• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MassDevice

The Medical Device Business Journal — Medical Device News & Articles | MassDevice

  • Latest News
    • Cardiovascular
    • Orthopedics
  • Wall Street Beat
    • Funding Roundup
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Podcasts & Webinars
    • Podcasts
    • Webinars
  • Resources
    • About MassDevice
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Leadership in Medtech
    • Manufacturers & Suppliers Search
    • MedTech100 Index
    • Videos
    • Whitepapers
  • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
  • Coronavirus: Live updates
Home » Healthcare reform likely to survive court challenges

Healthcare reform likely to survive court challenges

October 28, 2010 By MassDevice staff

healthcare reform graphic

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — better know as healthcare reform — will probably survive challenges to its constitutionality pending in several courts across the country, according to one legal scholar.

Sara Rosenbaum, chairwoman of the Dept. of Health Policy at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, writes in the New England Journal of Medicine that the healthcare reform act satisfies two key legal criteria involving the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, making its consitutionality “incontrovertible.”

Citing Judge George Steeh of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota’s dismissal of one of the challenges to the law, Rosenbaum writes that it meets one requirement for constitutionality because the healthcare market is a nationwide system.

“As Judge Steeh noted, the health care market is unlike any other market, because there is no way that ‘living breathing beings’ can opt out of it,” Rosenbaum writes. “Everyone needs health care at some point, and thus all of us are market purchasers, however reluctantly. How individuals buy health care is fundamentally a matter that affects the health care system nationwide.”

The law also satisfies a second test: “Congress must intervene in a manner that rises to the level of a broader regulatory scheme,” she writes.

“Health care reform represents just such an intervention, offering a comprehensive redesign of the U.S. health insurance market. The law fundamentally transforms health insurance from a product designed to preserve profitability in the face of rampant adverse selection to a regulated industry whose long-term strength and stability are essential to the public interest and that, in its restructured form, will therefore take on certain characteristics of a public utility,” according to Rosenbaum, who goes on to list five reasons the law is constitutional:

  1. The ACA transforms health insurance into a public accommodation. “The Civil Rights Act barred private businesses such as hotels, bus companies, and restaurants from refusing to sell their products or services to customers on the basis of race. The ACA bars state-licensed health insurers from refusing to sell products to individuals on the basis of health status. This prohibition, which bars rescissions — the canceling of policies of people who become ill — and which applies at both the point of initial sale and the point of renewal, is binding on health insurers nationwide, regardless of whether they sell their products in the open market or through state health insurance exchanges. This basic reconceptualization of health insurance as a good whose availability is a matter of national public interest essentially frames health insurance the way the Civil Rights Act framed other business interests.”
  2. The ACA establishes minimum national standards governing the design of health insurance. “In all insurance markets, these standards include bans against excessive waiting periods and against the imposition of annual and lifetime coverage limits, a requirement to cover preventive services with no cost sharing, and a requirement to cover routine medical costs associated with participation in clinical trials. In the individual and small-group markets, design regulation reaches further, specifying a minimum level of coverage for “essential health benefits” and limits on exposure to out-of-pocket costs for those essential benefits. Equally important are new rules that, according to a strategy of measuring the medical loss ratio (the proportion of money collected in premiums that is actually spent on medical care), position the industry for greater price regulation as a result of increased transparency of cost increases and their justifications.”
  3. The ACA creates a nationwide system of health insurance exchanges. The law encourages states to establish and operate their own exchanges but guarantees access to a federally administered exchange in states that elect not to do so. Health insurance sold through exchanges will be subject to “qualified health plan” requirements, which are aimed at ensuring not only the integrity of coverage, but also, by stipulating that each plan’s provider network must be adequate, the availability of affordable health care itself.
  4. The ACA establishes a uniform, national subsidy system that ensures Medicaid coverage for the poorest Americans. It also creates “advance tax credits for insurance premiums for individuals and families who are not eligible for Medicaid but have low-to-moderate incomes. States, of course, participate in Medicaid on a voluntary basis, but all participating states will be required to extend coverage to newly eligible individuals, just as many previous Medicaid reforms have created new mandatory categories of beneficiaries. In this case, the new expectations are accompanied by considerable new funding.”
  5. The ACA uses the platform of uniform, stable financing to begin to change health care itself, on a nationwide basis. “The law provides for a major investment in primary care through an expansion of federally qualified health centers. This investment is coupled with a series of health care cost-cutting measures, as well as the establishment of national frameworks for quality improvement and public health and prevention, as well as pilot and demonstration projects that aim to improve the quality and efficiency of health care for the entire population over time.”

“The fundamental goal of the ACA is no less than the preservation of the U.S. health care system,” Rosenbaum concludes. “In a country that depends on health insurance to finance care, preservation cannot happen without a comprehensive regulatory scheme that reaches from coast to coast and sets the minimum rules of market entry and operation for health insurers. The glide path to this new system is long and complex, but the law’s end point is clear and visionary, and its constitutionality — at least in this first round — is incontrovertible.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized

In case you missed it

  • EchoNous partners with Samsung on AI-guided ultrasound
  • RefleXion expands footprint through multi-system contract with Select Healthcare
  • Report: 3M faces losses of $100B in earplug lawsuits
  • Caregility, Eko partner to bring smart stethoscope to telehealth platform
  • Henry Schein makes $400M increase to share repurchase plan
  • Tandem Diabetes Care delivers 1 million insulin boluses using t:connect mobile app
  • CathVision closes $7.2M financing round for electrophysiology recording tech
  • Verily’s Onduo, Sword Health collaborate on virtual care
  • FDA clears expanded labeling for Preceptis Medical’s ear tube system
  • KeyCare raises $24M for virtual care platform
  • FDA says 44 more deaths have been reported in Philips ventilator recall
  • Paragonix reaches milestone of 2,000 organs preserved, transported for transplantation
  • Axonics expands IP portfolio with new patents
  • BD, Accelerate Diagnostics partner on rapid antibiotic testing
  • FDA clears VySpine’s VyPlate anterior cervical plate system
  • Technical Brief – “Understanding the Extensive OEM Benefits of Total Linear Motion Solutions.”
  • Exactech launches total hip arthroplasty system

