The latest newsletter from the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics is now available online. For an archive of past newsletters, please visit the Center’s website.
Month: April 2016
Call for Proposals: Innovations in Life Sciences and Stakeholder and Agency Responses
The Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Annals of Health Law invite original research paper submissions on innovations in life sciences and stakeholder and agency responses for presentation at our Tenth Annual Health Law Symposium. The Symposium will take place at Loyola University Chicago School of Law on Friday, October 28, 2016 at 9:30am.
The Symposium will explore recent innovations in life sciences and responses by regulatory agencies including FDA, FTC, and DOJ as well as stakeholder responses and recommended next steps for policy and regulatory reforms.
A range of topics will be considered, including but not limited to gene editing, mobile health,
cybersecurity, personalized/precision medicine, 3-D printing technologies, Cancer Moonshot 2020, biosimilars and interchangeable biologics, and vaccine development and incentives (e.g., Zika).
Submission Information: Those interested in participating, please send a 1000-word abstract to health-law@luc.edu by May 31, 2016. Authors will be notified of decisions no later than June 15, 2016. If your abstract is selected, a full paper will be due by January 6, 2017.
Covered expenses: Hotel, travel, ground transportation, three provided meals.
Questions: E-mail questions to health-law@luc.edu Read More
James Hodge on ‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast
By Nicolas Terry and Frank Pasquale
This week’s guest was James G. Hodge, Jr., JD, LLM, Professor of Public Health Law and Ethics and Director of the Public Health Law and Policy Program at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University. Through scholarship, teaching, and applied projects, Professor Hodge delves into multiple areas of health law, public health law, global health law, ethics, and human rights.
Our lightning round this week focused on drug prices. Nic analyzed a California referendum proposal and the general potential of state drug price cap laws. Frank noted that New York’s Medicaid program and private insurers now must take a much more humane approach with respect to state-of-the-art treatment for Hepatitis C.
Our conversation with James focused on his recent work addressing the Zika virus. We covered topics ranging from the genetic modification of mosquitoes to the Puerto Rico financial crisis, and legal interventions ranging from budget requests to quarantines to price controls for condoms and mosquito repellent.
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, Tunein 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
NPRM Symposium: Your Privacy or Your Life – Human Research Subjects and the Great Healthdata Giveaway
Part One of Seven-Part Blog Series by Guest Blogger Patrick Taylor
The recent Apple-FBI controversy has highlighted the fact that our government, obligated to protect our privacy in some contexts, actively undermines it in others. The same internal conflict of interest is responsible, at least in part, for the U.S. government’s recent proposal to revise longstanding regulations to protect people who participate in research.
The proposals emerged last September, 2015, and were hailed as the first major reworking of the regulations in several decades, four years after an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking buried somewhat different approaches to the same desired adverse privacy effects in a tome of hundreds of pages. It’s a safe bet that few if any members of the public not professionally involved ever read them. The feds gave themselves four years to consider and devise the current proposal, but they gave the public about four months to consider it and with no evident structured interaction with public opinion. Read More
State Drug Price Cap Laws: How Do They Work?
By Rachel Sachs
Two weeks ago, I blogged here about various state bills designed to encourage transparency in the pharmaceutical industry, by requiring companies to disclose information about their research & development costs, marketing expenses, and prices charged to different purchasers. In that post, I glossed over the state initiatives to cap drug prices directly, but as these initiatives have been more recently in the news, I want to focus on them here and ask a basic question: can someone explain to me how they would work?
Let’s back up. Two states, California and Ohio, are considering ballot initiatives that propose to cap what drug manufacturers can charge to public payers in the state (such as Medicaid). The texts of the initiatives are nearly identical, with a few state-specific differences in the enumeration of entities eligible to pay the capped price. As clearly stated in a comprehensive POLITICO article earlier this week by Nancy Cook and Sarah Karlin-Smith, the initiatives “would require the state to pay no more for prescription drugs than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — one of the few federal agencies allowed to negotiate drug prices.”
