August 17, 2016 - Bill of Health

[Crossposted from RegBlog]

Zubik v. Burwell was this year’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) appearance on the Supreme Court stage. Consolidated with six other cases, Zubik challenged the ACA requirement that group health plans and health insurance issuers must provide free coverage of preventative services, including all contraceptive methods approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Some religious groups believe that the use of some or all contraceptives is morally wrong. In response, the initial preventive services regulation exempted houses of worship, such as churches, from the requirement altogether. For religious nonprofit organizations, such as universities and hospitals, later regulations created an accommodation that enabled employees to receive coverage for contraceptives without the employer having to provide it.

Even though the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has tried to make it easy for nonprofit organizations to receive the accommodation, it still requires those organizations, unlike churches and other houses of worship, to ask for it affirmatively through a process of self-certification. Read More

By Nicolas Terry and Frank Pasquale

Listen here!

It’s that time of year again–the TWIHL Back to School Specials (BTSS)! We’ve rounded up experts from across the health law academy to discuss what they see as the most important new developments over the past year in health law, and how to integrate them into the health law curriculum. We’ll have three installments of the BTSS.

This is our second episode, and you’ll see why we love acronyms so much once you hear Frank’s discussion of MACRA’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Advanced Payment Models (APMs). For an introduction to MACRA, check out resources linked to here and here and here. We are also pleased to have two great returning guests for this BTSS: Leo Beletsky discusses the opiate crisis and the curative but unfunded mandate. Erin Fusee Brown discusses Universal health Services v. U.S., ex rel. Escobar, the case that may launch a thousand (or more) false claims litigations.

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