Category: Health Law Policy

Houses.

Author Q&A: State Preemption of Inclusionary Zoning Policies and Health Outcomes

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment
Courtnee E. Melton-Fant, PhD

Historically, federal and state governments have been primarily responsible for increasing and maintaining the supply of affordable housing. But as budgets decrease, the burden has fallen more and more to local governments. Inclusionary zoning policies, which seek to reverse the negative, exclusionary effects of conventional zoning, are one tool local governments can use to increase affordable housing stock.

Courtnee Melton-Fant, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Memphis School of Public Health, recently published research in Housing Policy Debate that explores the growing trend of preemption as it relates to these inclusionary zoning policies.

Dr. Melton-Fant’s research used policy surveillance data produced by the Center for Public Health Law Research with the National League of Cities to examine the relationship between state preemption of inclusionary zoning policies and health outcomes among different demographic groups — particularly among people of color.

We asked Dr. Melton-Fant a few questions about her work.

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a stethoscope tied around a dollar bill, with a bottle of pills nearby

Can We Expect Legislation on Surprise Medical Billing? I’d Be Surprised

Abe Sutton Leave a comment

By Abe Sutton

Surprise medical billing has emerged as a top political priority amid a torrent of complaints about expensive balance billing.

Despite leaders such as President Trump, former Vice President Biden, and members of the 116th Congress pledging to address surprise medical billing, federal legislation is unlikely, due to powerful health associations’ divergent interests. To shake legislation loose, the President would need to publicly take a side and expend political capital on a creative solution.

In this piece, I walk through why federal legislative action has been stymied to date, and what it would take to get surprise medical billing legislation over the line.

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Medicine law concept. Gavel and stethoscope on book close up

Addressing Racism through Medical-Legal Partnerships

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Medha D. Makhlouf

Numerous studies have documented that racism is a social determinant of health (SDoH) that negatively impacts Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). As such, racism is one of “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age” that are “mostly responsible for unfair and avoidable differences in health statuses.”

The U.S. health care system was not designed to respond to SDoH, much less to address racial health disparities. In fact, U.S. health care institutions have racist legacies that continue to influence the way they operate today. When health care providers fail to confront racism within and outside their walls, they perpetuate the racial health disparities that have plagued our nation since before its founding.

Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) is a model of collaboration and joint advocacy between lawyers and health care providers who seek to improve social conditions that affect health and well-being. MLPs aim to address SDoH on three levels: direct representation in civil legal matters, institutional change, and systemic advocacy. They typically employ legal interventions to ensure that people’s basic needs are met, such as nutritious food, health care, income, safe and stable housing, and uninterrupted energy and water utilities. Improving access to such resources is an important way of engaging with the work of health equity.

While some MLPs incorporate a racial justice lens in their work, many do not. MLPs are generally more oriented toward addressing the effects of racism as a SDoH, rather than as the cause of poor health. But considering the cross-cutting nature of racism as a SDoH, MLPs can and should address it directly. As Director of the MLP Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law, whose faculty has resolved to incorporate discussions of racism and inequality in the curriculum, I have begun researching Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework to understand how MLPs can build on their core activities to further address racism as a SDoH and make explicit the connections between racism and poor health. This post describes how MLPs can address racism as a SDoH in at least four ways that align with the goals of CRT.

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Man holds up a sign at the Black Lives Matter protest in Washington DC 6/6/2020.

How Social Movements Shape the Law to Address Health Disparities

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Aziza Ahmed

We are facing a health crisis in America. In thinking through the causes of health disparities, a now well-developed body of public health law scholarship focuses in on the central issue of law as a social determinant of health. This scholarship examines the issue of how legal rules can determine health outcomes. Property laws that explicitly or implicitly discriminate against minorities, for example, often result in poor Black communities living in neighborhoods in which they may be more exposed to pollutants, resulting in higher rates of breast cancer or asthma. Or, immigration practices, including ongoing profiling at the border, as well as detention practices, may have mental and physical health impacts.

What is missing from legal scholarship on the social determinants of health is an account of how communities respond to change the legal environments that have the effect of producing poor health outcomes. In other words, how do communities demand a better legal system with regard to health inequality? Here, we must turn to social movements who often drive our national conversation on access to health care by doing the hard work of identifying, naming, and drawing attention to the complexity of issues that people face.

