Notice & Comment

Author: Nicholas Bagley

Notice & Comment

Amicus brief in the Texas ACA case

Together with a bipartisan group of law professors—Jonathan Adler, Abbe Gluck, Ilya Somin, and Kevin Walsh—I submitted an amicus brief today in the Texas litigation over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Joe Palmore at Morrison and Foerster graciously helped to pull the brief together; he did characteristically excellent work. The amicus brief doesn’t […]

Notice & Comment

Texas Fold ‘Em

In an unexpected move, the Justice Department filed a brief this evening urging a Texas court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act’s crucial insurance reforms—including the prohibition on refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions. Although the ACA is not in immediate peril, the brief represents a blow to the integrity of the Justice Department. […]

Notice & Comment

A puzzle about standing (and the Affordable Care Act).

When you bring a federal lawsuit, you have to show that you’ve suffered an injury that the defendant has caused and that, if you prevail, the court can enter relief that will redress that injury. In assessing the sufficiency of your claim for standing, the court—in principle, at least—is supposed to assume that you’ll prevail […]

Notice & Comment

Disparate Impact and the Administrative Procedure Act

This post was co-authored with Eli Savit, an attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School. In a New York Times op-ed this week, we argued that a Michigan bill that would impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits any program […]

Notice & Comment

Michigan’s Discriminatory Work Requirements

That’s the title of an op-ed that Eli Savit and I just published at the New York Times. For those who are too poor to afford health insurance, Medicaid is a lifeline. This joint federal and state program doesn’t care whether you’re white or black, Christian or Muslim, Republican or Democrat, a city-dweller or a […]

Notice & Comment

Bring back the Medicare experiments!

Together with Scott Levy and Rahul Rajkumar, both formerly of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, I’ve got a new piece out in the New England Journal of Medicine: In an ambitious effort to slow the growth of health care costs, the Affordable Care Act created the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) […]

Notice & Comment

Just how many billions of dollars are at stake in the litigation over cost-sharing payments?

Earlier this week, the Court of Federal Claims certified a class action brought by insurers to recover the cost-sharing payments that President Trump unceremoniously terminated. At first blush, the court’s opinion looks unremarkable. Because insurers share a common legal claim—you promised to pay me, and you broke that promise—it makes sense to certify a single […]

Notice & Comment

Massachusetts wants to drive down Medicaid drug costs. Why is the Trump administration so nervous?

This piece is co-authored by Rachel Sachs, associate professor of law at Washington University Law School. It’s cross-posted at the Health Affairs Blog. Although drug formularies are ubiquitous in Medicare and the private insurance market, they’re absent in Medicaid. By law, state Medicaid programs that offer prescription drug coverage (as they all do) must cover all drugs approved […]

Notice & Comment

Knock it off, Idaho. (But carry on, Idaho.)

Credit where credit is due: the Trump administration announced yesterday that it won’t look the other way if Idaho flouts the Affordable Care Act. The ACA “remains the law and we have a duty to enforce and uphold the law,” CMS administrator Seema Verma explained in a letter to Idaho’s governor and its insurance director. Maybe it’s a […]

Notice & Comment

A feeble constitutional challenge to the ACA.

I was gone last week when twenty states filed yet another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. But no matter. This case isn’t going anywhere—or at least it shouldn’t go anywhere. In their complaint, the states point out (rightly) that the Supreme Court upheld the ACA in NFIB v. Sebelius only because […]

Notice & Comment

As Idaho goes, so goes the nation.

I’ve got a new piece at Vox digging into Idaho’s decision to flout the Affordable Care Act. If you want to learn something about Idaho administrative law (I know, I know, pure clickbait) this is the place to look. I also examine the analogy between what Idaho’s doing and marijuana legalization. The upshot is that […]

Notice & Comment

Are Medicaid work requirements legal?

That’s the title of a new piece of mine that came out in JAMA this morning. It’s pretty timely: a lawsuit was filed last week challenging CMS’s approval of Kentucky’s waiver, which includes work requirements. More waivers, and more litigation, are sure to come. I’m no fan of work requirements. They’re harsh, stigmatizing, and ineffective. And they will hurt people, […]