A couple of weeks ago, my wife (also a law professor) and I wrapped up the final session of a seminar that we co-taught called Contagion. We wanted to offer an introduction to the outbreaks of infectious disease that have reshaped American life and law. The class was one of Michigan Law’s “at home mini-seminars,” […]

If you’re worried about Zika’s arrival in the United States—and you should be—Laurie Garrett has a must-read article at Foreign Policy on the fecklessness of national political leaders and the appalling lack of preparation in the cities that will be hardest hit. [W]hat Congress fails to recognize is that most aspects of public health, especially […]

It never fails. You leave the country for a much-needed vacation and the Supreme Court drops an opinion you’ve been waiting for. On Tuesday, in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual, the Supreme Court rebuffed Vermont’s effort to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding health-care prices. In an opinion by Justice Kennedy, the Court held that ERISA prevented […]

The World Health Organization’s dismal handling of the Ebola outbreak has led to calls for sweeping reforms to the world’s system for managing infectious disease. The consensus view, though, is that we shouldn’t start from scratch. Laurie Garrett captures the prevailing wisdom in her incredible Foreign Affairs article on Ebola: The WHO performed so poorly […]

From the Portland Tribune: Health Republic Insurance Company of Oregon, a Lake Oswego-based insurer that is phasing down its operations, on Wednesday filed a $5 billion class action lawsuit on behalf of insurers it says were shorted by the federal government under an Obamacare program. The lawsuit, filed in the United States Court of Federal […]

The D.C. Circuit has released a fascinating opinion about the total meltdown of Medicare’s system of internal appeals. The case brings to mind the old paradox of the irresistible force and the immovable object: it’s genuinely vexing and about as difficult to solve. As I explained eighteen months ago, Medicare’s got a big problem on […]

To follow up on yesterday’s update on House v. Burwell, I thought it might be useful to post the briefs accompanying the cross-motions for summary judgment. To my knowledge, they haven’t been made publicly available elsewhere: House’s Opening Brief. Burwell’s Opening Brief. House’s Opposition Brief. Burwell’s Opposition Brief. House’s Reply Brief. Burwell’s Reply Brief.

In House v. Burwell news, the Obama administration and the House of Representatives have each filed their final briefs on whether Congress has supplied an appropriation for the cost-sharing subsidies. The government has requested oral argument in the case, but a hearing date has yet to be scheduled. What happens when and if the court […]

I’ve got a new essay coming out as part of a symposium on executive power at the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Here’s the intro: Accusations of illegality have dogged the Obama administration’s efforts to implement the Affordable Care Act, the most ambitious piece of social legislation since the advent of Medicare and Medicaid. Some […]

Is the Obama administration’s deferred action program for the parents of citizens and legal permanent residents (DAPA) a legislative rule? The Fifth Circuit says it probably is, the administration swears it isn’t. The fight matters because, if DAPA is a legislative rule, it should have gone through notice and comment. With its cert grant in […]

Medical privacy matters. But it’s not the only thing that matters, and people may not value it as much as they say they do. Here’s an analogy. If I asked you whether you think private companies should monitor your movements, you’d probably say no. You might even feel strongly about it, and understandably so. It’s […]

Justice Breyer dominated the conversation in last month’s oral argument in Liberty Mutual v. Gobeille. (You can read this for my take on the case.) Again and again, he harped on a point pressed by none of the parties: that the Court couldn’t uphold Vermont’s reporting requirement because the Department of Labor hadn’t issued a […]

Yesterday, the internet caught fire with a new study drawing attention on the prices that we pay for health-care services. Contrary to expectations in some quarters, low Medicare spending doesn’t correlate at all with low spending in the private market. Instead, variations in private spending are driven mainly by variations in prices—and prices, in turn, […]

A simmering dispute over the risk corridor program has broken into the presidential campaign, with Senator Rubio crowing that an arcane budget move has “kill[ed] Obamacare” and “saved the American taxpayer $2.5 billion.” On account of that move, health plans are set to receive only pennies on the dollar from the risk corridor program, which […]

Workplace wellness programs discriminate. That’s what they do. Employees who adhere to a wellness program pay less for their coverage; those who don’t pay more. Wellness programs thus clash with federal rules that generally require employers to treat their employees even-handedly, regardless of health status. The Affordable Care Act makes an exception, however, for wellness-based […]