Health Law Advisor

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a case challenging the sufficiency of due process protections in the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) and National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), effectively confirming that the current safeguards are constitutionally sufficient.

In Doe v. Rodgers, a surgeon brought an action against the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the NPDB, and several individual officials who administer the NPDB, alleging that the NPDB wrongfully accepted, kept, and distributed a “false and ...

On July 8, two weeks following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson that invalidated the constitutional right to abortion, President Biden signed Executive Order 14076 (E.O.). The E.O. directed federal agencies to take various actions to protect access to reproductive health care services,[1] including directing the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “consider actions” to strengthen the protection of sensitive healthcare information, including data on reproductive healthcare services like abortion, by issuing new guidance under the Health Insurance and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).[2]

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to imminently issue its opinion in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (“Dobbs”). If the Court rules in a manner to overturn Roe v. Wade, states will have discretion in determining how to regulate abortion services.^[1] Such a ruling would overturn nearly 50 years of precedent, leaving patients, reproductive health providers, health plans, pharmacies, and may other stakeholders to navigate a host of uncharted legal issues. Specifically, stakeholders will likely need to untangle the web of cross-state legal issues that may emerge.

Our colleagues Stuart Gerson and Daniel Fundakowski of Epstein Becker Green have a new post on SCOTUS Today that will be of interest to our readers: "Court Declines Resolving Circuit Split on What Constitutes a 'False' Claim, but Will Consider Legality of Trump Abortion Gag Rule."

The following is an excerpt:

While this blog usually is confined to the analysis of the published opinions of the Supreme Court, several of this morning’s orders are worthy of discussion because of their importance to health care lawyers and policy experts. Guest editor Dan Fundakowski joins me in ...

I knew Justice Ginsburg had been seriously ill, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard the news of her passing. But it was still a big shock, and tears started falling. I thought to myself, “I don’t even personally know her—why am I crying?” It was because of all that she represented. She was truly inspirational. She had a tough life—losing her mother at a young age and trying to get her foot in the door and succeed in a male-dominated profession, not to mention numerous serious health issues. Yet she persevered, and she became a “first” in so many ways, even in ...

"My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

A couple days after Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, my eight year old daughter asked me, when I was her age, what I wanted to be when I grew up. I paused and swallowed hard. I had wanted to be a doctor, but despite how well I performed in school, the more conservative environment I grew up in did not support such dreams because it was “not something that moms did”.

My daughter’s question allowed me to explain to her how lucky she is to grow up in the world we now live in where women ...

The U.S. Supreme Court decision today in Maine Community Health Options v. United States, is a major decision affecting healthcare and resolving a significant Obamacare dispute. The Affordable Care Act famously established online exchanges where insurers could sell their healthcare plans. It included the now-expired “Risk Corridors” program aimed to limit the plans’ profits and losses during the exchanges’ first three years (2014-16). The Act contained a formula for computing a plan’s gains or losses at the end of each year, providing that eligible profitable plans “shall pay” the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), while the Secretary “shall pay” eligible unprofitable plans. But the Act did not appropriate funds that the Secretary could dispense or cap the amounts that the Secretary would pay to unprofitable plans. Nor was there any budget neutrality stated in the Act. The program was something less than a great success and, after three years, in which unprofitable plans outnumbered those that were profitable, the net deficit was more than $12 billion. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) couldn't make any payments to unprofitable plans because, each year, its budget appropriation included a rider preventing CMS from using the funds for Risk Corridors payments. Four unprofitable plans brought suit against the government under the Tucker Act, alleging that the ACA obligated the government to pay the full amount of their negative deficit. With Justice Sotomayor writing for seven other Justices (Alito, J. dissented, and Thomas, J. and Gorsuch, J. did not join one section of the majority opinion), the Court agreed with the plans and reversed the Federal Circuit's holding that while the ACA initially created an initial obligation, the subsequent riders vitiated it.

Congress is currently considering two bills that would dramatically alter the ways in which all federal agencies develop and publish rules. If enacted, both would create significant new obligations for agencies such as CMS and the FDA, expand the scope of judicial review of rules, and would increase the potential for political influence over the rulemaking process. Both bills passed the House on party-line votes, and are under consideration by the Senate.

