Health Law Advisor

Introduction

Following the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade, the federal government, pursuant to President Biden’s Executive Order (the EO) took several steps to protect reproductive health privacy, some of which we previously discussed here. Specifically, the EO called for agencies to protect “women’s fundamental right to make reproductive health decisions.” Shortly following issuance of the EO, the Biden Administration created its HHS Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force, requiring all relevant federal agencies to draft measurable actions that they could undertake “to protect and bolster access to sexual and reproductive health care.”  

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued their long-awaited proposed rules in connection with the Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care today.  Transforming our healthcare system to one that pays for value is one of the Department’s top four priorities, and the Deputy Secretary launched the Regulatory Sprint to remove potential regulatory barriers to care coordination and value-based care.

OIG’s proposed rule revising the safe harbors under the anti-kickback statute ...

Following up on its July 2017 guidance on the same topic (discussed in a previous blog post), FDA issued a proposed rule on November 15, 2018 to amend Agency regulations to allow Institutional Review Boards (“IRBs”) to waive or alter certain informed consent elements (or in some cases, waive the informed consent requirement altogether) for FDA-regulated, minimal risk clinical investigations (“Proposed Rule”).

What Clinical Investigations are Affected?

Importantly, the only clinical investigations affected by the Proposed Rule are those that are FDA-regulated and ...

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule on November 1, 2018 that updates physician fee schedule (PFS) payments for calendar year (CY) 2019 and finalizes several policies. The final rule includes amendments to the regulations promulgated under Section 216 of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (“PAMA”) intended to increase the number of clinical laboratories that qualify as an “applicable laboratory” for reporting purposes; specifically (1) removal of payments received from Medicare Advantage (MA) Plans for determining ...

Two cases decided over the last three months have added California[1] and Massachusetts[2] to the list of minority states that hold brand name manufacturers of drugs (“Brand Manufacturers”) liable under state “failure to warn” laws when sued by patients that exclusively used a generic version of the Brand Manufacturer’s drug.  These cases follow the US Supreme Court decision in PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 131 S. Ct. 2567 (2011) (“PLIVA”), which held that generic drug manufacturers cannot be held liable for failure to update the safety label of a drug or biologic in ...

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a draft guidance (Draft Guidance) on July 11, 2016 that allows some generic drug manufacturers holding an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) to update the label of the drug they manufacture with new safety information.  The Draft Guidance provides new clarifications and recommendations to generic drug manufacturers seeking to update a generic label after withdrawal by the name brand manufacturer of the reference listed drug (RLD) (a "Withdrawn RLD").  The Draft Guidance explains how a generic manufacturer may submit an updated ...

If your organization has missed an opportunity to participate in the voluntary Medicare Bundled Payments for Care Initiatives and/or the mandatory CJR program, CMS' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has issued a proposed rule introducing three new mandatory Episode Payment Models (EPMs) and a Cardiac Rehabilitation incentive payment model intended to be tested with a broad scope of hospitals which may not have otherwise participated in innovative payment model testing.

In the proposed rule issued August 2, 2016, CMS introduced EPMs for Acute Myocardial infarction ...

by Jason B. Caron, O. Benton Curtis III, Anjali N.C. Downs, and Jennifer K. Goodwin

Almost two years after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) released a proposed rule regarding overpayments to providers and suppliers, as provided for under Section 6402(a) of the ACA. To date, regulators, courts, clients, and members of the bar have interpreted the requirements of Section 6402(a) in various ways. The proposed rule provides CMS's view on this matter, and, given that CMS is proposing a ...

by Kathleen A. Peterson, Benjamin S. Martin, Wendy C. Goldstein, and Constance A. Wilkinson

This issue of Implementing Health & Insurance Reform summarizes and discusses some issues raised by the proposed rule ("Proposed Rule") that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("CMS") published on February 2, 2012, to implement changes to the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program ("MDRP") and to reimbursement limits for outpatient drugs covered by Medicaid.

In Part 1, we discuss proposals relating to the MDRP that would change the manner in which pharmaceutical manufacturers calculate ...