with the insurance company used by the religious charity, it is not commandeering anybody’s property. Nor is it taking metaphorical control of the group’s health insurance plan. Instead, the government is seeking to fulfil Obamacare’s near-universal guarantee to female employees by working with the same insurance company or third-party plan administrator that provides the rest of the employee’s health benefits. Neither the insurance company nor the plan is the property of the religious charity: Aetna is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Catholic Charities. The non-profit and the insurer are independent entities.  When a school brings a child to a playground that his parents (for some reason) opt to avoid, the teachers are not “hijacking” the swingset. They are using a resource for the child’s benefit. The parents may be displeased about the school trip to the forbidden playground, but any complaint they raise would necessarily have a paternalistic flavour. Employers do not have such a role vis-a-vis their employees.

Read the full essay here.

Greg Lipper (@theglipper) is Senior Litigation Counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.