Law Commons^™

The Medicaid Gamble, Ann Marie Marciarille

Faculty Works

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was an unprecedented gamble. The ACA transformed Medicaid from an unevenly and underfunded program for the poor and disabled to a program to offer those priced out of commercial insurance markets government-funded health insurance similar to Medicare, the single-payer system for seniors and the disabled. In a sense, the ACA gambled that Medicaid could be more like Medicare.

The ACA, as it was transformed by the Supreme Court of the United States, became a gamble on the part of the Court that good things would follow from empowering each of the states …

Farewell, School House Rock (Understanding Legislative History Through The Lens Of The Aca), Nicole Huberfeld

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this blog post, Professor Nicole Huberfeld reviews John Cannan's article A Legislative History of the Affordable Care Act: How Legislative Procedure Shapes Legislative History, 105 L. Library J. 131 (2013).

Medicaid Expansion As Completion Of The Great Society, Nicole Huberfeld, Jessica L. Roberts

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

On the doorstep of its fiftieth anniversary, Medicaid at last could achieve the ambitious goals President Lyndon B. Johnson enunciated for the Great Society upon signing Medicare and Medicaid into law in 1965. Although the spotlight shone on Medicare at the time, Medicaid was the “sleeper program” that caught America’s neediest in its safety net—but only some of them. Medicaid’s exclusion of childless adults and other “undeserving poor” loaned an air of “otherness” to enrollees, contributing to its stigma and seeming political fragility. Now, Medicaid touches every American life. One in five Americans benefits from Medicaid’s healthcare coverage, and that …

Paging Dr. Derrida: A Deconstructionist Approach To Understanding The Affordable Care Act Litigation, Laura A. Cisneros

Publications

Sovereignty federalism and cooperative federalism represent the two dominant federalism narratives among Supreme Court justices and scholars. The Court consistently invokes formal protections to safeguard the states' right to preside over their own empires.' Sovereignty scholars tend to embrace this dualistic vision of federalism that locates federalism's success in the state's ability to exercise supreme policymaking authority within its own sphere of influence without federal interference. By contrast, academics that lean toward cooperative federalism locate the states' power in their position as federal servants, not separate sovereigns. Scholars have commented that even though these academics tend to resist the rigid …

Cultural Collisions And The Limits Of The Affordable Care Act, Jasmine E. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (“NFIB”) settled the central constitutional questions impeding the rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”): whether the federal government’s “individual mandate” to purchase or hold health insurance and the federal government’s authority to retract existing federal dollars if states fail to expand Medicaid eligibility violate the Constitution. However, a number of residual questions persist in its wake. While most of the focus this year has been on related constitutional issues — such as religious exemptions from offering contraceptive coverage to employees — NFIB also clears the path for a discussion …

Mind The Gap: Basic Health Along The Aca’S Coverage Continuum, Sallie Thieme Sanford Sanfords@Uw.Edu

Articles

As ACA implementation proceeds, expansion states should mind the gap — the gap between Medicaid and Marketplace. In this transition between insurance platforms, people can stumble. As a bridge between expanded Medicaid and the insurance Marketplaces, the ACA allows states to enact a Basic Health Program (BHP) supported by federal funds. The BHP option, which has been delayed until 2015, aims to reduce insurance costs and increase care continuity for low-income individuals and families. Interested states face a complicated calculus, one with significant unknowns and moving parts. In this article, I first place this new insurance affordability program in the …

Health Care Reform And Efforts To Encourage Healthy Behavior By Individuals, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Money, Sex, And Religion – The Supreme Court's Aca Sequel, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case is in many ways a sequel to the Court's 2012 decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The majority decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is a setback for both the ACA's foundational goal of access to universal health care and for women's health care specifically. The Court's ruling can be viewed as a direct consequence of our fragmented health care system, in which fundamental duties are incrementally delegated and imposed on a range of public and private actors. Our incremental, fragmented, and incomplete health insurance system means …

Why The Affordable Care Act Authorizes Tax Credits On The Federal Exchanges, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay refutes Adler’s and Cannon’s argument that the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) does not authorize premium tax credits for insurance policies purchased from the federal healthcare Exchanges. Adler’s and Cannon’s argument is the basis of challenges in a number of ongoing lawsuits, including Oklahoma ex rel. Pruitt v. Sebelius and Halbig v. Sebelius. This Essay conducts a textual analysis of the Affordable Care Act and concludes that the text clearly authorizes premium tax credits for insurance policies purchased from the federal healthcare Exchanges.

On November 7th, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of the King …

Employer-Based Health Care Insurance: Not So Exceptional After All, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Future Of The Affordable Care Act: Protecting Economic Health More Than Physical Health?, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

A Restatement Of Health Care Law, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Health Care Spending And Financial Security After The Affordable Care Act, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

Health insurance has fallen notoriously short of protecting Americans from financial insecurity caused by health care spending. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) attempted to ameliorate this shortcoming by regulating health insurance. The ACA offers a new policy vision of how health insurance will (and perhaps should) serve to promote financial security in the face of health care spending. Yet, the ACA’s policy vision applies differently among insured, based on the type of insurance they have, resulting in inconsistent types and levels of financial protection among Americans.

To examine this picture of inconsistent financial protection, this Article offers …

Rfra Exemptions From The Contraception Mandate: An Unconstitutional Accommodation Of Religion, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Rebecca G. Van Tassell

Faculty Scholarship

Litigation surrounding use of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to exempt employers from the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” is moving steadily towards resolution in the U.S. Supreme Court. Both opponents and supporters of the mandate, however, have overlooked the Establishment Clause limits on such exemptions.

The heated religious-liberty rhetoric aimed at the mandate has obscured that RFRA is a “permissive” rather than “mandatory” accommodation of religion — a government concession to religious belief and practice that is not required by the Free Exercise Clause. Permissive accommodations must satisfy Establishment Clause constraints, notably the requirement that the accommodation not impose …