Biden’s Early Focus: Durable and Attainable Private Insurance

By Zack Buck

Though health policy debates during the 2020 presidential primaries centered around expanding access to public health insurance programs (e.g., “Medicare-for-All”), the focus of the nascent Biden administration has been on making private health insurance more durable, not deconstructing it.

While these changes are likely to make private insurance plans more affordable and attainable, choosing to reinforce private insurance plans puts global systemic reform, the goal of many advocates, further out of reach.

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Hand holding pencil drawing a path.

Roll Back Harmful Section 1115 Waivers: Charting the Path Forward

By Sidney D. Watson

On March 18, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent formal notices to Arkansas and New Hampshire that it was withdrawing their Section 1115 waivers that allowed the states to require poor adults to work as a condition of Medicaid coverage.  

This appears to be the first time that HHS has invoked its authority to rescind an approved 1115 waiver. It won’t be the last. 

Waiver withdrawals provide a path forward for the Biden administration to end a grab bag of Trump-era Section 1115 waivers that create a risk of loss in coverage and harm to Medicaid beneficiaries.  

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WASHINGTON, DC - OCT. 8, 2019: Rally for LGBTQ rights outside Supreme Court as Justices hear oral arguments in three cases dealing with discrimination in the workplace because of sexual orientation.

Now Is the Time for a Sex-Based Civil Rights Movement in Health Care

By Valarie K. Blake

The Biden administration and all three branches of government are poised to finally deliver a sex-based civil rights movement in health care that generations have waited for.

Sex discrimination is prevalent in health care, but especially so for LGBTQ people. Combine this with other forms of discrimination that LGBTQ people experience, and the result is a population that suffers from serious health disparities, including heightened risks of mental health conditions, substance use disorders, and suicide.

A much needed ban on sex discrimination in health care finally passed in 2010, as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Section 1557 of the ACA prohibits health care entities that receive federal money from discriminating on the basis of sex, along with race, age, and disability. Specifically, Section 1557 bans sex discrimination in health care by way of extending Title IX, which previously applied to educational entities only. Section 1557 reaches most hospitals, providers, and insurers. Sex equality in health was a long time coming. Similar bans on discrimination by recipients of federal money had passed decades earlier: race discrimination in 1964, disability discrimination in 1973, and age discrimination in 1975.

Despite its historic nature, Section 1557 has yet to deliver on its promise, owing to delays and volatility in rulemaking and near-constant litigation. The statute was barebones, requiring interpretation, but the Obama administration only promulgated a rule and began full enforcement six years after the passage of the ACA. The Obama rule broadly banned gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination, but the part of the rule banning gender identity discrimination was judicially stayed only months later in Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell.

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stethoscope, pills, ampules, and notepad with "claim denied" written on it.

Preserving Meaningful External Review Despite Insurers’ Rulification of Medical Necessity

By Daniel Schwarcz and Amy B. Monahan

Increasingly, health insurers are crafting their coverage terms in ways that undermine a vital consumer protection created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA): the right to appeal health plan claim denials that are based on medical judgments to an independent, external reviewer. The ACA extended this right to all health plans to protect consumers against the risk of unreasonable coverage determinations — a risk that is all too familiar given insurers’ financial incentives to deny claims.

Yet, as revealed by our new article, Rules of Medical Necessity, this essential consumer protection is becoming increasingly illusory as health insurers shift from broad standards to concrete rules for defining when care is medically necessary. For that reason, this post proposes that the Biden/Harris administration should promulgate rules allowing external reviewers to set aside insurers’ rules of medical necessity even when they are contained in insurance policies or formal health plan documents. Instead, federal regulations should make clear that the ACA requires external reviewers to apply traditional, standard-based, definitions of medical necessity when reviewing denials of coverage that are premised on medical judgments.

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Fairview Heights, IL—Jan 5, 2020; Sign on medical clinic announces Planned Parenthood branch is now open, the southern Illinois clinic was built to serve St Louis after Missouri restricted abortions.

Financing Reproductive Justice Through Title X

By Elizabeth Sepper

The Trump administration left Title X in tatters. In the last year, its capacity to finance family planning and reproductive health services for the poor was cut in half. Many family planning providers, including Planned Parenthood, whose clinics alone served 40% of patients, were forced out of the program. Six states were left with no active Title X providers at all. 1.5 million people lost access to care.

The Biden administration has said it will undo the harm. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has promulgated new rules to restore the family planning network. But more than restoration is in order. The administration must actively pursue reproductive justice. Doing so will require Congress. But failure to do so will leave Title X’s poor and uninsured patients to serve as a political football once again.

