MONDAY (1/23)! PFC’s 5th Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

The Fifth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium will feature leading experts discussing major developments during 2016 and what to watch out for in 2017. The discussion at this day-long event will cover hot topics in such areas as health policy under the new administration, regulatory issues in clinical research, law at the end-of-life, patient rights and advocacy, pharmaceutical policy, reproductive health, and public health law. Read More

The ACA’s Real Effect: Moving the Goalposts

By Christopher Robertson

“I believe and I look forward to working with you to make certain that every single American has access to the highest-quality care and coverage that is possible. … [W]e believe it’s appropriate to put in place a system that gives every person the financial feasibility to be able to purchase the coverage that they want for themselves and for their family.”

That quote is not from Barack Obama.  It’s from Trump HHS nominee Tom Price, and it shows just how successfully the ACA has shifted the American political landscape towards universal coverage. As I argued earlier this month in STAT, with Glenn Cohen and Holly Fernandez Lynch, the debate is now about how to get universal health insurance coverage, rather than whether to do so.

Republicans will of course favor market-oriented approaches, and they will find difficulty conceiving a plan that is farther to the right than the ACA itself while actually achieving the goals that Price promises.  But for now, even if the ACA is soon repealed, it has succeeded in moving the goalposts for health policy.

REGISTER NOW (1/23)! PFC’s 5th Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

The Fifth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium will feature leading experts discussing major developments during 2016 and what to watch out for in 2017. The discussion at this day-long event will cover hot topics in such areas as health policy under the new administration, regulatory issues in clinical research, law at the end-of-life, patient rights and advocacy, pharmaceutical policy, reproductive health, and public health law.

This year’s Health Law Year in P/Review is sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, Harvard Health Publications at Harvard Medical School, Health Affairs, the Hastings Center, the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund. 

Agenda

8:30 – 9:00am, Registration

A continental breakfast will be available.

9:00 – 9:05am, Welcome Remarks

  • I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard Law School
  • Holly Fernandez Lynch, Executive Director, Petrie-Flom Center and Faculty, Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School

9:05 – 10:30am: The End of ObamaCare? Health Care Reform Under A New Administration

  • Joseph R. Antos, Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy, American Enterprise Institute
  • David Blumenthal, President, The Commonwealth Fund
  • Michael K. Gusmano, Research Scholar, The Hastings Center
  • John McDonough, Professor of the Practice of Public Health, Director of the Center for Executive and Continuing Professional Education, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
  • Abigail R. Moncrieff, Associate Professor of Law and Peter Paul Career Development Professor, Boston University School of Law
  • Moderator: Einer Elhauge, Caroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Law and Founding Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard Law School

10:30 – 10:45am, Break

10:45 – 11:10am, Precision Medicine Initiative/Cancer Moonshot

11:10 – 11:35am, Common Rule Update

  • Holly Fernandez Lynch, Executive Director, Petrie-Flom Center and Faculty, Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School

11:35am – 12:00pm, Clinical Trial Data Sharing

  • TBD, MRCT Center at Harvard

12:00 – 12:25pm, All-Payer Claims Databases

  • Gregory D. Curfman, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Health Publications, Harvard Medical School

12:25 – 1:00pm, Lunch

Lunch will be provided.

1:00 – 1:25pm, Defining Death, Aid in Dying, and Family Rights

  • Paul Ford, Lecturer, Harvard Medical School, Winter 2017; Director, NeuroEthics Program, Cleveland Clinic; Director of Education, Department of Bioethics, Cleveland Clinic; Associate Professor, CCF Lerner College of Medicine of CWRU

1:25 – 1:50pm, Patient Advocacy, FDA, and Right to Try

  • Jerry Avorn, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

1:50 – 2:15pm, Drug Pricing and Cost

  • Ameet Sarpatwari, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital

2:15 – 2:40pm, Health IP

2:40 – 2:55pm, Break

2:55 – 3:20pm, Women’s Health

  • Aziza Ahmed, Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law

3:20 – 3:45pm, Reproductive Technology and Regulatory Oversight

  • I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard Law School

3:45 – 4:10pm, Legal Responses to Zika

  • George Annas, William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health; Professor in the Boston University School of Medicine, and School of Law