We can and should debate whether price caps like these are a good idea, as a policy matter, and the Cook & Karlin-Smith piece canvasses a number of the arguments on both sides. But first, we should be clear that the laws we’re enacting can actually accomplish their intended purpose. And if they can’t, we should acknowledge that publicly. I see at least two primary obstacles to the implementation of these price cap initiatives, and since they’ve largely been absent from the public discussion, it’s useful to state them explicitly.
Implied Certification and the Problem of Interpretation Under the False Claims Act
[Cross-posted from Hamilton and Griffin On Rights]
In a recent post, I explained the contours of the False Claims Act (FCA) implied certification theory of falsity, the subject of the recent Supreme Court argument in Universal Health Services v. United States(UHS). In this post, I will address an issue largely overlooked by most commentators: the potential for differing interpretations of what is required by the underlying Medicare and Medicaid provisions that form the basis for the certification.
Recent years have seen an expansion of FCA cases from “factually false” misrepresentations to those involving “legally false” claims, where items or services were provided but the claimant also violated an underlying legal requirement. For example, UHS involves an allegation that the defendant clinic violated the FCA because, by submitting a claim for payment under MassHealth, it implicitly certified that it was in compliance with all relevant Massachusetts regulations – including the staffing and supervision requirements it later was found to have violated.
Courts have taken two broad approaches to defining the universe of regulatory provisions with which certification will be implied. Some courts, notably the Second Circuit in Mikes v. Straus, 274 F.3d 687 (2d Cir. 2001), limit the theory to violations of statutes or regulations clearly identified as conditions of payment. Other courts, such as the First Circuit in UHS, instead ask whether the claimant “knowingly represented compliance with a material precondition of payment,” which need not be “expressly designated.” The tests may sound similar, but differ both theoretically and functionally. First, defining implied certification by reference to “materiality” is curious in light of the fact that, since 2009, materiality has been an express – and distinct – element of the FCA false records provision in 31 US.C. § 3729(a)(1)(B). Yet implied certification cases such as UHS usually arise under the false claims provision in § 3729(a)(1)(A), which Congress did not amend to require materiality.
Looking Towards 2030 in Patient Safety
By John Tingle
There is a clear need for those charged with patient safety policy making to prepare for the future and to take account of emerging trends. This would be so in any commercial or professional organisation. These issues were addressed in the context of patient safety at the recent,Patient Safety Global Action Summit held in March 2016 in London. The conference was designed to mirror the discussions contained in the report by NIHR (National Institute for Health Research), Patient Safety Translational Research Centre at Imperial College London and The Imperial College NHS Trust on the priorities and direction that the patient safety movement should follow going towards 2030.
There is a lot that is excellent in this report which is very rich in analysis and detail. Lots of deep thinking about patient safety issues with interesting and novel ideas expressed on nearly every page.
Emerging threats to patient safety
In the report, in chapter one, it is acknowledged that there are many existing issues at the root of patient harm that have yet to be solved. Also that unfortunately trends in healthcare are likely to increase the risks to safety. The report focuses on four emerging trends: Read More
Amicus brief in Sequenom v. Ariosa: Why the U.S. Supreme Court should grant the petition for a writ of certiorari
By Timo Minssen
I am happy to announce that on April 20th the New York attorney Robert M. Schwartz and I have filed an amicus brief at the US Supreme Court with Berkeley-based Andrew J. Dhuey as Counsel of Record. The brief, which was signed by 10 prominent European and Australian Law Professors as amici curiae, adds a European perspective to the many amicus briefs that have been submitted in support of Sequenom’s petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. Sequenom’s petition in Case No. 15-1182 was filed on March 21, 2016 and seeks review of the Federal Circuit’s controversial decision in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., 788 F.3d 1371, reh’g denied, 809 F.3d 1282 (Fed. Cir. 2015). The case concerns the revocation of Sequenom’s patent claims directed to inventive methods of genetic testing by detecting and amplifying paternally inherited fetal cell-free DNA (cffDNA) from maternal blood and plasma. Before the development of this highly beneficial, non-invasive prenatal diagnostic test, patients were placed at higher risk and maternal plasma was routinely discarded as waste. Distinguishing this case from previous Supreme Court decisions and highlighting the mitigating effects of other patentability requirements, we are concerned that the Federal Circuit’s overly rigid approach to claims eligibility decision might jeopardize the development of new therapies in an increasingly important area of modern medicine.
