My post at TIE: 4.683 million people get tax bills, lose coverage https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/4-683-million-unanswered-questions-in-halbig/
Also Nick Bagley at TIE: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/a-stinging-defeat-for-the-government/
UPDATE: Gov’t wins in the 4th Cir companion case: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/the-government-may-have-lost-in-d-c-but-it-just-won-in-the-fourth-circuit/
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
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.
The AALS Section on Law, Medicine and Health Care is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for a special Works-in-Progress for New Law School Teachers Program. The Section will run the Program from 5:15 to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 3, at the AALS 2015 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
This program will bring together junior and senior health law scholars for a lively discussion of the junior scholar’s’ works-in-progress. Junior health law scholars will submit papers that they expect to submit in the spring 2015 law review submission cycle. After they briefly present their papers in a concurrent roundtable setting, senior scholars will provide oral comments and critiques. This new program presents an opportunity for the audience to hear cutting edge health law scholarship by recent members of the academy.
We will limit our selection to two or three papers. Read More
by Guest Blogger Wylie Burke MD, PhD.
When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, the National Center for Human Genome Research – now the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) – created a research funding program for evaluation of the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genomics. ELSI scholars study a wide range of issues, from the responsible conduct of genomic research, to implementation and outcomes of genetic testing programs, to intellectual property challenges. But how should this research be evaluated? In particular, what impact should we expect for this kind of research? These questions are particularly challenging for those of us who work in the multidisciplinary Centers of Excellence in ELSI Research (CEERs) funded by the NHGRI, because these centers have been given a programmatic charge to consider policy-relevant questions and help to inform the policy-making process. A group of ELSI researchers, representing seven CEERs, have been deliberating these questions and recently published a paper with recommendations.
We noted, first of all, that policy-making occurs in many venues. Although discussions often focus on governmental policies, policy-making in other venues often influences genomic translation, including actions as diverse as Institutional Review Board (IRB) decisions about consent and return of results; guidelines promulgated by professional organizations; funding decisions of health insurers; and investment decisions of venture capital. In addition, policy-making in one arena may influence the need for policies in another. For example, practice guidelines influence the use of genetic testing and may in turn influence how clinical data are accessed to evaluate test outcomes, or how IRBs decide what genetic results should be returned to research participants. Read More
As mentioned in co-blogger Matthew Lawrence‘s prior posts (here) and (here), Medicare’s Departmental Appeals Board (DAB) recently vacated a decades-old National Coverage Determination (NCD) precluding coverage for sex change therapy. That opens the door for Medicare coverage for sex change therapy, but does not guarantee coverage.
In this second blog of a two-part post, we will discuss how we got here: the somewhat unique process taken by the Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) to invalidate its old coverage decision.
The decision has a somewhat odd procedural history. On the morning of March 29, 2013, the CMS announced that it was reconsidering the NCD through the formal process for doing so, and sought public comment on what it should do. (See enthusiastic coverage here.) The statutory, public process for reconsideration of an NCD includes the opportunity for comment and so on, analogous to notice and comment rulemaking. And the ultimate decision is subject to judicial review. (See here for more on the NCD process.) The NCD reconsideration process could have not only vacated the old standard, but offered specific standards to govern coverage across claimants (and thereby avoided some of the limbo discussed in our last post).
But on the night of March 29, 2013, the CMS rescinded its call for public comment, saying that it would instead allow a “just filed” appeal challenging the NCD before the DAB to proceed. (See here.) The DAB process is more adversarial and pits a single beneficiary challenging CMS policy in his or her case against the CMS. (Although there are opportunities for amici to participate. In this case, six amici participated, and all of them argued that the ban was unlawful.) The CMS went on to decline to defend the policy, which made the ultimate DAB decision vacating the (undefended) policy unsurprising.
We can’t say why the CMS chose to rescind the reconsideration process rather than push for the individual appeal before the DAB to be held in abeyance pending the outcome of the reconsideration. (In federal court, the doctrine of “ripeness” would have made the pendency of the NCD reconsideration grounds for dismissal of the individual appeal.) And for transgender persons seeking coverage, the process by which their cause was furthered is surely of little moment. But we can’t help but note that, for better or worse, proceeding through the DAB rather than the formal NCD reconsideration process meant less public attention on the proceeding, and less opportunity for comment by interested groups.
Call for Submissions: Journal of Law and the Biosciences
Deadline: Rolling.
The Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB) is actively soliciting original manuscripts, responses, essays, and book reviews devoted to the examination of issues related to the intersection of law and biosciences, including bioethics, neuroethics, genetics, reproductive technologies, stem cells, enhancement, patent law, and food and drug regulation. JLB welcomes submissions of varying length, with a theoretical, empirical, practical, or policy oriented focus.
JLB is the first fully open access peer-reviewed legal journal focused on the advances at the intersection of law and the biosciences. A co-venture between Duke University, Harvard Law School, and Stanford University, and published by Oxford University Press, this open access, online, and interdisciplinary academic journal publishes cutting-edge scholarship in this important new field. JLB is published as one volume with three issues per year with new articles posted online on an ongoing basis.
For more information about JLB, click here. To submit a manuscript, click here.
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…
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.
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