Health Law Advisor

Our colleague Kara M. Maciel of Epstein Becker Green wrote a wage and hour update in this month’s Take 5 labor and employment newsletter.

Here’s a preview of the five items:

1. IRS Will Begin Taxing a Restaurant's Automatic Gratuities as Service Charges
2. The New DOL Secretary, Tom Perez, Spells Out the WHD's Enforcement Agenda
3. DOL Investigates Health Care Provider and Obtains $4 Million Settlement for Overtime Payments
4. Federal Court Strikes Down DOL Tip Pooling Rule
5. Take Preventative Steps When Facing WHD Audits

Read the full article here.

By Amy Traub, Michael Kun, and Anna Kolontyrsky

As employers know, not only are FLSA collective actions more prevalent than ever, but they can be costly to defend or resolve.  In an attempt to bring quick closure to such cases, somedefendants have attempted to settle such claims with the individual plaintiff alone through a Rule 68 offer of judgment before a class has been conditionally certified.

This strategy has come under attack.  And the United States Supreme Court will now determine whether it is permissible.

The United States Supreme Court has elected to review a Third Circuit ...

Now that we have sweeping new health care legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("the Act"), let's look at the rollout of the accountable care provisions--i.e., those changes to the payment and delivery system that hold the most long-term promise of improving quality and cost-efficiency. They are discussed in my most recent article: "The Timeline for Accountable Care: The Rollout of the Payment and Delivery Reform Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Implications for Accountable Care Organizations," published last week in ...

Much of the work of the Commonwealth Fund and others seems to presume that payors are a necessary intermediary and should be the entities doling out population prepayment (aka capitation before it was a nasty word). However, it need not work out that way – particularly with House Dems’ concern that Medicare Advantage was profiteering.

It would be a small step for the new public plan likely to be created to make “population prepayments” directly to integrated health systems particularly because the covered lives under such a plan are likely to have the benefit of public ...