By Alexa Richardson The next Supreme Court term is shaping up to include a number of critical cases that will impact health law. From insurance, the Affordable Care Act, abortion access, and mental health, the decisions made this term could have significant impacts on public health moving forward. Here are some of the key health…
By Ameet Sarpatwari, Charlie Lee, Frazer Tessema, and Aaron S. Kesselheim Each month, members of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) review the peer-reviewed medical literature to identify interesting empirical studies, policy analyses, and editorials on health law and policy issues relevant to current or potential future work in the Division. Below are the abstracts/summaries…
By Stephen Wood If you rely on a pacemaker, an implanted defibrillator, a prosthetic hip, wear contacts or need an MRI, then you should be concerned about the constant threat and imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports by the Trump Administration. Using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, President Donald Trump imposed new…
Let’s hope that Congress will act this session to protect patients and fix this broken market.
Is there a role for the government to play a greater role in making health insurance affordable and accessible? As public support for action on health care grows, what options are available to states now?
By Rahul Nayak Recently, there has been a lot of media attention on galling price hikes of generic drugs. Historically, the social contract in pharmaceutical pricing has been tolerating expensive brand-name drugs while they have been on patent (a government-granted monopoly), followed by allowing low cost generics to rush to market after patent expiration. Yet…
By Rebecca Friedman Short-term, limited-duration insurance was designed as a temporary gap-filler while a person transitions from one kind of health insurance to a different plan or coverage. In 2016, recognizing its serious limitations, an Obama Administration rule mandated that coverage of short-term, limited-duration insurance be limited to three months, including any period of renewal. But…
By Gali Katznelson Recently there has been a shift in popular parlance toward referring to PCPs as primary health care providers. Not primary health care physicians or practitioners, but providers. This change seems to have increased in popularity after the original passage of the ACA, specifically with the opening of the health insurance marketplaces. But it…
By Oliver Kim Happy World Trade Month! While health policy is often seen as something particularly domestic, trade can have an impact on health policy here at home. Just a day before President Trump’s speech outlining the administration’s approach to rising drug costs, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) declared May as a…
This new post by Nicholas Bagley and Rachel Sachs appears on the Health Affairs Blog. Although drug formularies are ubiquitous in Medicare and the private insurance market, they’re absent in Medicaid. By law, state Medicaid programs that offer prescription drug coverage (as they all do) must cover all drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,…