4:10 – 4:35pm, Flint, Water Safety, and Public Health Infrastructure

  • Wendy Parmet, Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Health Policy and Law, and Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Education and Research Support; Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs

4:35 – 5:00pm, Concussion Litigation and Legislation in Sports

  • Christopher Deubert, Senior Law and Ethics Associate, Petrie-Flom Center Law and Ethics Initiative, Football Players Health Study at Harvard University

5:00pm, Adjourn

Learn More

How did our prognosticators do in predicting health law and policy developments they expected in 2016? Check out videos of all of the presentations at the 4th Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event, held in January 2016, and find out!

Register Now!

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration is required. Register now!

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, Harvard Health Publications at Harvard Medical School, Health Affairs, the Hastings Center, the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund. 

The Best-Laid Plans For Health Care

This new post by Petrie-Flom’s Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen appears on the Health Affairs Blog as the first entry in a series that will stem from our Fifth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event to be held at Harvard Law School on Monday, January 23, 2017.

“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” This phrase, adapted from the 1785 Robert Burns Poem “To a Mouse” and made as the source of the title of a Steinbeck novella, may become the mantra for health policy in 2017.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was the largest and most ambitious alteration to American health policy in a generation. By the middle of 2016, it appeared to be largely “settling into place,” and the quartet of Supreme Court encounters with the law have by now been largely resolved. The Constitutional commerce and taxation clause challenges of NFIB v. Sebelius have been decided, with the Court weakening Medicaid expansion and causing other problems, albeit not ones that threatened the vitality of the overarching statutory scheme due to preservation of the individual mandate.

The decision in King v. Burwell left funding for the insurance Exchanges intact. Controversy over the contraceptive coverage requirements stemming from the Act remains, with the Court punting on the extent to which its analysis from Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ought to apply to challenges raised by other types of objectors in Zubik v. Burwell, leaving the litigants with a strange “Can’t you guys just work this out on remand?” sort of resolution. […]

Read the full post here!

REGISTER NOW (1/23)! PFC’s 5th Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

The Fifth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium will feature leading experts discussing major developments during 2016 and what to watch out for in 2017. The discussion at this day-long event will cover hot topics in such areas as health policy under the new administration, regulatory issues in clinical research, law at the end-of-life, patient rights and advocacy, pharmaceutical policy, reproductive health, and public health law. Read More

Tom Price Endangers Women’s Health

By Allison K. Hoffman and Jill Horwitz

In today’s NYTimes, Jill Horwitz and I have an Op-Ed describing why Donald Trump’s selection of Tom Price for secretary of health and human services is a particular threat to women’s health. Read it here!

From the Op-Ed:

With the selection of Representative Tom Price as secretary of health and human services, President-elect Donald J. Trump has taken a giant step toward undermining the health of American women.

It is regrettable, but not surprising, that Mr. Trump has nominated a strident opponent of abortion. It is also no surprise that Mr. Price, an orthopedic surgeon from Georgia, earned a zero rating from Planned Parenthood, an organization he’d like to defund, despite its role in providing preventive health services. […]

Read the full article here!

LIVE ONLINE TODAY @ NOON: President-Elect Trump’s Health Policy Agenda: Priorities, Strategies, and Predictions

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Webinar: President-Elect Trump’s Health Policy Agenda: Priorities, Strategies, and Predictions

Monday, December 19, 2016, 12:00 – 1:00pm

WATCH LIVE ONLINE!: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/president-elect-trumps-health-policy-agenda

Submit your questions to the panelists via Twitter @PetrieFlom.

