H.L. Mencken once observed that for every human problem, there is a solution that is “neat, plausible, and wrong.” Exhibit A is the “Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act” – also known as H.R. 4626. This bill seeks to repeal the antitrust exemption granted to health insurance companies by the McCarran-Ferguson Act. The Obama Administration […]
Author Archive | David Hyman
The Perils of High Public Office: II
National Review Online just posted a piece that I did on the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, and its implications for our latest efforts at health (insurance) reform. Here’s the conclusion of the piece: No one can predict whether the latest effort at health-care reform will meet a similar ignominious defeat. But this story does hold […]
The Perils of High Public Office
CBS News has dug up some video of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski being chased down the street by a crowd of angry seniors. This event took place twenty years ago next Monday — August 17, 1989. Here’s Rostenkowski starting at 1:35 in the video: Rostenkowski: I don’t think they understand what the government’s trying to do […]
Antibiotic Resistance II
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a nice short piece juxtaposing the reaction to swine flu and to antibiotic resistance. It begins as follows: In March of this year an epidemic of H1N1 influenza virus, otherwise known as swine flu, began in Mexico. It spread to the United States within weeks and has since affected over […]
Only Two Things Scare Me:
And one of them is antibiotic resistance. Along with my regular co-author, Bill Sage, I’ve just sent off a new article to the law reviews, titled Combating Antimicrobial Resistance: Regulatory Strategies and Institutional Capacity. Antibiotic resistance is a major public health problem. Every year, two million Americans acquire bacterial infections in the hospital, and 70% […]
Grassroots Activism For Me, But Not For Thee
Democratic legislators are complaining vigorously about the push-back they are receiving on health reform during town hall meetings. House Majority Leader Pelosi stated that reform opponents were “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare” and dismissed them as “Astroturf” rather than a grassroots movement. An editorial cartoon in the Washington […]
Illinois Admissions Review Commission
The State of Illinois Admissions Review Commission is scheduled to release its report/recommendations tomorrow on its investigation into admissions practices at the University of Illinois. The University of Illinois’ website on the Commission is here. (Former Dean) Heidi Hurd’s written submission to the Commission is here. Those interested in reading her testimony will find it […]
University of Illinois Admissions
The University of Illinois admissions
Health Insurance and the Public Plan: Where’s The Beef?
The proposal to allow a public plan (also called a
Health Reform: Naive, Hypocritical, or Simply Dishonest?
Those are the three choices offered by Robert Samuelson in a scathing piece on the Obama administration
Paying Health Care Providers: How to Make Agency Problems Worse:
Over the weekend, the New York Times had a nice short piece about how the way we compensate health care providers can create problematic incentives. By and large, Medicare pays providers on a fee-for-service basis – tied to patient encounters and services provided, rather than the results of those interactions. For hospitals, this takes the […]
The Duty To Rescue, or How Kind Are Strangers?
The absence of a generalized duty to rescue is a perennial feature of the first year of law school. Generations of law students have learned of the existence of the no-duty rule by reading hypothetical cases of babies who drowned in puddles while Olympic swimmers stood by and did nothing, and real cases, such as […]
The Doctor Shortage and Universal Coverage:
The New York Times article referenced by David, highlights an important point
Health Reform: The Public Plan Option
Yesterday
Health Reform: ERISA and Pay or Play II
San Francisco is not the only place to adopt a pay or play initiative. In the past few years, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Suffolk County, New York have all adopted such statutes. California adopted a pay or play statute in 2003, but it was overturned by Proposition 72 in the 2004 election. These statutes required employers […]