By Vickie J. Williams I am back after a brief hiatus for the Jewish holidays. L’Shanah Tova to all my readers who have just celebrated the Jewish New Year. The first Monday in October is, of course, a special day for all of us legal eagles–the Supreme Court is back in session. The other significant thing…
by Suzanne M. Rivera, Ph.D. The Presidential debate on Wednesday was fascinating theater. Much of the post-debate commentary in social media has focused on Mitt Romney’s threat to cut federal funding to PBS as a way of reducing the deficit (save Big Bird!) and President Obama’s unexpected restraint (including this piece of NSFW satire from…
By: Katie Booth The New York Times recently reported that the switch to Electronic Health Records (“EHRs”) may be contributing to rising Medicare costs. The Times described two hospitals where the portion of patients billed at the highest reimbursement rate rose by over 40% when the hospitals adopted EHRs. The Times also reported that in…
By Scott Burris No, I mean it: this is a question to Bill of Health readers who know about the law on this topic. This week, a colleague handed me a palm card she’d been given at a subway station here in Philadelphia. “Cash for diabetic test strips” it read. Comparing prices on the company’s…
by Adriana Lee Benedict Earlier this year, the World Health Organization’s Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination (CEWG) issued a report calling for, inter alia, increased support for innovative pharmaceutical R&D funding mechanisms. Although lack of financing has posed a challenge to implementation of alternative approaches to R&D, the increasing…
By Abby Moncrieff First, an uncontroversial statement: Despite academics’ resistance, libertarian arguments played a huge role in the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision. That seems obvious. Chief Justice Roberts and the four dissenters based their Commerce Clause analyses largely on notions of individual freedom, asserting that the federal government should not be allowed to force individuals…
Our friends over at the New England Journal of Medicine just alerted us to a new perspectives piece addressing the impact of cutting family planning funds in Texas (the piece was also picked up by Politico). The authors interviewed 56 leaders of organizations throughout the state that provided reproductive health services using public funding before cuts…
By Glenn Cohen Last week, as I mentioned before, Judge Wolf (D. Mass) ruled that Michelle Kosilek, who was born as a man but has received hormone treatments and lives as a woman in an all-male prison, was entitled to the sex re-assignment surgery that the Department of Corrections’ doctor ordered as the treatment necessary…
by Rebecca Haffajee Earlier this week, the Boston Globe reported that medical debt is still a problem in Massachusetts, with scant change since the implementation of health reform legislation in 2006. Specifically, the article reports that of approximately 3,000 adults surveyed in 2010, 17.5% had trouble paying medical bills in the past year and 20%…
Interesting decision (H/T Wall Street Journal Law Blog ) from the D. Mass ordering the state to pay for a sex change operation for a prisoner. I’ll have more to say on the case soon once I’ve digested, but just wanted to share it for now.
