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Health Law and Policy

Cleveland State University

Individual mandate

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Beyond Payment And Delivery Reform: The Individual Mandate’S Cost-Control Potential, Abigail R. Moncrieff, Manisha Padi Jan 2014

Beyond Payment And Delivery Reform: The Individual Mandate’S Cost-Control Potential, Abigail R. Moncrieff, Manisha Padi

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Obamacare's individual mandate, minimum coverage requirements, elimination of cost-sharing for preventive care, and minimum medical loss ratios work together to decrease patients' decision costs, steering patients to particular choices that Congress deemed most efficient. If those regulations succeed in improving the efficiency of patients' healthcare and insurance choices, then the resulting demand-side forces can help to decrease prices. This brief Essay does not attempt to evaluate the regulations' success; it merely highlights the cost-control implications of Obamcare's demand-side measures, noting that discussions of cost control should not focus exclusively on the statute's supply-side effects.


The Individual Mandate As Health Care Regulation: What The Obama Administration Should Have Said In Nfib V. Sebelius, Abigail R. Moncrieff Jan 2013

The Individual Mandate As Health Care Regulation: What The Obama Administration Should Have Said In Nfib V. Sebelius, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

There was an argument that the Obama Administration's lawyers could have made—but didn't—in defending Obamacare 's individual mandate against constitutional attack. That argument would have highlighted the role of comprehensive health insurance in steering individuals' healthcare savings and consumption decisions. Because consumer-directed healthcare, which reaches its apex when individuals self-insure, suffers from several known market failures and because comprehensive health insurance policies play an unusually aggressive regulatory role in attempting to correct those failures, the individual mandate could be seen as an attempt to eliminate inefficiencies in the healthcare market that arise from individual decisions to self-insure. This argument would …


The Commerce Clause Implications Of The Individual Mandate Under The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act , L. Darnell Weeden Jan 2013

The Commerce Clause Implications Of The Individual Mandate Under The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act , L. Darnell Weeden

Journal of Law and Health

The fundamental focus of this Article is whether the decision not to buy individual health insurance as required by Congress also qualifies as valid economic activity under the Commerce Clause. This question before the Court continues the modern battle regarding the scope of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause, and the battle regarding the regulation of economic activity continues, irrespective of the Supreme Court decision regarding PPACA, because of the continuing impact of the Supreme Court’s holding in United States v. Lopez. Part II of this Article contends that the decision not to purchase health insurance is not to be …


Can Compulsory Health Insurance Be Justified? An Examination Of Taiwan's National Health Insurance , Chuan-Feng Wu Jan 2013

Can Compulsory Health Insurance Be Justified? An Examination Of Taiwan's National Health Insurance , Chuan-Feng Wu

Journal of Law and Health

Since a great paradox lies beneath the universal health insurance mandate debate in both Taiwan and the U.S., Taiwan’s experience clarifying the constitutionality of its compulsory universal health insurance program might provide valuable lessons to the U.S. The goal of this Article is to provide a theoretical basis, based upon the human rights impact assessment in public health policies and a Rawlsian theory of justice, to decide whether the restriction on individual liberty imposed by Taiwan’s compulsory NHI is constitutionally justified. An analytic four-step assessment is established to evaluate the NHI’s burden on individual liberties: (1) examine the importance, legitimacy, …


Cost-Benefit Federalism: Reconciling Collective Action Federalism And Libertarian Federalism In The Obamacare Litigation And Beyond, Abigail R. Moncrieff Jan 2012

Cost-Benefit Federalism: Reconciling Collective Action Federalism And Libertarian Federalism In The Obamacare Litigation And Beyond, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article argues that most commentators have exaggerated all three of the relevant issues with Obamacare: its efficiency gains, its liberty costs, and its departure from the status quo ante's federalist balance. The collective action problem with state insurance regulation is not as bad as scholars of collective action federalism have argued; the liberty implications of the individual mandate are not as extreme as scholars of libertarian federalism have argued; and the shift from state to national power is not as significant as the litigants and courts have argued. Although I do not make the strong claim that Obamacare reaches …


The Freedom Of Health, Abigail R. Moncrieff Jun 2011

The Freedom Of Health, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article first draws out the freedom of health from Supreme Court precedent and demonstrates that, like other substantive constitutional rights, the freedom of health is a negative liberty that must be balanced against legitimate and compelling regulatory projects. The Article then applies that understanding of the freedom to evaluate some proposed and actual health care regulations that have made headline news in the last decade. I consider the constitutionality of the phantom death panels, the HlNl vaccine distribution program, the FDA's restrictions on access to experimental drugs, PPACA's obesity and smoking regulations, and, of course, PPACA's individual mandate. Should …