Sarah de Guia of ChangeLab Solutions is joined by Sharon Terman from legal aid at work, and Danilo Trisi from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The participants have a broad-ranging discussion about the safety net, what the Biden administration has achieved so far, and what are some of the priorities that remain.

241. Safety Net Support for Children and Families.

Professor Wendy Parmet, Northeastern University School of Law, Lori Tremmel Freeman is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), and Jill Krueger, the director of the Network for Public Law’s Northern Region Office discuss the various attempts to restrict, reallocate, or otherwise diminish traditional public health powers and the implications. The panelists discuss recent state laws reducing public health emergency powers, ALEC, &amp; where things stand now.

240. State Efforts to Restrict Public Health Powers.

I am joined by Professor Anniek de Ruijter Professor of European Law at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Professor Andrew Noymer, University of California, Irvine, and Professor Nils Hoppe, the Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences at Leibniz University Hannover. Our discussion begins with the lessons learned or not learned in various countries and regions and then explores issues such as vaccine intellectual property and vaccine passports. BTW, Anniek has an interesting new paper on EU health solidarity, Sharon Baute &amp; Anniek de Ruijter (2021) EU health solidarity in times of crisis: explaining public preferences towards EU risk pooling for medicines, Journal of European Public Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2021.1936129

239. International Lessons Learned.

Jorge Contreras, Professor of Law, University of Utah, Brook Baker, Professor of Law, Northeastern University, and Ana Santos Rutschman, Professor of Law, Saint Louis University discuss vaccine access, What are the technical obstacles to increasing vaccine access? How are Intellectual Property, primarily patent and trade secret, laws restricting access and keeping prices high?

238. Global Vaccine Sharing.

Professor Scott Burris, Temple Law School, Professor Wendy Parmet, Northeastern University School of Law, and Professor Lance Gable, Wayne State College of Law discuss the “shadow docket,” the hundreds of cases (emergency orders and summary decisions) decided by the Supreme Court each year outside of its far smaller, normal or merits docket. Specifically, the discussion focuses on how public health decisions, such as (particularly free exercise) challenges to government mitigation mandates have been handled by the shadow docket, the possible deprecation of Jacobson deference and the implications for public health powers and law. As always for more information about public health law and the pandemic see Vol.2 of our COVID-19 Policy Playbook, Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future.

237. The Shadow Docket.

Scott Burris, Professor of Law, Temple Law School, Christopher Robertson, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law, and Gene Matthews, Network for Public Health Law discuss the current proposals to increase the independence of public health agencies such as the CDC. Political manipulation and lack of leadership have seriously jeopardized public trust and even agency competence. Topics include prior examples of the politicization of public health, policymakers failing to understand social and behavioral science, and how an independent agency could be protected and funded. For more on this topic see The “Legal Epidemiology” of Pandemic Control and Designing an Independent Public Health Agency. See also Vol.2 of our COVID-19 Policy Playbook, Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future.

236. CDC as an Independent Agency.

This is a special episode of TWIHL that introduces our new report, Volume II of our COViD-19 Policy Playbook titled, Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future. Support for this report was generously provided by the de Beaumont Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. On this episode you will hear from the six members of the editorial committee in the following order-- Lance Gable from Wayne State University, Wendy Parmet from Northeastern University, myself, Scott Burris from Temple University, Donna Levin from The Network for Public Health Law, and finally Sarah de Guia from ChangeLab Solutions. Each of us will summarize one of the six Parts of the report and then return to highlight one or two of the recommendations the Editorial Committee thought particularly important.

235. A Safer, More Equitable Future.

Can private companies effectively serve public health functions? A panel discussion sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University featuring Lindsay F. Wiley, Professor of Law, Director of Health Law and Policy Program, American University Washington College of Law, Tamar Sharon, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Technology; Co-director of the Interdisciplinary Hub for Security, Privacy and Data Governance, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nicolas Terry, Hall Render Professor of Law, Executive Director of William S. and Christine S. Hall Center for Law and Health, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Craig Konnoth, Associate Professor of Law, Director, Health Law Certificate; and Faculty Director, Health Data &amp; Technology Initiative, Silicon Flatirons Center, University of Colorado School of Law, and our moderator Mason Marks, Assistant Professor of Law, Gonzaga University; Fellow in Ethics of Technological and Biomedical Innovation, Edmond J. Safra and Petrie-Flom Centers, Harvard University This privatization of public health, which has taken shape over the past few years and accelerated rapidly during the pandemic, raises challenging ethical and legal questions. What is lost when public health becomes privatized? Are values like scientific rigor, transparency, equity, and accountability upheld? Are the promised efficiencies of the free market realized? This panel discussion addressed these questions and more.

