Health Care

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("CMS") recently announced that, beginning January 1, 2017, Medicare Advantage plans in Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee will be permitted to offer what are known as "value-based insurance design" ("VBID") plans.

Last week, we discussed the memorandum released by the Department of Justice emphasizing the Government’s commitment to holding individuals accountable when dealing with corporate wrongdoing.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a memorandum on Wednesday from Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates that reaffirms the Government’s commitment to prosecuting individuals and formally instructs prosecutors to focus on individual accountability when dealing with corporate misconduct.

Exellus BlueCross BlueShield has announced that the personal information of at least 10 million members has been compromised in a “very sophisticated” cyberattack that occurred on December 23, 2013 and was discovered by the plan on August 5, 2015.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) and fifteen other Federal Departments and Agencies have announced a proposal to update the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects known as the “Common Rule,” originally promulgated in 1991. 

In June, an antitrust suit brought by plaintiff ambulatory surgery centers (“ASCs”) against a health system, health insurers, and a trade association survived a motion to dismiss. Last week, the ASCs’ case cleared the hump of summary judgment and will now proceed to trial. 

After months of pressure from industry, health practitioners and even congressional stakeholders, FDA has finally proposed a convention for assigning nonproprietary names (also known as proper names) to biological products.

After a summer that saw major data breaches at the Office of Personnel Management and UCLA Health System, this fall is a great time to take your organization back to school on HIPAA compliance and data security.  Here are four items to add to your fall to-do list, no #2 pencils required.

As a veteran of the AWP litigation era, I am struck by the recent state efforts to legislate transparency into pharmaceutical pricing. Multiple states have introduced bills that would require pharmaceutical manufacturers to produce information to justify the sales price for their drugs.

In a post published earlier this week this week our colleagues Brian Dunphy and Joanne Hawana examined key issues in the recent Amarin decision from the Southern District Court of the New York.

Earlier this month, my colleague Andy Shin at ML Strategies co-authored an article in the American Journal of Managed Care for a special issue of Evidence–Based Oncology, focusing on personalized medicine.

Earlier this week Mintz Levin’s Privacy & Security Matters blog posted some useful “bytes” to consider for the latest installment of the “Privacy Monday” series.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers have likely taken note of Amarin Pharma Inc.’s recent success in a pre-enforcement legal challenge against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA or the Agency).

On Monday, ML Strategies (MLS) posted its weekly Health Care Update, which provides information from the previous week on a variety of important health care-related topics like implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Congressional initiatives affecting the health care industry, and state and federal health regulatory developments.

This week might have been the first time that an FDA regulatory issue hit the headlines on TMZ and other “celebrity watcher” websites.

On Mintz Levin's Employment Matters blog, my colleague David Barmak recently discussed in a blog post a notable case in which a federal court compelled the arbitration of three nurses’ False Claims Act (FCA) retaliation claims against the hospital that employed them.

As the co-editors of Health Law & Policy Matters, we are pleased to report that our blog was recently ranked as the No. 1 Health Law Blog in LexBlog’s AmLaw 200 Blog Benchmark Report based on overall traffic.

Last Friday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement warning that certain drug infusion pumps that administer medication to patients are vulnerable to being hacked. 

Earlier this week, ML Strategies posted its weekly Health Care Update. This publication provides timely information on implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Congressional initiatives affecting the health care industry, and federal and state health regulatory developments.

Last week, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Health and Human Services published Advisory Opinion 15-10 (Opinion). The Opinion addressed a hospital system’s proposal to lease non-clinician employees and provide operational and management services to a related psychiatric hospital.