Like the recent Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby, the D.C. Circuit’s ruling earlier this week in Halbig v. Burwell is being hailed by conservatives and bemoaned by liberals as a death knell for Obamacare. Unlike the decision in Hobby Lobby, however the D.C. Circuit’s ruling is not the end of the matter, and many liberals are finding hope in the ruling of the 4th Circuit the same day, the probability of an en banc hearing in the D.C. Circuit, and the ultimate possibility of a favorable Supreme Court decision. In an earlier post in HealthLawProf, I decided to take seriously the possibility of damage control from a limited reading of Hobby Lobby. It is pretty much universally agreed—and I believe correctly—that it is not possible to do similar damage control by giving a limited reading to Halbig v. Burwell. If the ruling stands, that tax subsidies are not available to people purchasing coverage through the exchanges in the states that are letting the federal government do the work, many important other provisions of the ACA will be untenable, including the penalties for large employers not offering insurance whose employees receive subsidies and likely the individual mandate itself. But I think it is possible to undermine Halbig in a way not generally recognized by the liberal critics who argue (correctly) that the statutory provision at issue is ambiguous: argue that the jurisprudence of the majority opinion in Halbig is internally inconsistent. Here’s how. Read More
Category: Health Care Reform
A Mixed Message on Obamacare from Two Federal Circuits
By Greg Curfman and Holly Fernandez Lynch
It was as if lightning had struck twice in the same place.
On Tuesday two pivotal federal circuit court opinions that could dramatically impact the future of Obamacare were unexpectedly issued within hours of each other. And what’s more, the two opinions reached opposite conclusions on the same question, setting the stage for further appeals and possible Supreme Court review, potentially bringing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) before the high court for the third time since its passage.
At issue in both circuit court cases was the legality of providing subsidies in the form of Internal Revenue Service tax credits for the purchase of health insurance on the federal exchange (Healthcare.gov).
In a decision that stunned Obamacare supporters–but elated opponents–a three-judge panel of the Federal Appeals Court for the DC Circuit ruled in Halbig v. Burwell that the purchase of health insurance on the federal exchange may not be subsidized by IRS tax exemptions. This judgment would leave millions of Americans with earnings between 133% and 400% of the federal poverty level without affordable health insurance, and it would also threaten the viability of the employer mandate.
In contrast, in a unanimous (3-0) opinion in a nearly identical case, King v. Burwell, the Federal Appeals Court for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, VA, came to the opposite conclusion.
Don’t Buy the Cooperative-Federalism-Makes-Halbig-Logical-Argument
By Abbe Gluck
Cross-posted at Balkinization and Election Law Blog
I had hope to take a day off blogging about Halbig and King (the ObamaCare Subsidies cases), but I cannot allow another new, and inaccurate, narrative about ObamaCare to take hold. Over at Volokh, Ilya Somin argues that the holding in Halbig is not absurd because Congress uses statutory schemes all the time that try to incentivize states to administer federal law (and penalize them if they don’t). It is true we see schemes like that all the time–Medicaid is a prime example–but the insurance exchange design at issue in these cases is NOT one of them. This federalism argument was made before the D.C. Circuit and even Judge Griffith didn’t buy it in his ruling for the challengers. I tried to dispel this myth back in March, when I wrote the following on Balkanization. As I said there, this isn’t Medicaid—it’s the Clean Air Act.
Obama Administration to Revise Contraceptives Coverage Accommodation
In response to the SCOTUS decision granting Wheaton College a preliminary injunction against having to comply with the terms of the HHS accommodation available to non-profit religious organizations who object to covering contraceptives for their employees (i.e., submitting a form to their insurance providers), the Obama Administration has announced that it will revise the terms of that accommodation. Instead of requiring objecting employers to provide the form and notice to insurers or third party administrators of self-insured health plans so that they can jump in to provide free coverage directly to employees, HHS will issue new regulations in short order, the details of which remain to be worked out, but will likely allow nonprofit institutions to write a letter stating their objections, rather than filling out the form (see the WSJ story here). This will leave the government to make sure employees are not left without contraceptives coverage.
I may be oversimplifying things, but I think this extended accommodation really isn’t such a big deal. It seems to just add the government in as a middleman between the objecting employer and the insurer or third party administrator that was responsible for providing coverage under the original accommodation. In other words, before, nonprofit religious employers with an objection had to fill out the form and give it directly to their insurers; after the modification, those employers could just let the government know, and presumably the government will notify their insurers. A bit more bureaucracy, but shouldn’t be too big of a problem – probably just a drop in the bucket of the massive ACA bureaucracy, and potentially unnoticeable by the women seeking free contraceptives. That is unless the employers claim that even this approach leaves them complicit in violation of their religious beliefs.