The first bill, H.R. 5, would overhaul multiple phases of the federal rulemaking process. These proposed changes would make the ...

As the transition in Washington moves into high gear this month, it's not just the new Administration and Congress that are putting in place plans for policy and legislation; stakeholders are busy creating agendas, too.

Many stakeholder agendas will seek to affect how government addresses such prominent health care issues as the Affordable Care Act, Medicare entitlements, fraud-and-abuse policies, FDA user fees, and drug pricing. There will be a myriad of stakeholder ideas, cutting a variety of directions, all framed with an eye to the new political terrain.

But whatever policies ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has rendered a unanimous decision in the hotly-awaited False Claims Act case of Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar.  This case squarely presented the issue of whether liability may be based on the so-called "implied false certification" theory.  Universal Health Service's ("UHS) problem originated when it was discovered that its contractor's employees who were providing mental health services and medication were not actually licensed to do so. The relator and government alleged that UHS had filed false claims for payment because ...

[caption id="attachment_1475" align="alignright" width="113"] Robert E. Wanerman[/caption]

A group of conservative members of Congress have introduced a pair of bills (S. 2724 and H.R. 4768) that would sweep away one of the basic principles of administrative law if they became law. The proposed amendments would make it easier to challenge many determinations involving the Department of Health and Human Services in federal courts by legislatively overruling the deference commonly applied to agency interpretations of the law.

Even before the Administrative Procedure Act was ...

[caption id="attachment_1416" align="alignright" width="113"] Stuart Gerson[/caption]

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided (6-2, with Kennedy writing for the majority and  Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissenting) the case of Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.  The matter before the Court involved Vermont law requiring certain entities, including health insurers, to report payments relating to health care claims and other information relating to health care services to a state agency for compilation in an all-inclusive health care database. 

In an important victory ...

With the untimely passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the best known and most controversial Justice on the Court, commentators, including this one, have been called upon to assess his legacy – both immediate and long term – in various areas of the law.

Justice Scalia was not known primarily as an antitrust judge and scholar. Indeed, in his confirmation hearing for the Court, he joked about what he saw as the incoherent nature of much of antitrust analysis. What he was best known for, of course, is his method of analysis of statutes and the Constitution: a literal ...

In a split decision announced today, June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court, in King v. Burwell, ruled in upholding the tax credits to individuals in all states, including those with only a federal exchange.  In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter. Section 36B can fairly be read consistent with what we see as Congress's plan, and that is the reading we ...

In a unanimous decision announced May 26, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Carter, 2015 BL 163948, U.S., No. 12-1497, 5/26/15, ruled that the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act ("WSLA") applied only to criminal charges and not underlying civil claims in times of war. Thus, the WSLA – which suspends the statute of limitations when the offense is committed against the Government - cannot be used to extend the statute of limitations in cases such as those brought under the False Claims Act ("FCA"). This ruling reversed a decision of ...

On March 31, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc. The Court handed down a hodgepodge of opinions but, in the end, five Justices concurred in the judgment that the Constitution's Supremacy Clause does not confer a private right of action, and that Medicaid providers, therefore, cannot sue for an injunction requiring compliance with the reimbursement laws.  This ruling will adversely affect at least those health care companies that have contemplated suing on the basis that the reimbursement they are getting is less than what ...

On December 15, 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens, a class action removal case.

In short, the Dart case is welcome news to employers. Standards for removing a case from state to federal court have been an abiding point of concern for employers faced with "home town" class actions. In more recent times, this problem has become a point of interest to employers in health care and other industries that are beset by cybersecurity and data breach cases originating in state courts but calling for the application of federal privacy ...

Only last week, we informed you of the Supreme Court's somewhat surprising grant of cert. in the Fourth Circuit case of King v. Burwell, in which the court of appeals had upheld the government's view that the Affordable Care Act makes federal premium tax credits available to taxpayers in all states, even where the federal government, not the state, has set up an exchange.

The Administration has taken something of a PR buffeting in the week following, after its principal ACA technical advisor's comments on this issue were made public.

In any event, we suggested that the scheduled DC ...