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 […]
In an open letter, a coalition of voting rights advocates has accused the Obama administration of breaking the law by failing to use the federal exchanges—those run through HealthCare.gov—to help people register to vote. I don’t think that’s right, but the letter nonetheless raises an important question: Even if it’s not legally mandated, why shouldn’t […]
Consider DuoNeb, which is used to treat chronic lung disease. The drug is nothing fancy: it’s just a combination of two cheap and widely available drugs—albuterol and ipratropium. You can pop DuoNeb in a nebulizer and administer both drugs at once. Or you can administer the two drugs separately. Apart from mild inconvenience, there’s no […]
The Obama administration has filed a motion in House v. Burwell asking the district court for permission to take an immediate appeal of its decision allowing the case to proceed. Among other things, the administration argues that allowing the House to sue over an alleged violation of the Appropriations Clause is “a momentous step” that […]
The Center for American Progress has released a report that includes an arresting suggestion for controlling the prices of prescription drugs. Under the Bayh-Dole Act, in certain circumstances, the federal government may exercise its “march-in rights” to license patents that resulted from federally funded research but that are now owned by drug companies. These rights […]
A district court in Washington, DC ruled Wednesday that the House of Representatives has standing to bring a lawsuit alleging that the Obama administration is spending federal money to finance the ACA, absent a congressional appropriation. As I’ve explained , the stakes of the lawsuit are high—not as high as King v. Burwell, but nothing […]
Sarah Kliff has a nice explainer at Vox about how the House’s lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act could get some traction. As I’ve said before, the case should be dismissed for want of standing, and I suspect that it eventually will be—if not by the district court, then on appeal. But what if the […]
Walter Dellinger, a former Solicitor General of the United States, has a compelling op-ed in the Washington Post about House of Representatives v. Burwell, the latest effort to maim the ACA in the courts. Read it. He makes a quick, convincing case for why the House lacks standing to sue. ( I made a similar […]
A long-running dispute over the First Amendment flared up this past Friday, when a federal judge in New York told FDA that it couldn’t prevent a drug manufacturer from discussing research supporting an off-label use of its drug. The drug at issue is Vascepa, the active ingredient of which is an omega-3 fatty acid. It’s […]
Back in July 2014, a panel of three D.C. Circuit judges on the rejected Sissel v. HHS, the big Origination Clause challenge to the Affordable Care Act. In the plaintiffs’ view, the ACA didn’t comply with the Origination Clause, which requires all bills for raising revenue to “originate” in the House of Representatives. As such, […]
It was easy to overlook in the hubbub over the end-of-term cases, but the Supreme Court yesterday morning agreed to hear Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual, a case with significant implications for the states’ authority over the health-care sector. At issue in the case is whether Vermont can force health insurers—including employers that self-insure—to tell state […]
Last Monday, the Supreme Court decided Baker Botts v. ASARCO, a bankruptcy case about whether certain kinds of attorneys’ fees are available under the Bankruptcy Code. In deciding the case, did the Court tip its hand about the outcome in King v. Burwell, as some have speculated? Perhaps. On behalf of a six-justice majority, for […]