By Michael Anne Kyle This summer, four of the five largest national health insurance companies proposed mergers – with each other. The acquisition of Cigna by Anthem and Humana by Aetna would reduce the “big five” to three. Provider groups, including the American Hospital Association and American Medical Association are alarmed, citing the potentially anticompetitive…
By Elizabeth Guo Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) released a proposed rule implementing section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Section 1557 applies the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to the ACA so that a covered entity cannot discriminate against an individual on the basis…
By Gregory Curfman Bill of Health contributor Gregory Curfman has a new piece up at the Health Affairs Blog discussing the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell in the broader context of Americans’ right to care. From the piece: Do Americans have a fundamental right to health care? This oft-debated question is timely given the Supreme Court’s stunning…
By Joan H. Krause [Cross-posted from Hamilton and Griffin on Rights] The long-awaited and much-debated opinion in King v. Burwell is here. In an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts – who almost single-handedly saved the ACA with his 2012 opinion in N.F.I.B. v. Sebelius – and newly joined by N.F.I.B. dissenter Justice Kennedy as…
By Lydia Stewart Ferreira Two Canadian think tanks – the C.D. Howe Institute and the Institute for Research on Public Policy – recently issued contradicting reports on whether prescription drug plans should be age-based or income-based. As background, medications prescribed outside a Canadian hospital setting are not covered by Canada’s medicare system. They are financed…
By Kelsey Berry One of my previous blogs discussed how potentially discriminatory practices in insurance design may continue to dissuade people with high-cost conditions from enrolling in insurance plans, even in a post-ACA world. Last week, colleagues Haiden A. Huskamp, Howard H. Goldman, Colleen L. Barry and I published new findings in Psychiatric Services on the same issue, except with…
By Rachel Sachs Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, and the Justices seemed split on the central issue of whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA) permits health insurance subsidies to flow to citizens of states that have chosen not to establish their own insurance exchanges. Trying to predict the outcome…
By Kelsey Berry It’s time to talk about discrimination again — this time, in insurance benefit design. A recent study in NEJM by Jacobs and Sommers has coined the term “adverse tiering” to describe the use of drug formularies by insurers “not to influence enrollees’ drug utilization but rather to deter certain people from enrolling…
HLS Health Law Workshop: Liran Einav February 9, 2015 5:00 PMGriswold Hall, Room 110 (Harvard Law School)1525 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA [Map here.] Download the Presentation: “The Response of Drug Expenditure to Non-Linear Contract Design: Evidence from Medicare Part D” (co-authors, Amy Finkelstein and Paul Schrimpf) Liran Einav is Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His current research focuses on empirical work…
By Nicolas Terry Today, the Washington Post ran an interview with Laurence Tribe about the King v. Burwell subsidy litigation (recall that oral arguments are scheduled for March 4). Tribe speculated that Chief Justice Roberts will once again be the swing vote, as he was in Nat’l Fed. of Independent Bus. v. Sebelius. Tribe seems to predict…
