By Abbe R. Gluck As most readers know by now, two federal appeals courts on Tuesday reached the opposite conclusions about the validity of the critical financial subsidies on the ACA’s federal health insurance exchanges. The Fourth Circuit in Virginia upheld the subsidies—indicating the government had the better argument, but regardless applying the longstanding rule…
By Matthew Lawrence This morning the D.C. Circuit ruled that the ACA “unambiguously restricts the section 36B subsidy to insurance purchased on Exchanges “established by the State.” (See opinion here.) In other words, the court ruled that the subsidies that make insurance on federally-operated exchanges affordable are illegal. In the news and blog coverage this…
By Elizabeth Guo As mentioned in co-blogger Matthew Lawrence‘s prior posts (here) and (here), Medicare’s Departmental Appeals Board (DAB) recently vacated a decades-old National Coverage Determination (NCD) precluding coverage for sex change therapy. That opens the door for Medicare coverage for sex change therapy, but does not guarantee coverage. In this second blog of a two-part post, we will…
By Gregory Curfman Tom Goldstein, Publisher of SCOTUSblog, has opined on why Justice Stephen Breyer apparently joined the majority opinion in Wheaton College v. Burwell, which the Court released last Thursday. The majority granted Wheaton a temporary injunction exempting the College from the contraceptive mandate, which was spawned by the Affordable Care Act and which…
By Gregory Curfman and Holly Fernandez Lynch [A quick follow up to our recent NEJM Perspective on the case, with I. Glenn Cohen] Immediately after Justice Samuel Alito’s announcement on June 30 of the majority opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court took further actions on the contraceptive mandate, and both supporters and opponents…
By Matthew Lawrence and Elizabeth Guo Last month Medicare’s policy on coverage for sex change therapy changed somewhat. (See Matt’s earlier post here.) Specifically, Medicare’s Departmental Appeals Board invalidated the long-standing National Coverage Determination that dubbed sex change therapy to be non-covered, per se. Co-blogger Elizabeth Guo and I have done some further digging on…
By I. Glenn Cohen, Holly Fernandez Lynch, and Gregory Curfman Check out the “hot off the press” New England Journal of Medicine Perspectives piece “When Religious Freedom Clashes with Access to Care” by Petrie-Flom Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen, Executive Director Holly Fernandez Lynch, and NEJM Executive Editor (and PFC Faculty Affiliate), Gregory Curfman. We review the…
By Kate Greenwood Cross-Posted at Health Reform Watch In a recent, very moving, post about her son’s diagnosis with autism at age eight, blogger Amy Storch writes: “I guess I should mention the obvious — district services for Autism are much more comprehensive than ADHD.” An autism diagnosis should not, as a matter of law,…
By Jennifer S. Bard Cross post from healthlawprof blog Since the likelihood is that many readers of this blog will be asked to comment when the Supreme Court, some time this week, announces its decision in Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialty cases here’s a brief refresher and some links. The cases are challenges to…
By The Petrie-Flom Center Harvard Law Today has posted a feature on Cass Sunstein’s keynote address at the 2014 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference, “Behavioral Economics, Law, and Health Policy.” Sunstein, who is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and the co-author of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, addressed the opening day of the conference…
