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Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Obamacare Could Divert Defendants Away From Jail

Due to Obamacare's expansion under the Medicaid program in the states that have opted for it, more people facing criminal charges might have access to health care and might get diverted away from the justice system. According to The Crime Report, "for law enforcement and courts, that could mean a greater ability to quickly identify alternatives to incarceration for those with mental illness and substance abuse issues. Tim Murray, executive director of the Pretrial Justice Institute, said that healthcare and substance abuse counseling is more effective at mitigating risk than jail."

PA Judge Upholds Religious Exemptions to Obamacare

Even though the Third Circuit has held that "secular, for-profit companies aren't afforded religious protection and the constitutional rights of their owners don't pass through to the corporate entity," a district-court federal judge sided with employers that are challenging Obamacare's contraceptive-coverage mandate on the grounds that it violates their freedom of religion, The Legal Intelligencer, Pennsylvania's legal newspaper, reported. The Legal also reported that U.S. District Chief Judge Joy Flowers Conti of the Western District of Pennsylvania denied a request from the Obama administration for an indicative ruling on the application of the Third Circuit case when Conti had granted an injunction for a plaintiff from the contraception mandate.

The issue is being primed for the U.S. Supreme Court. A circuit split is present on the issue between the Third Circuit and the Tenth Circuit.
 

Bill Would Better Define 'American Indian' in Obamacare Law

Five Democratic senators have introduced legislation to better define who as American Indians are eligible under Obamacare to not face IRS tax penalties for not carrying coverage. Prince William Sound's Cordova Times' also reported the legislation would rectify "the several definitions of 'Indian'  which led to conflicting interpretations of eligibility for benefits and requirements for coverage."

Why the Federal Insurance Exchange Is Failing

The New York Times reports on why the health-insurance exchanges have been so buggy: one factor was that the biggest contractor wasn't given specifications right away and only started writing software code this spring. Another factor was not rolling out a piece of the portal instead of the whole shebang at once. A third factor was that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor." Sources told the NYT that CMS did not have the capacity to take on that role.

The result: "Many users of the federal exchange were stuck at square one. A New York Times researcher, for instance, managed to register at 6 a.m. on Oct. 1. But despite more than 40 attempts over the next 11 days, she was never able to log in. Her last attempts led her to a blank screen."

Why Obamacare Exchanges Are Buggy

The Washington Post has a great explainer on why the exchanges for American consumers to buy health insurance policies are buggy and having problems since they opened. One issue: "the site needs to interact with a large number of databases operated by various federal and state agencies. If these back-end systems are poorly designed, it could take months or even years to straighten out the mess," The Post reports.

Those Left Behind By Obamacare Health Reform

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled states could not be forced to expand their Medicaid programs for the poor as part of the Obamacare health reform law, that is leaving many of the most impoverished Americans still without health care, The New York Times reports after a detailed analysis of census data. Among its findings: "The 26 states that have rejected the Medicaid expansion are home to about half of the country’s population, but about 68 percent of poor, uninsured blacks and single mothers. About 60 percent of the country’s uninsured working poor are in those states. Among those excluded are about 435,000 cashiers, 341,000 cooks and 253,000 nurses’ aides."

On a personal note, I still have hope the states that resisted expanding Medicaid will do so in the future. I attended a health law conference last winter, and a Pennsylvania lobbyist for health care pointed out that all the states eventually adopted programs like Medicaid and Medicare, when first created, even if they resisted for several years. He also arged that healthcare providers will lobby to get the expansions in order to control their costs. This is no consolation for any one person who can't get coverage today, but it's systemic hope for the success of correcting the healthcare marketplace.

 

Health Exchanges Open Today: An Explainer On All Things Obamacare

Now that American consumers can start shopping for private health insurance through exchanges, the Washington Post has a great explainer on how the exchanges will work. 

Some things I learned that I didn't know:

1. If folks can't find an affordable plan, they don't have to buy coverage if it's more than 8% of their income.

2. The proportion of people who won't be affected by the law is higher than I thought. Only 20% of Americans don't get insurance from employers or the government and will need to access the exchanges.

3. Smokers have to disclose their tobacco use and will be charged extra for their health insurance.

 

Circuit Split On Contraception Mandate Reaches Supreme Court

The clash over the requirement that most employers, as well as insurers for religious institutions that are not directly associated with houses of worship, cover female employees' contraception is primed for the U.S. Supreme Court, UPI reports. The Sixth and Third Circuits ruled against challenges to the insurance mandate to cover contraception, but the 10th Circuit has ruled in favor of a challenge by two private, secular companies, UPI also reported. The Solicitor General has asked the Supreme Court to grant certiorari on the issue, and such requests tend to be granted by the justices, UPI also reports.

Obamacare to Affect Nursing Homes, Too

Submitted by Amaris Elliott-Engel on Wed, 09/11/2013 - 10:05

(The Legal Intelligencer- second of two-part series on The Future of Long-Term Care Litigation)

While health care headlines focus on the implementation of Obamacare's individual mandate and establishment of insurance exchanges, the landmark legislation also is going to affect long-term care for older Americans.

Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing facilities must have had compliance and ethics programs in place by March, but regulations are still forthcoming.

Compliance programs for the health industry are not a new thing, said Susan V. Kayser, a partner with Duane Morris' New York office who chairs the long-term care and senior services subgroup of that firm's health law practice. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General issued guidance in the 1990s for compliance programs on the basis of the federal sentencing guidelines, she said. New York is the first state to require Medicaid providers to have a compliance plan, she also added.

"I suspect that by and large, most nursing homes until earlier this year may not have had one," Kayser said. "And now they are required to have one."

Due to the fact the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not yet issued the regulations that would put the meat on the skeleton of the Affordable Care Act, "you have a legal requirement to have a compliance program with no real governing regulations," said consultant David Hoffman, whose firm works on compliance programs for nursing homes and is a former federal prosecutor who specialized in health care fraud and abuse.

To read the full report I wrote for The Legal Intelligencer: http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202618827884&Obamacare_to...
 

Long-Term Care Litigation Sees Surge

Submitted by Amaris Elliott-Engel on Wed, 09/11/2013 - 09:53

The Legal Intelligencer

Amaris Elliott-Engel

(first of two-part series on The Future of Long-Term Care Litigation)

When Rhonda Hill Wilson started representing clients in the field of long-term care litigation, there was not a lot of interest in representing elder Pennsylvanians for the torts they might have been wronged by.

Damages were only thought of in an "economic sense," said Wilson, of the Law Offices of Rhonda Hill Wilson in Philadelphia, and the trial-lawyer bar was more interested in representing clients who were breadwinners.

But in recent years, the understanding has developed that "even a person who is elderly or aged has value in his or her life," Wilson said.

Plaintiffs and defense lawyers told The Legal that litigation against nursing homes and other facilities that provide care to older Pennsylvanians has ticked upward in the last decade, along with increased advertising by plaintiffs firms.

In 2010, 15.4 percent of Pennsylvanians were aged 65 or older, while 13 percent of all Americans were aged 65 or older, according to the last U.S. Census.

'FAVORABLE CLIMATE'

Lawyers prosecuting health professional liability actions traditionally sued doctors and hospitals, but those sort of lawsuits died down with tort reform, said William J. Mundy, a Harrisburg attorney who is co-chair of Burns White's health care and professional liability group and has a longtime practice focusing on long-term health care litigation.

To read the rest of the report I wrote for The Legal Intelligencer: http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202618550735

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