234. Privatizing Public Health.

A Pandemic Meets a Housing Crisis. Sarah de Guia and Gregory Miao of ChangeLab Solutions, along with Courtney Lauren Anderson of Georgia State University, discuss how the pre-existing housing crisis has been exacerbated by its compounding eviction and public health crises--and what work can be done to address it.

233. George #covidlawbriefing. A Pandemic Meets a Housing Crisis.

Improving Data Collection and Management. Nicolas Terry of Indiana University, Wendy Parmet of Northeastern University, and Jessica L. Roberts of the University of Houston discuss the unique challenges created by the lack of public health data available to drive targeted disease mitigation strategies. They will explore how the nation could advance data gathering and management to be better prepared for the next outbreak. In particular, the discussion focuses on collection of important sociodemographic data and questions of privacy.

232. George #covidlawbriefing. Data Policies and Governance.

Nicolas Terry and his guests discuss the significant health law and policy issues of the week

Love it!

Really brilliant guests, know health law and policy inside and out...bravo!

Incredibly interesting podcast

The Week in Health Law

Carl Ameringer

A first time visit from Dr. Carl Ameringer, professor of health policy and politics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. A lawyer with a PhD in political science, he is an expert on issues surrounding our national debate on health care reform. We discuss his latest book “US Health Policy and Health Care Delivery: Doctors, Reformers, and Entrepreneurs” published by Cambridge University Press.

126. The Old Healthcare System and the Sea. Guest, Carl Ameringer.

Françoise Baylis

I welcome Dr. Françoise Baylis, University Research Professor at the NTE Impact Ethics interdisciplinary research team based at the Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University in Halifax Canada. She is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In 2017 she was awarded the Canadian Bioethics Society Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a distinguished researcher and prolific scholar with 200 or so books, refereed publications and chapters to her name. Her latest book published by Harvard University Press  is Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing, which has just been nominated for an Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Excellence (or PROSE) award.

178. Germline Ethics. Guest, Françoise Baylis.

Erin Fuse Brown

Elizabeth McCuskey

Erin Fuse Brown is a Professor of Law at Georgia State University’s College of law. She teaches Administrative Law; Health Law: Financing &amp; Delivery; and the Health Care Transactional &amp; Regulatory Practicum. She is a faculty member of the Center for Law, Health &amp; Society. In 2019 Professor Fuse Brown was awarded a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to study out-of-network air ambulance bills. She served as co-investigator on a grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute from 2014-2017 to study legal protections for participants in genomic research and in 2017 won the Patricia T. Morgan Award for Outstanding Scholarship among her faculty. Elizabeth McCuskey is a Professor Law at UMass School of Law, There she teaches Civil Procedure, Health Law, Food &amp; Drug Law, and Health Care Antitrust courses. Her research focuses on regulatory reforms for health equity and courts’ roles in securing those reforms. She is broadly published and her work on ERISA preemption and state health reform was featured on Health Affairs Blog and she has covered FDA preemption for SCOTUSBlog. She was a 2016 ASLME Health Law Scholar. Erin and Liz have a fantastic new article coming out in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review entitled “Federalism, ERISA, and State Single-Payer Health Care” that is the subject of our conversation.

Erin Fuse Brown is a Professor of Law at Georgia State University’s College of law. She teaches Administrative Law; Health Law: Financing &amp; Delivery; and the Health Care Transactional &amp; Regulatory Practicum. She is a faculty member of the Center for Law, Health &amp; Society. In 2019 Professor Fuse Brown was awarded a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to study out-of-network air ambulance bills. She served as co-investigator on a grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute from 2014-2017 to study legal protections for participants in genomic research and in 2017 won the Patricia T. Morgan Award for Outstanding Scholarship among her faculty. Elizabeth McCuskey is a Professor Law at UMass School of Law, There she teaches Civil Procedure, Health Law, Food &amp; Drug Law, and Health Care Antitrust courses. Her research focuses on regulatory reforms for health equity and courts’ roles in securing those reforms. She is broadly published and her work on ERISA preemption and state health reform was featured on Health Affairs Blog and she has covered FDA preemption for SCOTUSBlog. She was a 2016 ASLME Health Law Scholar. <br><br>Erin and Liz have a fantastic new article coming out in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review entitled “Federalism, ERISA, and State Single-Payer Health Care” that is the subject of our conversation.