RSS From Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Owens & Minor and Allina Health partner on supply chain resiliency
    Owens & Minor (NYSE: OMI) and Minneapolis-based Allina Health are partnering on what they call a “unique integrated service model for supply chain resiliency.” An Owens & Minor distribution center that has been in operation for more than 25 years in Moundsview, Minnesota will serve as the integrated service center powering the model, the companies… […]
  • Chronic pain researchers say sound and electrical stimulation has treatment potential
    University of Minnesota researchers are using sound and electrical stimulation to treat chronic pain and other sensory disorders without pharmaceutical drugs. The combination of sound and stimulation activates the brain’s somatosensory cortex, according to a study on guinea pigs published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. Also known as the tactile cortex, the somatosensory cortex is… […]
  • What Laura Mauri learned from a ‘firestorm’ in her first months at Medtronic
    Dr. Laura Mauri faced a monumental moment with former Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak shortly after she joined the company as VP of global clinical research and analytics. It was late 2018, and Mauri — who’s now an SVP and the chief scientific, medical and regulatory officer at Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) — was in a meeting… […]
  • Senators seek post-market FDA study of pulse oximeters and skin color
    Democratic U.S. senators are prodding the FDA to launch a post-market study of pulse oximeters due to unreliable performance for patients with dark skin. Pulse oximeters estimate blood oxygen levels (SpO2) and pulse rates in patients using infrared light — usually on a fingertip — at home or in clinical settings. Blood oxygenation is one… […]
  • TE Connectivity opens global medical device prototyping center in Ireland
    TE Connectivity (NYSE:TEL) today announced it opened its global Propelus Prototype Center for medical devices in Galway, Ireland. The $5 million rapid prototyping center was built into its existing manufacturing site in Galway and directly connects TE engineers with customers to reduce development time and increase speed to market for lifesaving and life-improving medical devices. Propelus… […]
  • Contract manufacturer Minnetronix Medical launches its first in-house product, MindsEye
    Minnetronix Medical has launched MindsEye, making it the first medical device that the contract developer and manufacturer has conceived and commercialized. St. Paul-based Minnetronix Medical’s MindsEye is the first expandable brain access port on the market. The FDA cleared the device under the 510(k) pathway in August 2020. The minimally invasive device gives neurosurgeons deep… […]
  • What’s next for Jennifer Fried after leaving Explorer Surgical?
    Explorer Surgical co-founder Jennifer Fried has resigned from the company after selling it to Global Healthcare Exchange in October. Fried announced her departure last week on LinkedIn, saying she’s preparing for her next professional chapter. “It’s bittersweet — I’m so proud of everything our team has built and accomplished,” Fried wrote. “The time has flown… […]
  • The 24 best medical device innovations of 2022
    The Galien Foundation recently announced its nominees of medical device innovations for its 2022 Prix Galien USA awards. There are 24 medical technologies nominated for the annual award this year, up from 18 nominees in 2021. The Galien Foundation’s annual Prix Galien awards highlight devices, biotechnology and pharmaceutical products designed to improve the human condition.… […]
  • FDA issues new COVID-19 testing guidance to avoid false negatives
    COVID-19 testing should be repeated following a negative result on any antigen test, the FDA said in a move that could increase demand for diagnostics manufacturers. The latest guidance from the federal health agency is for negative COVID-19 antigen test results regardless of the presence or absence of symptoms. The federal agency said recent studies… […]
  • Confluent Medical expands Costa Rica manufacturing footprint for nitinol, complex catheter production
    Confluent Medical Technologies this week announced the opening of its new addition to its Costa Rica manufacturing facility. The expansion adds 66,000 sq. ft to its large-scale manufacturing center of excellence in Alajuela, Costa Rica to expand Confluent’s capacity for nitinol component processing and complex catheter manufacturing. “Confluent has experienced consistent and strong growth in… […]
  • FDA’s breakthrough medical device designations tally nears 700
    Stewart Eisenhart, Emergo Group The US Food and Drug Administration has granted almost 700 designations over the past seven years under a voluntary program for expedited regulatory review of medical devices and combination products that facilitate more effective treatment or diagnosis of serious diseases. According to recent metrics published by FDA, the agency has issued a total of… […]

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

DeviceTalks Weekly

August 12, 2022
DTW – Medtronic’s Mauri brings years of patient care to top clinical, regulatory, scientific post
See More >

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
Need Medtech news in a minute?
We Deliver!

MassDevice Enewsletters get you caught up on all the mission critical news you need in med tech. Sign up today.

MDO ad

Footer

MASSDEVICE MEDICAL NETWORK

DeviceTalks
Drug Delivery Business News
Medical Design & Outsourcing
Medical Tubing + Extrusion
Drug Discovery & Development
Pharmaceutical Processing World
MedTech 100 Index
R&D World
Medical Design Sourcing

DeviceTalks Webinars, Podcasts, & Discussions

Attend our Monthly Webinars
Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

MASSDEVICE

Subscribe to MassDevice E-Newsletter
Advertise with us
About
Contact us
Add us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Connect with us on LinkedIn Follow us on YouTube

Copyright © 2022 · WTWH Media LLC and its licensors. All rights reserved.
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media.

Advertise | Privacy Policy