Law Commons^™

Comment On The Proposed Definition Of “Eligible Organization” For Purposes Of Coverage Of Certain Preventative Services Under The Affordable Care Act, Lyman P. Q. Johnson, David K. Millon, Stephen M. Bainbridge, Ronald J. Colombo, Brett Mcdonnell, Alan J. Meese, Nathan B. Oman

Lyman P. Q. Johnson

In late August 2014, after suffering a defeat in the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision when the Court held that business corporations are “persons” that can “exercise religion,” the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) proposed new rules defining “eligible organizations.” Purportedly designed to accommodate the Hobby Lobby ruling, the proposed rules do not comport with the reasoning of that important decision and they unjustifiably seek to permit only a small group of business corporations to be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage on religious grounds. This comment letter to the HHS about its proposed rules makes several theoretical and …

Comment On The Proposed Definition Of “Eligible Organization” For Purposes Of Coverage Of Certain Preventative Services Under The Affordable Care Act, Lyman P. Q. Johnson, David K. Millon, Stephen M. Bainbridge, Ronald J. Colombo, Brett Mcdonnell, Alan J. Meese, Nathan B. Oman

David K. Millon

In late August 2014, after suffering a defeat in the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision when the Court held that business corporations are “persons” that can “exercise religion,” the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) proposed new rules defining “eligible organizations.” Purportedly designed to accommodate the Hobby Lobby ruling, the proposed rules do not comport with the reasoning of that important decision and they unjustifiably seek to permit only a small group of business corporations to be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage on religious grounds. This comment letter to the HHS about its proposed rules makes several theoretical and …

Comment On The Proposed Definition Of “Eligible Organization” For Purposes Of Coverage Of Certain Preventative Services Under The Affordable Care Act, Lyman P.Q. Johnson, David K. Millon, Stephen M. Bainbridge, Ronald J. Colombo, Brett Mcdonnell, Alan J. Meese, Nathan B. Oman

Scholarly Articles

In late August 2014, after suffering a defeat in the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision when the Court held that business corporations are “persons” that can “exercise religion,” the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) proposed new rules defining “eligible organizations.” Purportedly designed to accommodate the Hobby Lobby ruling, the proposed rules do not comport with the reasoning of that important decision and they unjustifiably seek to permit only a small group of business corporations to be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage on religious grounds. This comment letter to the HHS about its proposed rules makes several theoretical and …

The Commerce Power And Congressional Mandates, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, a five-Justice majority concluded that the commerce power did not support enactment of the so-called “individual mandate,” which imposes a penalty on many persons who fail to buy health insurance. That ruling is sure to spark challenges to other federal laws on the theory that they likewise mandate individuals or entities to take certain actions. Federal laws founded on the commerce power, for example, require mine operators to provide workers with safety helmets and (at least as a practical matter) require mine workers to wear them. Some analysts will say that laws …

The Unintended Federalism Consequences Of The Affordable Care Act’S Insurance Market Reforms, Joshua Phares Ackerman

Pace Law Review

This Article, which is the first to examine the relationship between the ACA’s insurance market reforms and state regulation of insurance, argues that states’ decisions to forego creating their own exchanges may mark the beginning of an important shift of regulatory authority from the states to the federal government. It begins by sketching the historical antecedents of the current allocation of state and federal authority over insurance regulation. The aim of this discussion is to highlight the unique role states play in the regulation of insurance as opposed to other financial products. Part III explains the pre-ACA structure of health …

Breastfeeding And A New Type Of Employment Law, Marcy Karin, Robin Runge

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Building A Better Laboratory: The Federal Role In Promoting Health System Experimentation, Kristin Madison

Pepperdine Law Review

While expanding federal involvement in the health care system, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) preserves states' roles as policy laboratories and private providers' roles as health care delivery laboratories. State-based and provider-based laboratories suffer from many shortcomings, however, as mechanisms to develop, evaluate, and facilitate diffusion of reforms within the health system. This Article argues that the federal government can take steps to address these shortcomings. It first briefly reviews ACA provisions that promote policy and delivery experimentation. It then suggests that by tying funding to policy outcomes, making use of regulatory variation and regulatory menus, and …