Since SCOTUS’s substantial burden test as applied in Hobby Lobby focused on the hefty fines for noncompliance, rather than the extent to which the employers’ religious beliefs were directly v. indirectly burdened, the complicity point is an important one to keep an eye on. Will religious employers be satisfied with simply adding another link to the causal chain? Perhaps (and I hope). Technically, all they would be asked to do is announce to the world that they have a religious objection. What the government does with that information is beyond their control. If this works out, the revised accommodation could also be extended to the closely held for-profit corporations with religious objections to contraceptives coverage that SCOTUS determined could not be forced to comply with the mandate, such that their employees too could retain access.
So let’s see what HHS can come up with. Haters gonna hate, as they say, so I’m sure there will be more litigation on this, but hopefully we’re nearing a solution – and I think a good compromise. The bigger issue will be dealing with all those other services that must be included as essential benefits or preventive services to which religious employers may object, and to which insurers are likely to object to providing free coverage. But let’s see if the ACA lives to die another day after Halbig and King.
The ObamaCare Subsidies Rulings–and the D.C. Circuit’s Disappointing Misreading of the ACA
As most readers know by now, two federal appeals courts on Tuesday reached the opposite conclusions about the validity of the critical financial subsidies on the ACA’s federal health insurance exchanges. The Fourth Circuit in Virginia upheld the subsidies—indicating the government had the better argument, but regardless applying the longstanding rule that when a statute is not clear, courts defer to the agency administering the statute (in this case, the IRS). The D.C. Circuit, however, ruled the other way, reading one provision of this massive and complex federal law out of context. That opinion not only misinterprets the statute—with enormous practical consequences—but also does a deep disservice to conservative jurists and lawyers who have spent the last 30 years arguing that text-based interpretation is sophisticated, not literalistic, and serves democracy.
The stakes are enormous: If the D.C. Circuit’s opinion ultimately carries the day, more than $36 billion dollars in financial relief will be denied to the approximately 7 million people expected to be insured with the help of this financial assistance. It also places Republicans in a real dilemma, especially as the election cycle heats up: The result, if the ruling stands, would be massive red-state/blue-state disparity, as millions of middle-class Americans are deprived in red states of access to medical care, because it is mostly the red states whose subsidies are now at issue.
As I wrote yesterday on Balkinzation, the opinion is terribly disappointing from a statutory interpretation perspective. It relies in part on irrelevant legislative history (from the HELP committee, whose bill wasn’t even the basis for these provisions–the Finance committee’s was) and gets it wrong anyway (as I argued here); it bends over backwards to come up with reasons why Congress might have intended this result (which we all know it certainly did not); and it attaches far too much significance to a line in the statute that expressly deems exchanges in the territories to be state exchanges and does not replicate the special deeming language for the federal exchanges. The territories language is boilerplate language used by Congress when talking about territories in statutes even beyond the ACA, and should have been attached no significance here.
For a more detailed legal and political analysis, check out my op-ed on the cases.
How En Banc Review Would Work in Halbig
This morning the D.C. Circuit ruled that the ACA “unambiguously restricts the section 36B subsidy to insurance purchased on Exchanges “established by the State.” (See opinion here.) In other words, the court ruled that the subsidies that make insurance on federally-operated exchanges affordable are illegal.
In the news and blog coverage this has already received, the possibility of this decision being reversed “en banc” has been mentioned. (See here, here, and here for news, here and here for blogs. For other blog reading on the opinion itself, see here and here.) Having written a bit elsewhere about the logistics of the DC Circuit (see here), I thought I would chime in with specifics about exactly how the decision whether to rehear the case en banc, and en banc rehearing, would work.
Health Care Decisions in the New Era of Health Care Reform
The North Carolina Law Review has just released its symposium issue on Health Care Decisions in the New Era of Health Care Reform, featuring several Bill of Health contributors and friends of the Petrie-Flom Center. Take a look at the description and contents below. [HT: Richard Saver, who served as faculty advisor for this issue, alongside Joan Krause.]
Optimal decision making in health care often proves challenging. Health care providers often confront multiple treatments for each condition with limited evidence as to which interventions work best; moreover, treatment decisions can implicate questions of ethics and personal values that may not be answerable by clinical expertise alone. Fragmented delivery systems lead to insufficient coordination among providers in managing patients’ overall care. Patients face significant informational disadvantage not only in dealing with clinical information, but also in making choices regarding health care insurance coverage. Payers must make reimbursement and coverage decisions with incomplete information about the value and cost effectiveness of many treatments. Governmental officials must make complex regulatory decisions in managing a health care system with seemingly endless demand, escalating costs, and limited resources.
