Be sure to check out the August 19th edition of the Petrie-Flom Center’s biweekly e-newsletter for the latest on events, affiliate news and scholarship, plus job and fellowship opportunities in health law policy and bioethics!
Featured in this edition: Read More
Co-authored with Eliana Grossman.
By all accounts the U.S. drug war has failed: more drugs are sold on black markets, streets, and in alleys than before, trillions of dollars have been spent, and millions of non-violent offenders are now locked away. Some men and women will be incarcerated for the rest of their lives for non-violent drug crimes.
However, in wake of the drug war and robust mass incarceration, the pattern of policing has trickled down to children. The “school to prison pipeline” is more than a euphemism. It describes zero tolerance policies, subjective discipline, suspensions, and expulsions. Most disturbingly, it describes a process that starts for some kids as young as five and six years old.
In our recent Huffington Post article, we describe how Madisyn Moore, a six year old, African American, was handcuffed behind a dark stairwell for more than an hour by a school guard who mistakenly believed the little girl stole a piece of candy. In defending his actions, the guard claimed, “‘I’m teaching her a f — -g lesson. She took a piece of candy and I handcuffed her under the stairs.’” It turns out the Madisyn’s mother packed the treat for her daughter. The guard was later fired, but the trauma Madisyn experienced will likely last for a long time. Read More
In a new article published today in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Scott Burris, Laura Hitchcock, Jennifer Ibrahim, Matthew Penn and Tara Ramanathan make the case for the practice of policy surveillance to improve public health.
Though widely used, legal “treatments” for public health promotion and protection are too often applied to large populations without timely evaluation or even systematic monitoring. When we implement programmatic interventions in health, we demand evaluation. We should demand no less for legal interventions.
Policy surveillance can help end the inconsistent treatment law receives in public health research and practice. Policy surveillance is the systematic, scientific collection and coding of important laws of public health significance. Read More
[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
By Nicolas Terry and Frank Pasquale
Listen here!
It’s that time of year again–the TWIHL Back to School Special (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 episode is the first.
This episode features three scholars at the cutting edge of contemporary health law. Allison Hoffman discusses Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance and Zubik v. Burwell–and offers big picture commentary on the ways employer-sponsored insurance create unique dilemmas for American law. Nicole Huberfeld discusses Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt and Medicaid expansion. Abbe Gluck describes a new “book course” approach to teaching health law, and the importance of health law perspectives in constitutional law and federal courts courses.
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
[Crosspost that originally appeared on WBUR’s CommonHealth]
By Michael Anne Kyle and Lauren Taylor
Here in Boston, cooperation between health care providers is a fraught issue.
Competition is fierce among local, not-for-profit teaching hospitals, and the idea of collaboration brings to mind collusion, mergers and monopolies.
Unfortunately, these concerns may be keeping Boston hospitals from pursuing cost-effective strategies to meet federal tax-exemption requirements and improve community health. Over the next year, each of Boston’s 12 hospitals will have to conduct a community health needs assessment (CHNA) to retain their tax-free status. New requirements in the Affordable Care Act specifically encourage collaboration between hospitals and with other health care agencies, such as public health departments.
We argue that doing one, citywide CHNA presents a rare opportunity for high-value, low-commitment coordination among Boston hospitals. Read More
With 148,000 members, the American College of Physicians (ACP) is the largest medical-speciality organization. This summer, its board released a new report on the growing financial burdens faced by patients who enjoy health insurance but are nonetheless exposed to unbearably large costs for healthcare. At the end of the day, cost-sharing is just the absence of insurance for those costs.
ACP calls for a range of reforms, including “income-adjusted cost-sharing approaches that reduce or directly subsidize the expected out-of-pocket contribution of lower-income workers to avoid creating a barrier to their obtaining needed care.” As I have argued, the Affordable Care Act includes income-based subsidies for cost-sharing in the Marketplaces, but these are currently being challenged in court, and do not apply to the employer-based system or Medicare, which together cover the vast majority of patients.
Hillary Clinton has also advanced a plan to create progressive refundable tax credits for people who spend more than 5% of their income out-of-pocket. The advantage of such a tax-based approach is that it reaches patients regardless of where they get their insurance (except for Medicare, which is excluded). The disadvantage is that it leaves people in a state of financial insecurity until they get their refunds. A better approach would scale cost-sharing exposure in the first place, a power that I have suggested is already available under Federal law and which is self-funding.
By Ameet Sarpatwari and Aaron S. Kesselheim
Each month, members of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) review the peer-reviewed medical literature to identify interesting empirical studies, in-depth analyses, and thoughtful editorials on pharmaceutical law and policy.
Below are the papers identified from the month of July. The selections feature topics ranging from the reporting of clinical trial subgroup effects in top medical journals, to an assessment of generic drug approvals since the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, to the impact of proposed Medicare Part D reforms on cancer drugs. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.
Be sure to check out the August 5th edition of the Petrie-Flom Center’s biweekly e-newsletter for the latest on events, affiliate news and scholarship, plus job and fellowship opportunities in health law policy and bioethics!
Featured in this edition:
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