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Full-Text Articles in Law
Is Obamacare Really Unconstitutional?, Nicholas Bagley
Is Obamacare Really Unconstitutional?, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
On December 18, 2019, just 3 days after the close of open enrollment on the exchanges and on the same day the House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump, a conservative appeals court handed the President a major victory in his crusade against the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Over a stern dissent, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declared that the law’s individual mandate is unconstitutional and that the entire rest of the law might therefore be invalid.
Threats To Medicaid And Health Equity Intersections, Mary Crossley
Threats To Medicaid And Health Equity Intersections, Mary Crossley
Articles
2017 was a tumultuous year politically in the United States on many fronts, but perhaps none more so than health care. For enrollees in the Medicaid program, it was a “year of living precariously.” Long-promised Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act also took aim at Medicaid, with proposals to fundamentally restructure the program and drastically cut its federal funding. These proposals provoked pushback from multiple fronts, including formal opposition from groups representing people with disabilities and people of color and individual protesters. Opposition by these groups should not have surprised the proponents of “reforming” Medicaid. Both people of …
Are Medicaid Work Requirements Legal?, Nicholas Bagley
Are Medicaid Work Requirements Legal?, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
On January 12, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approved a waiver allowing Kentucky to impose a work requirement on some nondisabled Medicaid beneficiaries. Similar waivers are sure to follow. Supporters see work requirements as a spur to force the idle poor to work; opponents see the requirements as a covert means of withholding medical care from vulnerable people. Setting the policy debate aside, however, are work requirements legal?
Small Change, Big Consequences — Partial Medicaid Expansions Under The Aca, Adrianna Mcintyre, Allan M. Joseph, Nicholas Bagley
Small Change, Big Consequences — Partial Medicaid Expansions Under The Aca, Adrianna Mcintyre, Allan M. Joseph, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
Though congressional efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) seem to have stalled, the Trump administration retains broad executive authority to reshape the health care landscape. Perhaps the most consequential choices that the administration will make pertain to Medicaid, which today covers more than 1 in 5 Americans. Much has been made of proposals to introduce work requirements or cost sharing to the program. But another decision of arguably greater long-term significance has been overlooked: whether to allow “partial expansions” pursuant to a state Medicaid waiver. Arkansas has already submitted a waiver request for a partial expansion, …
The Dubious Empirical And Legal Foundations Of Wellness Programs, Adrianna Mcintyre, Nicholas Bagley, Austin Frakt, Aaron Carroll
The Dubious Empirical And Legal Foundations Of Wellness Programs, Adrianna Mcintyre, Nicholas Bagley, Austin Frakt, Aaron Carroll
Articles
The article offers information on the dubious empirical and legal foundations of workplace wellness programs in the U.S. Topics discussed include enactment of Affordable Care Act for expanding the scope of incentives availas; analysis of financial incentives offered to the employees for encouraging their participation in wellness programs; and targeting incentives specifically toward individuals diagnosed with chronic diseases.
Federalism And The End Of Obamacare, Nicholas Bagley
Federalism And The End Of Obamacare, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
Federalism has become a watchword in the acrimonious debate over a possible replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Missing from that debate, however, is a theoretically grounded and empirically informed understanding of how best to allocate power between the federal government and the states. For health reform, the conventional arguments in favor of a national solution have little resonance: federal intervention will not avoid a race to the bottom, prevent externalities, or protect minority groups from state discrimination. Instead, federal action is necessary to overcome the states’ fiscal limitations: their inability to deficit-spend and the constraints that federal law …
Three Words And The Future Of The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley
Three Words And The Future Of The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley
Articles
As an essential part of its effort to achieve near universal coverage, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) extends sizable tax credits to most people who buy insurance on the newly established health care exchanges. Yet several lawsuits have been filed challenging the availability of those tax credits in the thirty-four states that refused to set up their own exchanges. The lawsuits are premised on a strained interpretation of the ACA that, if accepted, would make a hash of other provisions of the statute and undermine its effort to extend coverage to the uninsured. The courts should reject this latest effort …
No Good Options: Picking Up The Pieces After King V. Burwell, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones
