By Erin Fuse Brown[Cross-posted from Center for Law, Health and Society Blog] Last month, Slate columnist Reihan Salam wrote a provocative article about outrageous hospital prices that are driven, according to Salam, by greed, avarice, and market power. Salam gets a few things dead right, namely his diagnosis that we have a massive hospital pricing problem…
By David Orentlicher [cross-posted at HealthLawProfs blog] With the future of the Affordable Care Act in doubt after last week’s hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican lawmakers are busily preparing back-up legislation. New options should not be necessary—the government should prevail against those challenging its interpretation of the Act’s premium subsidy provisions. But it is…
By Tony Caldwell and Christopher Robertson This new post by Tony Caldwell and Christopher Robertson appears on the Health Affairs Blog, as part of a series stemming from the Third Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 30, 2015. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, a provision in the Affordable Care Act, seeks to increase…
By Kelsey Berry Whereas “allocation of scarce resources” is a buzz phrase that inspires a great deal of distress and desire for good ethical argument, “waste avoidance” strikes us as a relatively uncontroversial method for containing health care spending. Perhaps this is because rationing implies a trade-off between two individuals, each of whom have the potential to…
[Cross-posted from the Center for Law, Health and Society Blog at Georgia State University] By Erin C. Fuse Brown Last month, NPR and ProPublica reported a story that would be shocking if it weren’t sadly familiar about how nonprofit hospitals like Heartland Regional Medical Center in Missouri are suing their patients and garnishing their wages…
January 30, 2015 7:45 AM – 5:00 PM Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East AB 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA Please join us for the Third Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium, with leading experts discussing major developments during 2014 and what to watch out for in 2015. The discussion at this day long event will…
January 30, 2015 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East AB 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA Please join us for the Third Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium, with leading experts discussing major developments during 2014 and what to watch out for in 2015. The discussion at this day long event will…
By David Orentlicher[Cross-posted at Health Law Profs.] With Harvard professors protesting their increased responsibility for health care costs, we are seeing just the most visible aspect of the recurring cycle described in “Tragic Choices.” As Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt observed in that book, society tries to defuse societal conflict by hiding its rationing choices through implicit forms…
By Ryan Abbott Actavis is back in the spotlight regarding its allegedly anticompetitive behavior. Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an injunction against Actavis and its subsidiary, Forest Laboratories LLC based on the New York Attorney General’s “product hopping” suit. The suit concerns Actavis’ attempt to extend monopoly…
By Nicolas Terry Health reform may have signaled the shift from hospital-based “sick” care to primary care and “wellness” but the ACA failed to provide a detailed roadmap. All we know for sure is that primary care (PC) will be hugely important. Increasingly it also seems that it will look quite different. “Old” PC is being…