171. The Voldemort of Health Law. Guests, Erin Fuse Brown & Elizabeth McCuskey.

Scott Burris

Ross Silverman

187. George #covidlawbriefing. Cordon Sanitaire, Scott Burris and Ross Silverman.

Aaron Kesselheim

Jonathan Darrow

I am joined by Aaron Kesselheim and Jonathan Darrow, faculty members at Harvard Medical School and members of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) group directed by Dr. Kesselheim. The conversation began with a discussion about drug price narratives, including whether drug prices are still increasing? We also critically discussed at least some of Vox’s 8 ideas for bringing down drug prices, and some better ones! The conversation then shifted to some issues, including pricing and expectations, with gene therapy drugs. We spent a short time on the resignation of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb before ending our discussion with some information about PORTAL’s innovative online course, “The FDA and Prescription Drugs: Current Controversies in Context.”

155. It’s The Prices Stupid! Guests, Aaron Kesselheim and Jonathan Darrow.

Paul Osterman

Frank and I welcome labor economist Paul Osterman, Professor of Human Resources and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His most recent book is “Who Will Care For Us: Long Term Care and the Long Term Workforce,” which is the basis for our discussion. He argues that the expansion of the role of direct care workers “will save the system money, both by obtaining better health outcomes—thereby reducing visits to emergency rooms, hospitals, and nursing homes—and by shifting some tasks to lower-paid occupations.” Our discussion covers the demographics of care workers, scope of practice issues, the role of Medicare and Medicaid, possible technological innovations, and quality regulation.

122. Is there a Care Worker Win-Win? Guest, Paul Osterman.

Nicolas Terry

Elizabeth Weeks

Wendy Parmet

185. George #covidlawbriefing. Federalism, Wendy Parmet, Elizabeth Weeks and Nicolas Terry. 

For over two decades our school of law In conjunction with the IU School of Medicine has conferred the McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial Award for Excellence in Law and Medicine. This year’s honoree was Dr. Karen DeSalvo, who is currently Professor of Medicine and Population Health at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School.  She served in the Obama Administration as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Acting Assistant Secretary for Health and previously was the Health Commissioner for the City of New Orleans. I am very grateful to Dr DeSalvo for making her remarks available on TWIHL. Her talk begins in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, explains zip code health, emphasizes the roles of Social Determinants of Health, demonstrates how social determinants impact particular health outcomes, presents a systematic model for dealing with social determinants, explains Public Health 3.0, and discusses the gap between health and social care spending. Along the way Dr. DeSalvo also discusses the role of technologies such as ride share companies disrupting social services and digital assistants such as Amazon Echo acquiring more health information.

154. Zip Code Health. Guest, Karen De Salvo.

Zack Buck

We welcome back our good friend Zack Buck, Professor of Law and Wilkinson Junior Research Professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. He teaches bioethics and public health, torts, health care finance and organization, health care regulation and quality, and fraud and abuse. He is producing really interesting scholarship relating to our seemingly ever-present and intractable healthcare price and cost issues. Our conversation includes some compelling “lightning” stories, including wellness plans, the Health Affairs retirement of the great Tim Jost, and Medicaid work requirements. Then Zack demonstrated his true mettle, answering questions about MACRA/MIPS, value bundle reimbursement models, and state law attempts to reel in drug costs.

123. “Be Strong, Be Well, Be of Value.” Guest, Zack Buck.

Leo Beletsky

Jennifer Oliva

I am joined by guests Leo Beletsky &amp; Jennifer Oliva. Leo is a Professor of Law and Health Sciences and the Faculty Director of the Health in Justice Action Lab at Northeastern University School of Law. He holds a joint appointment with the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. He has broad expertise and an enviable research and publication record in the public health impact of laws and their enforcement, with special focus on drug overdose, infectious disease transmission and the role of the criminal justice system as a structural determinant of health. Jennifer is an Associate Professor at West Virginia University in the College of Law and School of Public Health. This Spring she has been a visiting research scholar at The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School. In the Fall she will be joining the faculty at Seton Hall Law School. Her work has been published by or is forthcoming in the Duke Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, North Carolina Law Review, and the George Mason Law Review. We discussed the conceptual and practical flaws in Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), on which see these great articles by Leo and by Jenn, opioidphobic moves such as Michigan’s NonOpioid Advance Directive, the apparent animosity of federal prosecutors towards evidence-based public health initiatives like SEPs or SIFs, some of which is the subject of ongoing litigation. And of course we talked about the role of social determinants on which, again, see Leo or structural determinants on which I have written.

