Affordable Care Act (ACA)

On November 10, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for California v. Texas, a case that will potentially decide the fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”).
Continue Reading Texas v. California: SCOTUS Hears Oral Arguments About the Constitutionality of the ACA

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and alongside it the high probability of a conservative successor to the open seat she left behind, is likely to shift the Court substantially to the right. Among the most notable cases that will likely be presented before the newly constituted Court is the pending challenge to the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”).
Continue Reading The Death of RBG…and the ACA?

On June 24, 2020, House Democrats proposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act (H.R. 1425) (the “Proposed Act”), legislation aimed at reinforcing the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”) by: (i) lowering American’s health coverage costs; (ii) allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices; (iii) expanding coverage by incentivizing 14 holdout states to accept the ACA’s Medicaid expansion; (iv) expanding affordable coverage to vulnerable populations; (v) honing in on “junk” health plans that provide inadequate coverage; and (vi) strengthening protections for people with pre-existing health conditions. A fact sheet on the provisions of the Proposed Act is available here.
Continue Reading House Democrats Propose New Legislation to Bolster the ACA

The Supreme Court issued a long-awaited ruling on April 27, 2020, directed at a more than $12 billion challenge related to the temporary risk corridors program established by the Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”).  Challenges were brought under multiple consolidated cases, Maine Community Health Options v. United States, Moda Health Plan v. United States, Land of Lincoln Mutual Health v. United States, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina v. United States (the “Consolidated Cases”).  In its decision, the Court reversed the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Continue Reading Supreme Court Issues Long Awaited Ruling on Affordable Care Act Risk Corridors Program

January 30th, 2020 marked a dramatic change in Medicaid funding, as the Trump Administration and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) showcased a plan, called the “Healthy Adult Opportunity,” that would permit states to cap Medicaid spending. This was a blow to the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), which expanded federal spending for low income individuals that did not previously qualify for the program.
Continue Reading ACA Medicaid Expansion Weakens: Trump Administration Unveils Optional Plan for Block Grants

On December 18th, 2019, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals released a long-awaited decision on a significant challenge to the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), affirming a lower-court ruling that we discussed in a previous post. In the lower-court ruling, the Federal District Court judge determined that the ACA’s individual mandate, which was reduced to $0 as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, is no longer considered a tax and therefore Congress no longer has constitutional authority to enforce the mandate. Going one step further, the Federal District Court judge found that the individual mandate is not severable from the rest of the ACA, and thus held that the whole law is unconstitutional.
Continue Reading Update to Texas v. United States: Fifth Circuit Strikes Individual Mandate, Remands on Severability

Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reached its widely anticipated decision in Texas vs. Azar, ruling that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017’s elimination of the mandate’s financial penalty. The Court has remanded the case to the District Court to further address the question (known as the “severability” question) of whether the remaining provisions of the ACA are lawful in light of the decision regarding the individual mandate.
Continue Reading JUST IN: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Reaches Decision on Latest Case Involving Constitutionality of ACA

On May 1, 2019, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed an initial brief (the “Brief”) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (the “Fifth Circuit”) on behalf of the United States, in favor of upholding the lower court’s decision that found the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “ACA”) unconstitutional.

As we discussed previously in our December 2018 blog post, a federal district court judge in Texas struck down the entire ACA by ruling that the “individual mandate,” which was reduced to $0 as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, no longer raises revenue and thus is no longer a constitutional exercise of Congress’s taxing power. The judge went on to determine that the unconstitutional individual mandate was inseverable from the rest of the ACA and therefore, the entire ACA was unconstitutional. The decision was then appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
Continue Reading Update to Texas v. United States: DOJ Files a Brief in Support of Eliminating the ACA

As discussed in our August 16, 2018 blog post, CMS Proposes Massive Changes to ACO Program – Pushing Providers to Accept Downside Risk, on August 9, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) published a proposed rule referred to as “Pathways to Success” (the “Proposed Rule”) to redesign the Medicare Shared Savings Program (“MSSP” ). As proposed, the redesign would require Accountable Care Organizations (“ACOs”) to accept downside risk or shared losses sooner than was originally scheduled under the then-current MSSP.
Continue Reading “Pathways to Success” Update: CMS Issues Final Rule on Changes to the ACO Program