The Best-Laid Plans For Health Care

Editor’s note: These issues and more will be discussed at the 5th Annual Health Law Year in P/Review conference, to be held on January 23, 2017, at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Conference presenters will participate in a blog series to follow here on Health Affairs Blog. Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can check out last year’s Health Law Year in P/Review blog series here.
“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” This phrase, adapted from the 1785 Robert Burns Poem “To a Mouse” and made as the source of the title of a Steinbeck novella, may become the mantra for health policy in 2017.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was the largest and most ambitious alteration to American health policy in a generation. By the middle of 2016, it appeared to be largely “settling into place,” and the quartet of Supreme Court encounters with the law have by now been largely resolved. The Constitutional commerce and taxation clause challenges of NFIB v. Sebelius have been decided, with the Court weakening Medicaid expansion and causing other problems, albeit not ones that threatened the vitality of the overarching statutory scheme due to preservation of the individual mandate.
The decision in King v. Burwell left funding for the insurance Exchanges intact. Controversy over the contraceptive coverage requirements stemming from the Act remains, with the Court punting on the extent to whic...

Source: Health Affairs Blog - January 5, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: I. Glenn Cohen Tags: Drugs and Medical Technology Following the ACA Health Policy Lab Organization and Delivery Payment Policy Public Health 21st Century Cures Act Supreme Court The Health Law Year in P/Review Source Type: blogs