Tag Archives: congress

3 Updates on Zika: Transmission, Surveillance & Funding

By Rebecca Reingold

3 Updates on Zika: Transmission, Surveillance & Funding

By Rebecca Reingold

From POLITICO Magazine: Henry Waxman, the Unsung Hero in the Fight Against AIDS

By O’Neill Institute

This post was written by Timothy Westmoreland, Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a Senior Scholar in health law at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.  It was originally published by POLITICO Magazine on February 4, 2014 and is re-posted here with permission of the author.  Professor Westmoreland was […]

Legal Issues in the Senate Manager’s Amendment

By Tim Jost

I reported over the weekend on one legal issue raised by the Senate manager’s amendment–an important clarification of the public disclosure and original source provisions of the civil false claims act. This post will address the constitutionality of the abortion provisions in the amendment and mention four other legal issues raised by the additions the […]

Returning to the Articles of Confederation?

By Tim Jost

A week ago the House of Representatives adopted HR 3962, the “Affordable Health Care for America Act.” In the very near future, the Senate will begin consideration of some version of the “America’s Healthy Future Act” or the “Affordable Health Choices Act.” Although we do not know the exact language of the Senate bill, its […]

More Legal Issues Raised by Health Insurance Exchange Legislation

By Tim Jost

The following is part of a memorandum on legal and policy issues raised by health insurance exchanges, which will be presented at the O’Neill Center’s Legal Issues in Health Care Reform conference on Monday, October 26. The full paper from which it is taken is available here. In my last post, I discussed the constitutional […]

More on Taxation

By Tim Jost

The 1502 page legislative language of the Senate Finance bill became available yesterday on the Senate Finance Committee website. One of the many legal issues raised by this legislation relates to my October 8 post on the constitutionality of taxation. As you may recall, the Constitution requires that “Duties, Imposts and Excises,” generally called indirect […]

Is it a Tax? Is it Constitutional?

By Tim Jost

By far the most controversial provision of the health care reform legislation pending in Congress from a constitutional perspective has been the individual mandate. The primary controversy has concerned the issue, which we addressed two weeks ago, of whether the commerce clause authorizes Congress to impose an individual mandate. A different constitutional issue, however, was […]

Civil War Redux

By Mark Hall

As Tim Jost well explains, the principle of Federal Supremacy is so well settled that the threat by some state governors or legislators to bar their citizens from complying with federal health care reform is overt legal defiance, or a form of civil disobedience if you will. Civil disobedience might be justified in some circumstances, […]

CBS Covers Constitutionality Debate

By Nan Hunter

From CBS News: Is Mandatory Health Insurance Constitutional? In the last few days, a new argument has emerged in the debate over Democratic health care proposals: Are they constitutional? More precisely, can the federal government force Americans to buy health insurance? “Mandatory Insurance Is Unconstitutional” is the unapologetic title of an op-ed last week in […]