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Symposium Introduction: Recommendations for a Biden/Harris Health Policy Agenda

By Erin C. Fuse Brown

This digital symposium explores recommendations for the Biden/Harris administration’s health policy agenda. We asked leading health law scholars to describe one health policy action the administration should pursue, beyond the pandemic response. Their recommendations make up this symposium. The responses range from concrete policy changes to broad reform ideas and can be grouped into three categories, those that (1) Reverse and Restore; (2) Reinforce; (3) Reform.

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WASHINGTON, DC - OCT. 8, 2019: Rally for LGBTQ rights outside Supreme Court as Justices hear oral arguments in three cases dealing with discrimination in the workplace because of sexual orientation.

It’s Time to Update the ACA’s Anti-Discrimination Protections

By Jenna Becker

Assuming that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) withstands its most recent challenge in California v. Texas, the Biden administration should prioritize as a future reform the codification of clearer nondiscrimination standards.

The ACA’s Section 1557, which provides anti-discrimination protections, has been fraught with challenges. Section 1557 incorporates nondiscrimination protections from four separate civil rights statutes. This vague language allows administrations to offer widely differing interpretations of healthcare anti-discrimination protections.

In a 2016 rule, the Obama administration interpreted Section 1557 broadly, including protections based on gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as specific language access requirements. Many of these protections were eliminated in a 2020 rule promulgated by the Trump administration.

It’s time to end these fluctuating standards. The Biden administration should work with Congress to add clearer nondiscrimination protections to the ACA.

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image of the US Supreme Court

What the Supreme Court’s ACA Ruling Might Mean for Nonprofit Hospitals

By Jacob Madden

California v. Texas, a pending Supreme Court case that concerns the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s individual mandate, could have profound implications for the standards to which nonprofit hospitals are held.

The ACA’s individual mandate requires people to have health insurance or otherwise pay a penalty. While the Court previously upheld the individual mandate as being constitutional under Congress’ taxation power in the 2012 case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, it may not do so again. For one, the 2017 Trump tax cuts effectively eliminated the individual mandate’s penalty, raising the question of whether the individual mandate is still a valid exercise of Congress’ taxation power. And conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, filling the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, has significantly changed the composition of the court.

If the Court strikes down the individual mandate, the rest of the ACA could be in jeopardy, depending on the specifics of the ruling. The Court has several options: sever the individual mandate from the ACA and keep the ACA alive, strike down the ACA in part, or strike down the ACA entirely.

The immediate concern, should the Court strike down the ACA entirely, is that tens of millions of Americans likely would lose their health insurance and other protections afforded by the law. Another, albeit lesser known concern, is that we would lose § 501(r).

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Close-up Of Stethoscope On Us Currency And American Flag.

Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance May Be Here to Stay

By Abe Sutton

Short-term, limited-duration insurance (STLDI) may be here to stay despite legal attacks, poor branding, and a potential Democratic victory in the upcoming Presidential election.

Though the Obama administration curtailed STLDI, it is now likely to endure due to black letter administrative law and changes in circumstance since 2016.

In light of this, a potential Biden administration should package legislation codifying the current regulations with legislation increasing individual market subsidies. A package along these lines could appeal to both sides of the aisle.

In this post, I provide an overview of what STLDI is, explain why administrative law precedents complicate the reversal of current regulations, and propose a path forward for a potential Biden administration. Read More

Image of a pile of contraceptive pills.

The Contraceptive Mandate Takes Another Hit  

By Elizabeth Sepper and John Aloysius Cogan, Jr.

Known for his national injunctions of federal legislation, district court judge Reed O’Connor is at it again. In DeOtte v. Azar [PDF], he issued a permanent injunction granting religious exemptions to two nationwide classes that object to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. Judge O’Connor’s decision is notable for both its expansion of religious exemptions—in contradiction of eight out of nine appellate courts to consider the issue—and its casual disregard for the realities of health insurance markets.

DeOtte is the latest in a series of lawsuits pitting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which bars the federal government from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion, against the ACA’s mandate that insurance plans cover FDA-approved contraceptives.

Initially, under the mandate, churches were exempt and religious non-profit employers—like hospitals and universities—received an accommodation. So long as non-profits gave notice of their objection, their plans could exclude contraception. Their employees then would receive contraception coverage through the insurance company or health plan administrator. In 2014, the Supreme Court extended the accommodation to closely held for-profit corporations in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc. Read More