Please join the Petrie-Flom Center for a live webinar to address what health care reform may look like under the new administration. Expert panelists will address the future of the Affordable Care Act under a “repeal and replace” strategy, alternative approaches to insurance coverage and access to care, the problem of high drug prices, innovation policy, support for scientific research, and other topics. The panel will discuss opportunities and obstacles relevant to President-elect Trump’s proposals, as well as hopes and concerns for health policy over the next four years. Webinar participants will have the opportunity to submit questions to the panelists for discussion.

Panelists

  • Joseph R. Antos, Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy, American Enterprise Institute
  • Lanhee J. Chen, David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow, Hoover Institution; Director of Domestic Policy Studies and Lecturer, Public Policy Program; affiliate, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
  • Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President, American Action Forum
  • Moderator:Gregory Curfman, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Health Publications

Read More

Public Health under the Trump Administration

By Wendy E. Parmet

The recent report by the National Center for Health Statistics showing a decline in life expectancy in the U.S. in 2015 highlights a point largely overlooked in post-election discussions about health policy under the Trump Administration. The significant increases in health insurance coverage under the ACA have not resulted in population-wide improvements in life expectancy. This is not because the coverage increases aren’t important; without question they have made a difference in the lives of millions. Rather, it’s because health care plays a relatively small role in determining population-level health outcomes.  More important are the so-called social determinants of health, the “conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age, and the wider forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.” This suggests that the new Administration’s economic, educational, environmental, labor, and housing policies will have more to say about the health of Americans than its proposals for replacing the ACA or reforming Medicare and Medicaid.

Public health policies, and public health law, can also have a major impact on population health. Several years ago, the CDC published a list of the “Ten Great Public Health Achievements in the 20th Century,” which it credited with adding 25 years to life expectancy in the U.S. The list included immunizations, control of infectious diseases, family planning, reductions in tobacco use, work-place and motor-vehicular safety and safer and healthier foods. These goals and other public health objectives, including reductions in opioid use and obesity, remain paramount to preventing further reductions in life expectancy.

To date, little attention has been paid to the incoming administration’s views on most of these issues. Although Trump has nominated Rep. Tom Price to be Secretary of HHS, he has yet to name his picks for the head of CDC or for Surgeon General. The Trump transition website does not mention public health; nor did many public health issues, other than the opioid epidemic, receive much notice during the election. Read More

REGISTER NOW (1/23/17)! PFC’s 5th Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

The Fifth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium will feature leading experts discussing major developments during 2016 and what to watch out for in 2017. The discussion at this day-long event will cover hot topics in such areas as health policy under the new administration, regulatory issues in clinical research, law at the end-of-life, patient rights and advocacy, pharmaceutical policy, reproductive health, and public health law.

This year’s Health Law Year in P/Review is sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, Harvard Health Publications at Harvard Medical School, Health Affairs, the Hastings Center, the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund. 

Agenda Read More

Losing the Arms Race: Health Policy and Anti-Microbial Resistance

By Seán Finan

And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians–dead!–slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed…

H.G. WellsThe War of the Worlds  

The WHO World Antibiotic Awareness Week ran from 15-22 November. It coincided with similar European and American initiatives. So, in the interests of raising awareness, I thought I would highlight a few figures.

Photo by Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIHAntimicrobial resistance currently causes an estimated 70,000 deaths annually. If current practices continue, the death toll is expected to hit to ten million per year by 2050. That works out at about one death every three seconds.

The threat isn’t limited to increased mortality. Anti-microbial resistance could cast medical practice back to turn-of-the-century standards. Turn of the 20th century, that is. Without antibiotics, the chance of infection turns chemotherapy and invasive surgeries into mortal gambles. During these procedures, the body’s immune system is subject to massive exposure and needs antibiotic support. Even ordinary nicks and scratches can lead to fatal infections without effective antibiotics.

So what is antimicrobial resistance? How does it come about? What can we do to combat it and prevent the “antibiotic apocalypse”?

Read More