According to some optimistic accounts, the new era of health care reform will radically improve health care decisions. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes many reform initiatives aimed at improving health care decision making. For example, the law encourages the formation of integrated delivery systems that share information and coordinate care, fosters the development of shared decision-making between providers and patients, develops a more comprehensive evidence base through comparative effectiveness research, and creates insurance exchanges where patients as consumers can choose between plans offering standardized benefits and compared in standardized formats. But there are also reasons for concern that, in the new era of health care reform, decision making will become all the more complex and daunting. This symposium will consider both the promise and limitations of recent reform efforts, highlighting the important issues that are likely to emerge as the health care system tries to improve decision making.
Contents: Read More
Update and Thoughts on Lawsuit Over Medicare Hearing Backlog
Several months ago, I promised to post my thoughts on the viability of the American Hospital Association’s threatened lawsuit against the Secretary of Health and Human Services challenging the growing backlog of coverage appeals. (See my post here). That issue has become timely, because the AHA and several providers filed suit in May in the District of Columbia, and a few days ago filed a motion for summary judgment. (See here). There has been some coverage of the suit. (See here and here.) In short, their argument is that the statute says that a hearing must be held in 90 days and Medicare officials admit that the plaintiffs will not get a hearing for years, so therefore the court should order “mandamus,” forcing compliance with the 90 day deadline.
When I was in practice before moving to academia, I represented the Secretary in cases like this, so keep in mind my view might be biased. But the government’s response to the complaint is due (by my calculation) Monday, July 28, so I wanted to offer my quick reactions about the case and what sort of response we might hear from the government. I’ve just read over the AHA’s motion for summary judgment and I think that in a case like this, with an admitted violation of a statutory requirement, you have to start with the presumption that things could go bad for the government. But with that said, I don’t think that the government’s case is as gloomy as it might at first appear, so this could be an interesting case to watch going forward.
Big Data, Predictive Analytics, Health Care, Law, and Ethics
Update: The Moore Foundation has generously paid to make my article available as open access on their website here. Today I am speaking at Health Affairs’ “Using Big Data to Transform Health Care” in DC, that will also launch its new issue devoted to the topic. I have a co-authored paper in the volume entitled “The Legal And Ethical Concerns That Arise From Using Complex Predictive Analytics In Health Care” that has just been released. Ironically the article is behind a paywall (while data wants to be free, I guess big data is different!) Here is the abstract.
Predictive analytics, or the use of electronic algorithms to forecast future events in real time, makes it possible to harness the power of big data to improve the health of patients and lower the cost of health care. However, this opportunity raises policy, ethical, and legal challenges. In this article we analyze the major challenges to implementing predictive analytics in health care settings and make broad recommendations for overcoming challenges raised in the four phases of the life cycle of a predictive analytics model: acquiring data to build the model, building and validating it, testing it in real-world settings, and disseminating and using it more broadly. For instance, we recommend that model developers implement governance structures that include patients and other stakeholders starting in the earliest phases of development. In addition, developers should be allowed to use already collected patient data without explicit consent, provided that they comply with federal regulations regarding research on human subjects and the privacy of health information.
I will also have a related paper on mobile health coming out later this summer that I will blog about when it comes out…
In the Aftermath of Hobby Lobby
By Gregory Curfman and Holly Fernandez Lynch
[A quick follow up to our recent NEJM Perspective on the case, with I. Glenn Cohen]
Immediately after Justice Samuel Alito’s announcement on June 30 of the majority opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court took further actions on the contraceptive mandate, and both supporters and opponents of the opinion were furiously assessing the implications and impact of what has proved to be a wild week for women’s access to contraception.
A report from the IMS Institute last April found that 24 million more prescriptions for oral contraceptives without a copayment were written in 2013 (when the contraceptive mandate was in full effect) than in 2012 (when it was not). This translates into a savings of $483 million for women (on average $269 per person). The percentage of women with no out-of-pocket costs for contraceptives increased from 14% to 56%. What will be the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby on these trends?
The Hobby Lobby opinion is quite clear that the contraceptive mandate, spawned by the Affordable Care Act, may not be enforced against closely held, for-profit companies with religious objections to paying for contraceptives coverage. In other words, such companies will not face the hefty fines for noncompliance that would otherwise be imposed by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Nonprofit Organizations
The opinion does not, however, apply to religious-affiliated, nonprofit organizations, such as Catholic schools or religious charities. For such organizations that object to paying for contraceptives coverage, the applicable regulation provided an accommodation by which the entities themselves were off the hook, but instead their insurers (or in the case of self-insured organizations, a third party administrator) would be required to provide free contraceptives coverage without cost to either the employee or the employer. In order to be eligible for this accommodation, the nonprofit entity must complete a form designating its objection and provide a copy to its health insurance issuer or a third party administrator. A number of nonprofits filed lawsuits asking that they be exempt from even this requirement, on the grounds that they were still being required to violate their religious beliefs by deputizing someone else to provide the objectionable services. One such group, the Little Sisters of the Poor in Colorado, a group of nuns who perform charity work, was granted an injunction by the Supreme Court last January.