Do We Really Need Health Care, After All?

Healthcare News first published this article, Do We Really Need Health Care, After All?, on January 14, 2020.

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

A Decade of Reform

More than seven years ago, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts saved the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”) by upholding the constitutionality of the individual mandate through Congress’s authority to “lay and collect Taxes.”  Rejecting the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause as a means to sustain the individual mandate, the Court acknowledged that Congress’s taxing authority can exceed its power to regulate commerce, but the power to tax affords Congress less control over individual behavior than its power to regulate commerce.  At the time Chief Justice Roberts concluded Congress can only require “an individual to pay money into the Federal Treasury, no more.”  As it turns out, Congress was unable to require an individual to pay the cost of the individual mandate, leaving the Internal Revenue Service to focus its collection efforts on the interception of refunds.

In December 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, setting the “shared responsibility payment” amount to the lesser of zero percent of an individual’s household income or $0.00, effective January 2019.  Following Congress’s slight modification of the ACA, a U.S. District Court in Texas held that the individual mandate was unconstitutional because it no longer was a tax, and according to Chief Justice Roberts in 2012, no other constitutional provision justified such an exercise of congressional power.  That same District Court concluded that without the individual mandate, the entirety of the ACA failed.

Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, but returned the case back to the District Court to revisit whether the ACA can stand on its own without the individual mandate.  … Read more →

Affordable Care Act and Health Plans Offered by Religious Employers0

Update from The State Bar Business Law Section’s HEALTH LAW COMMITTEE – The Affordable Care Act and Health Plans Offered by Religious Employers

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Since first announced in August 2011, the inclusion of contraceptive care as a mandatory component in the employer promotion of preventative services sparked a First Amendment inferno that many thought threatened the Affordable Care Act as well as a number of additional federal and state laws.  As a result, the Federal Government partially recanted this requirement by delaying its implementation for certain entities by an additional year. Regulations promulgated in 2012 kept contraceptive care in the gamut of preventative services, but created a temporary enforcement safe harbor for objecting employers. In 2013, the Federal Government issued proposed rules in an attempt to end the contraception controversy and its challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s commitment to preventative services. Some 200,000 comments later, the preventative services coverage rules in 2013 lowered the burden so employers can sidestep certain separations between church and state.  … Read more →

Virtual Round Table – Healthcare Law 20140

Screen Shot 2014-05-28 at 5.15.03 PM“In this roundtable we spoke with six experts from around the world to discuss the latest changes and developments in Healthcare. Our chosen experts discuss key topics including the advance of cloud computing, common litigation issues and possible measures to maximise efficiency in the delivery of healthcare services.”
View interactive round table on Corporate Livewire.

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