Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act


Book Description

Section 1557 is the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This brief guide explains Section 1557 in more detail and what your practice needs to do to meet the requirements of this federal law. Includes sample notices of nondiscrimination, as well as taglines translated for the top 15 languages by state.




The Affordable Care Act Decision


Book Description

Interest in NFIB v. Sebelius has been extraordinarily high, from as soon as the legislation was passed, through lower court rulings, the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari, and the decision itself, both for its substantive holdings and the purported behind-the-scene dynamics. Legal blogs exploded with analysis, bioethicists opined on our collective responsibilities, and philosophers tackled concepts like ‘coercion’ and the activity/inactivity distinction. This volume aims to bring together scholars from disparate fields to analyze various features of the decision. It comprises over twenty essays from a range of academic disciplines, namely law, philosophy, and political science. Essays are divided into five units: context and history, analyzing the opinions, individual liberty, Medicaid, and future implications.




A Guide to the Supreme Court's Affordable Care Act Decision


Book Description

On the last day of the 2011-2012 Term, the United States Supreme Court issued its long-anticipated opinion about the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In a case known as National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of two major provisions of the ACA: the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. A majority of the Court upheld the individual mandate. And, while the Court found the Medicaid expansion unconstitutionally coercive of states, because states did not have adequate notice to voluntarily consent and the Secretary could potentially withhold all of a state's existing federal Medicaid funds for non-compliance, a majority of the Court found that this issue was appropriately remedied by circumscribing the Secretary's enforcement authority, thus leaving the Medicaid expansion intact in the ACA. This policy brief describes the Court's decision and looks ahead to the implementation of health reform now that the constitutionality of the ACA has been resolved.




State Politics and the Affordable Care Act


Book Description

After a great deal of discussion and debate across all levels of government, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law in March 2010. Since President Trump's election into office, the ACA has stayed in the headlines. Trump has continued to call for the replacement and repeal of the ACA, and several efforts have spawned in both the House and the Senate to accomplish this goal. Unlike welfare reform, which was generally embraced by all states, the ACA has proven very divisive in some states, with some states actively seeking to block implementation. Alternative solutions continue to prove elusive. To better understand the major factors driving decision-making process and state-level dynamics influencing state support or opposition of the ACA, this book examines the initial implementation through established support and opposition factors across four states: Alabama, Michigan, California, and New Hampshire. The choices made by states are a direct consequence of long-term forces, and the choices made at the national level. State Politics and the Affordable Care Act will be of interest to scholars researching in public administration, policy formulation and implementation, and policy analysis.




The Impacts of the Affordable Care Act on Preparedness Resources and Programs


Book Description

Many of the elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect in 2014, and with the establishment of many new rules and regulations, there will continue to be significant changes to the United States health care system. It is not clear what impact these changes will have on medical and public health preparedness programs around the country. Although there has been tremendous progress since 2005 and Hurricane Katrina, there is still a long way to go to ensure the health security of the Country. There is a commonly held notion that preparedness is separate and distinct from everyday operations, and that it only affects emergency departments. But time and time again, catastrophic events challenge the entire health care system, from acute care and emergency medical services down to the public health and community clinic level, and the lack of preparedness of one part of the system places preventable stress on other components. The implementation of the ACA provides the opportunity to consider how to incorporate preparedness into all aspects of the health care system. The Impacts of the Affordable Care Act on Preparedness Resources and Programs is the summary of a workshop convened by the Institute of Medicine's Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events in November 2013 to discuss how changes to the health system as a result of the ACA might impact medical and public health preparedness programs across the nation. This report discusses challenges and benefits of the Affordable Care Act to disaster preparedness and response efforts around the country and considers how changes to payment and reimbursement models will present opportunities and challenges to strengthen disaster preparedness and response capacities.







The Health Care Case


Book Description

The Supreme Court's decision in the Health Care Case, NFIB v. Sebelius, gripped the nation's attention during the spring of 2012. Like the legislative battle leading to adoption of ?Obamacare?, the litigation took many unexpected twists and turns, culminating in a surprising, fractured and confusing decision from the Supreme Court. This volume gathers together reactions to the decision from an ideologically diverse selection of the nation's leading scholars of constitutional, administrative, and health law.




The Chief


Book Description

An incisive biography of the Supreme Court's enigmatic Chief Justice, taking us inside the momentous legal decisions of his tenure so far. John Roberts was named to the Supreme Court in 2005 claiming he would act as a neutral umpire in deciding cases. His critics argue he has been anything but, pointing to his conservative victories on voting rights and campaign finance. Yet he broke from orthodoxy in his decision to preserve Obamacare. How are we to understand the motives of the most powerful judge in the land? In The Chief, award-winning journalist Joan Biskupic contends that Roberts is torn between two, often divergent, priorities: to carry out a conservative agenda, and to protect the Court's image and his place in history. Biskupic shows how Roberts's dual commitments have fostered distrust among his colleagues, with major consequences for the law. Trenchant and authoritative, The Chief reveals the making of a justice and the drama on this nation's highest court.







The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform


Book Description

Chief Justice John Roberts stunned the nation by upholding the Affordable Care Act--more commonly known as Obamacare. But legal experts observed that the decision might prove a strategic defeat for progressives. Roberts grounded his decision on Congress's power to tax. He dismissed the claim that it is allowed under the Constitution's commerce clause, which has been the basis of virtually all federal regulation--now thrown in doubt. In The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform, Andrew Koppelman explains how the Court's conservatives embraced the arguments of a fringe libertarian legal movement bent on eviscerating the modern social welfare state. They instead advocate what Koppelman calls a "tough luck" philosophy: if you fall on hard times, too bad for you. He argues that the rule they proposed--that the government can't make citizens buy things--has nothing to do with the Constitution, and that it is in fact useless to stop real abuses of power, as it was tailor-made to block this one law after its opponents had lost in the legislature. He goes on to dismantle the high court's construction of the commerce clause, arguing that it almost crippled America's ability to reverse rising health-care costs and shrinking access. Koppelman also places the Affordable Care Act within a broader historical context. The Constitution was written to increase central power, he notes, after the failure of the Articles of Confederation. The Supreme Court's previous limitations on Congressional power have proved unfortunate: it has struck down anti-lynching laws, civil-rights protections, and declared that child-labor laws would end "all freedom of commerce, and . . . our system of government [would] be practically destroyed." Both somehow survived after the court revisited these precedents. Koppelman notes that the arguments used against Obamacare are radically new--not based on established constitutional principles. Ranging from early constitutional history to potential consequences, this is the definitive postmortem of this landmark case.