No Good Options: Picking Up The Pieces After King V. Burwell, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones
Articles
If the Supreme Court rules against the government in King v. Burwell, insurance subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will evaporate in the thirty-four states that have refused to establish their own health-care exchanges. The pain could be felt within weeks. Without subsidies, an estimated eight or nine million people stand to lose their health coverage. Because sicker people will retain coverage at a much higher rate than healthier people, insurance premiums in the individual market will surge by as much as fifty percent. Policymakers will come under intense pressure to mitigate the fallout from a government loss …
Predicting The Fallout From King V. Burwell - Exchanges And The Aca, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Predicting The Fallout From King V. Burwell - Exchanges And The Aca, Nicholas Bagley, David K. Jones, Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Articles
The U.S. Supreme Court's surprise announcement on November 7 that it would hear King v. Burwell struck fear in the hearts of supporters of the Affordable Cara Act (ACA). At stake is the legality of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule extending tax credits to the 4.5 million people who bought their health plans in the 34 states that declined to establish their own health insurance exchanges under the ACA. The case hinges on enigmatic statutory language that seems to link the amount of tax credits to a health plan purchased "through an Exchange established by the State." According to …
(Debate) Medicare: Did The Devil Make Us Do It?, D. A. Hyman, Jill R. Horwitz
(Debate) Medicare: Did The Devil Make Us Do It?, D. A. Hyman, Jill R. Horwitz
Articles
In this lively and creative debate, Professors David Hyman and Jill Horwitz argue about the virtues and vices of the federal Medicare program. As some predict a bleak future for the American’s government’s ability (or inability) to continue paying for Medicare as the population ages, this debate shows that there is genuine disagreement about the severity of the problem. In his Opening Statement, Professor Hyman offers a satirical letter to the Devil from one of his demonic servants, describes the Medicare program through the lens of the seven deadly sins. Arguing that Medicare’s faults are represented in each sin, the …
Hipaa-Cracy, Carl E. Schneider
Hipaa-Cracy, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
The Department of Health and Human Services has recently been exercising its authority under the (wittily named) "administrative simplification" part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to regulate the confidentiality of medical records. I love the goal; I loathe the means. The benefits are obscure; the costs are onerous. Putatively, the regulations protect my autonomy; practically, they ensnarl me in red tape and hijack my money for services I dislike. HIPAA (a misnomer-HIPAA is the statute, not the regulations) is too lengthy, labile, complex, confused, unfinished, and unclear to be summarized intelligibly or reliably. (Brevis esse laboro, …
Where Is The "There" In Health Law? Can It Become A Coherent Field?, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider
Where Is The "There" In Health Law? Can It Become A Coherent Field?, Mark A. Hall, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Gerturde Stein complained of Oakland, "There is no there there." Churchill complained of his pudding that "it has no theme." And everybody complains of health law that it lacks an organizing principle. Health law scholars bemoan the "pathologies" of health law and its contradictory and competing "paradigms'. which form a "chaotic, dysfunctional patchwork." But it should not surprise us that any field which grows by accretion lacks a unifying idea or animating concern. And health law certainly grew by accretion. It began in the 1960s, when the Law-Medicine Center was established, concerned with medical proof in litigation, physicians' malpractice, and …
The Bill For Rights, Carl E. Schneider
The Bill For Rights, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
Where today is legislative ingenuity lavished more bountiully than on the titles of statutes? And where has that ingenuity been better exercised than in the name "patients' bill of rights"? Do not our dearest liberties flow from the Bill of Rights? And who more deserves similar protection than patients in the hands of an angry Managed Care Organization? And behold, both Democrats and Republicans, both President Clinton and President Bush, have summoned us to arms. The patients' bill of rights is an idea whose time has seemed to have come for several years, and only conflicts among the numerous proposals …
Medicaid Managed Care And Disability Discrimination Issues, Mary Crossley
Medicaid Managed Care And Disability Discrimination Issues, Mary Crossley
Articles
This article examines issues potentially raised under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by states' decisions whether and how to include disabled Medicaid recipients in the massive shift towards Medicaid managed care. Part II briefly examines the special issues that disabled Medicaid recipients pose with respect to managed care enrollment. These include issues of cost, quality, access, and program design and implementation. Part III describes various approaches that state programs have taken or are proposing to take with respect to the enrollment of disabled Medicaid recipients in managed care. These approaches range from simply excluding the SSI population from managed …