As most Bill of Health readers know, the US Supreme Court has in a recent series of cases (i.e. the combined effect of Bilski, Prometheus, Myriad and Alice) barred the patent eligibility for many genetic inventions as “products and processes of nature”. In Sequenom the CAFC interpreted these to mean – in essence- that “laws of nature” had to be entirely eliminated from the test of patent eligibility under §101 of the Patent laws. Should this interpretation be institutionalized it will contravene the tests for exclusions and exceptions under the EPC, arguably contradict longstanding US treaty policy and disrupt international patent harmonization. More importantly, we fear that the broader impact of such an restrictive interpretation may have grave consequences for a sustainable global drug delivery system, which should involve both public and private actors.
Although we believe that patents will remain the backbone of the industry, we acknowledge in our brief that there are certain areas of biomedical innovations, such as antibiotics and orphan drugs, where the patent system does not work particularly well. We further recognize that both in Europe and in the US concerns have been raised about overly pre-emptive patents scope, but these are addressed at different levels. In contrast to Europe, the CAFC has interpreted the uncodified exception as part of a “threshold test” for patent-eligibility applied before other patentability requirements can be assessed. A strict and coherent application of these requirements, however, would invalidate overly-broad patent claims (including some of Sequenom’s arguably too broad and badly drafted claims), while also permitting, well-defined, narrower claims on diagnostic technology. In our view, the current approach conflates the patent eligibility test with issues that can be more sensibly addressed within a strict and coherent assessment of novelty, non-obviousness and sufficient disclosure criteria or at the post-grant level. We believe that, the Federal Circuit’s threshold test has not sufficiently considered the manner in which today’s statutory requirements have developed in both the U.S. and Europe to address policy rationales for patentability exceptions. To entirely transplant those issues into the patent eligibility assessment would categorically close the patentability door on many well-defined and beneficial inventions that deserve patent protection. In absence of sufficient public involvement and appropriate alternative incentives we risk that the wells driving technological progress run dry and that companies engage in business strategies, such as increased reliance on trade secrecy, that are not necessarily beneficial for our innovation system.
Accordingly, we urge the Supreme Court to clarify a patent eligibility test in line with its longstanding jurisprudence and in harmony with international and European law.
If the CAFC’s restrictive interpretation should prevail, however, I believe that it will be crucial to swiftly optimize the framework for PPPs and alternative innovation incentives, such as prizes and regulatory exclusivities. This would have to be done on an international level to allow for greater flexibilities and encompass further technological areas, such as biomedical diagnostics. Regarding regulatory exclusivities, Article 39 of the TRIPS agreement should provide sufficient leeway for such changes. The pros and cons of the different alternative approaches would of course have to be carefully considered.
The Amici curiae have no stake in the parties or in the outcome of the case. A full list of the Amici is appended at the end of the brief.
Heather Howard on ‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast
By Nicolas Terry and Frank Pasquale
This week we talked with Heather H. Howard, Lecturer in Public Affairs at Princeton University and Director of the State Health Reform Assistance Network. She served as New Jersey’s Commissioner of Health and Senior Services from 2008-2010, overseeing a cabinet-level agency with a budget of $3.5 billion and staff of 1,700 responsible for public health services, regulation of health care institutions, senior services, and health care policy and research.
Our lightning round “closed the loop” on some prior stories. Nic noted a big fine against a hospital which may end ER reality shows (or at least raise the price of their insurance policies), and a smaller action from OCR with a simple message: covered entities need to complete their BAAs! Prior show guest Nicholas Bagley offered an administrative end run around Gobeille. We also discussed the kaleidoscopic complexity of modern insurance markets.
Our conversation with Heather touched on her past, present, and future work on ACA 1332 waivers. If you care about innovation in state health policy, this podcast is for you.
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, Tunein 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
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