Expanding Women’S Healthcare Access In The United States: The Patchwork “Universalism” Of The Affordable Care Act, Randy Albelda, Diana Salas Coronado

Center for Social Policy Publications

This paper explores the promise of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called “Obamacare” (referred to here as the ACA), with attention to the ways gender matter by tracing the development and implementation of key US social protection systems, an examination of the current health system with particular attention to women’s coverage, and the potential impacts of the ACA, including how it conforms to international human rights norms for health care. The ACA promises to vastly improve the key dimensions of health coverage in the US, but it conforms with other US social policy by relying on market-based …

Consumer-Directed Healthcare By Any Other Name Would Be… Obamacare, Jeffrey B. Hammond

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Individual Mandate Tax Penalty, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Scholarly Publications

In 2010, President Obama signed legislation that significantly altered the healthcare and health insurance markets in the United States. An integral part of that reform is the individual mandate, a provision that requires individuals to purchase and maintain healthcare insurance. Failure to maintain such coverage subjects an individual to a tax penalty. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that provision under Congress’s taxing power.

Despite the Supreme Court upholding the individual mandate, fundamental questions remain. This Article addresses the question of whether the use of a tax penalty to encourage taxpayers to do something that the government desires is …

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.

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 …

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 …

Crafting A Narrative For The Red State Option, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

Scholarly Works

This Article examines the current state of play following the Supreme Court's decision in NFIB v. Sebelius to allow states the option of expanding their Medicaid programs in accordance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Holding that mandatory expansion was unconstitutionally coercive, the Court created the Red State Option. Despite the enormously generous federal financial support for Medicaid expansion, close to half of the states have declined. At the same time, at least eight Republican-led states have crossed Tea Party lines to accept federal funding for expansion. Drawing lessons from these states, including Arkansas, Arizona, Michigan, and …

Allocating Responsibility For Health Care Decisions Under The United States Affordable Care Act, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

This article summarizes the major elements of the ACA's insurance reforms and how they affect responsibility for making decisions about the health care that people receive. A key example of the difficulty of allocating decision making responsibility is the effort to define a minimum benefit package for insurance plans, called essential health benefits. While the ACA should achieve its goal of near-universal access to care, it leaves in place a multiplicity of processes and decision-makers for determining individual treatment. As a result, decisions about what care is provided are likely to remain, much as they are today, divided among government …

Healthy, Wealthy, And Wise: How Corporate Power Shaped The Affordable Care Act, Kevin Young, Michael Schwartz

History Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

A Vision Of An Emerging Right To Health Care In The United States: Expanding Health Care Equity Through Legislative Reform, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

When asked to write a chapter on how litigation has advanced a right to health in the U.S., I responded skeptically, both because evidence of the existence of any such right is weak and the role of litigation in promoting its development is small at best. A snapshot of the U.S. health care system evinces the absence of even a more narrow right to health care – a guarantee of equitable access to basic medical care. Instead, it reveals a fragmented picture of public and private financing that leaves many people lacking meaningful access to care. More so, the places …

Health Insurance Is Dead; Long Live Health Insurance, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Today, health insurance is no longer simply a class of insurance that covers risks to health, and it has not been so for many years. Health insurance has become a unique form of insurance — a mechanism to pay for healthcare that uses risk spreading as one of several pricing methods. The Affordable Care Act builds on this important payment function to create a complex social insurance system to finance healthcare for (almost) everyone. This article examines how the ACA draws on various conceptions of insurance to produce a quasi-social insurance system. This system poses new challenges to laws governing …

Healthy, Wealthy, And Wise: How Corporate Power Shaped The Affordable Care Act, Kevin A. Young, Michael Schwartz

Kevin Young

No abstract provided.