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Large pile of amber prescription pill bottles

A Look at Florida’s Decade-Long Effort to Curb the Opioid Epidemic

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment

By Jessica Lam and Megan Bershefsky

Over the years, Florida, an early hotspot in the opioid epidemic, has implemented a series of legal and regulatory responses that have been met with both success and continued challenges.

Since 2016 — about 25 years into an opioid crisis that began in the 1990s — more than half of the country has passed laws to limit either the number of days or the amount of opioids that can be prescribed. Florida is on the leading edge of both the epidemic and efforts to use law to combat its effects, passing its first laws before many other states.

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Man in hospital.

Following the Yellow Brick Road Toward Hospital Price Transparency

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By Laura Karas

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) scored a victory on the price transparency front in June of this year with the D.C. Circuit decision in American Hospital Association v. Azar, No. 1:19-cv-03619-CJN.

The CMS final rule at issue in the suit requires price transparency for hospital items and services. The legal victory will begin to remedy the information asymmetry that has kept patients in the dark about hospital prices for far too long.

As the final rule states, its aim is to empower patients to become “active consumers” of health care “so that they can lead the drive towards value.” The rule is part of a federal effort to improve the ability of patients to make informed choices based on price and gain leverage to negotiate unreasonable hospital charges.

The American Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and several other groups brought suit to contest the CMS final rule mandating that hospitals make public and update annually certain “standard charges” for hospital “items and services.”

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Syringe and vials of vaccine.

Racial Inclusivity in COVID-19 Vaccine Trials

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Colleen Campbell

Recent calls for racial inclusivity in vaccine trials, which often rely on genetic rationales while emphasizing medical distrust among African Americans, unfortunately lack an equally robust critique of medical racism and the ongoing reasons for this distrust.

Even though race lacks genetic meaning, the COVID-19 discourse is rife with biological notions of race. Because of “[g]enetics related to racial differences” African Americans must be involved in clinical trials, said Dr. Larry Graham in an NBC News article. He continued: “We must be sure it works in Black folks.” For this reason, companies like biotech firm Moderna are enlisting Black religious leaders to heavily recruit African American participants. They are also exploiting networks previously used for HIV clinical trials.

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Civil rights march on Washington, D.C. Film negative by photographer Warren K. Leffler, 1963. From the U.S. News & World Report Collection. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. Photograph shows a procession of African Americans carrying signs for equal rights, integrated schools, decent housing, and an end to bias. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003654393/

Structural Racism: The Root Cause of the Social Determinants of Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Ruqaiijah Yearby, J.D., M.P.H.

In 1906, W.E.B. DuBois noted that social conditions, not genetics, impacted the health of Blacks, causing racial disparities in mortality rates. In 2010, the federal government formally recognized that social conditions, specifically the social determinants of health (SDOH), were responsible for racial health disparities.

Racial health disparities, estimated to cost the United States $175 billion in lost life years and $135 billion per year in excess health care costs and untapped productivity, persist because of the failure to address their root cause: structural racism.

Structural racism describes the way our systems are structured to produce racial inequalities between whites and racial and ethnic minorities in the SDOH, leading to racial health disparities.

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Valuing the vaccine still.

Valuing the Vaccine: Video Preview with Lisa Ouellette

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Health Law, Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts.

The workshop is led by Professor I. Glenn Cohen, and presenters come from a wide range of disciplines and departments.

In this video, Lisa Ouellette gives a preview of her paper “Valuing the Vaccine,” co-authored by Daniel J. Hemel, which they will present at the Health Law Policy workshop on September 21, 2020. Watch the full video below:

shopping trolley with medicine

Concerns Raised by ‘Georgia Access’ 1332 Waiver Application

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By Matthew B. Lawrence and Haley Gintis

Georgia has applied to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for a waiver under the Affordable Care Act that would allow it to reshape its private health insurance marketplace.

HHS is accepting comments on the application through September 23, 2020. Commenters so far have raised various issues, including concerns about how the waiver would, if granted, impact access to treatment for mental illness and behavioral health conditions such as substance use disorder.

This blog post summarizes the revised waiver in Part I, changes from the original in Part II, and recent comments about its desirability in Part III.

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