157. Misaligned Opioid Policies. Guests, Leo Beletsky & Jennifer Oliva.

Nicole Huberfeld

These four episodes were recorded at the 2018 SEALS conference. Four of us got together as a panel to discuss Healthcare in the Era of the Trump Administration. I was joined by Nicole Huberfeld, Professor of Health Law, Ethics &amp; Human Rights, Health Law, Policy &amp; Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, Zack Buck, Assistant Professor of Law and Wilkinson Junior Research Professor at the University of Tennessee, and Jennifer Bard, Professor of Law in the College of Law at the University of Cincinnati with a joint appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine at the College of Medicine. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for Local and Global Health Law at Georgetown  University Law Center. This was a panel, not a typical studio recording so to get the most out of it you may wish to download our slides that are linked at TWIHL.com

These four episodes were recorded at the 2018 SEALS conference. Four of us got together as a panel to discuss Healthcare in the Era of the Trump Administration. I was joined by Nicole Huberfeld, Professor of Health Law, Ethics &amp; Human Rights, Health Law, Policy &amp; Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, Zack Buck, Assistant Professor of Law and Wilkinson Junior Research Professor at the University of Tennessee, and Jennifer Bard, Professor of Law in the College of Law at the University of Cincinnati with a joint appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine at the College of Medicine. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the O’Neill Institute for Local and Global Health Law at Georgetown  University Law Center. This was a panel, not a typical studio recording so to get the most out of it you may wish to download our slides that are linked at <a href="http://TWIHL.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">TWIHL.com</a>

143. Nicole Huberfeld: Health Reform, Medicaid and Health Care Federalism

In April, 2018 the Northeastern University School of Law held a conference titled “Diseases of Despair: The Role of Policy and Law.” TWIHL was asked to be the event’s podcast partner and we roped in Leo Beletsky, our friend and one of the conference organizers to act as co-host for two special TWIHL episodes. We recorded two shows, this, the first, concentrated on public health aspects. TWIHL thanks all the conference attendees and the organizers for their help and a wonderful conference.

136. Diseases of Despair (1): Public Health

Pod favorite and BU public health and law professor Nicole Huberfeld makes a welcome return. We discuss Medicaid work requirements, lockouts, and health literacy testing and reflect on the new CMS-imagined Medicaid space. As CMS blows past its traditional guardrails we ask, what are the limits for post-ACA Medicaid, a tightly controlled welfare benefit rather than universality-enabling health insurance? We end our discussion by weighing the possible legal challenges to the recent Section 1115 waiver plans. Also, we try to stay cheerful!

128. Barriers to Enrollment. Guest, Nicole Huberfeld.

The return of TWIHL’s infamous and extra long “Who’s Been Naughty or Nice?” Holiday show. This year’s festive appreciation of healthcare law and policy features the seasonal vocalizations of Zack Buck, Erin Fuse Brown, and Elizabeth Weeks Leonard. Nominees for both naughty and nice include a wealth of administration moves, plenty of good and bad Medicaid news, drug pricing, and a whole lot more to fill the stockings and require conspicuous amounts of egg nog.

153. Naughty or Nice 2018? Guests, Zack Buck, Erin Fuse Brown, and Elizabeth Weeks Leonard.

Deborah Reid

186. George #covidlawbriefing. Protecting the Vulnerable Substance Use Population, Deborah Reid, Nicolas Terry and Leo Beletsky. 

Julie Cantor

I have two excellent guests this week. Dr. Julie Cantor is an adjunct faculty member at the UCLA School of Law. She is a graduate of Stanford University, UC Berkeley School of Law, and the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr Cantor has two decades of public policy and advocacy experience focused on federal healthcare policy. She has published broadly including in the New England Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, the Indiana Law Review, the ABA Human Rights Journal, the NYT Debate section, and has submitted amicus briefs in several Supreme Court cases. Making a welcome return to the pod is Ross Silverman, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI, and holds a secondary appointment as Professor of Public Health Law at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. His research interests include legal, ethical and policy issues in public health and medicine, mobile health law and policy, interdisciplinary curriculum development, professional school admissions, medical humanities, human rights, and patient safety. Professor Silverman has published extensively on vaccination issues. Our discussion topic rotates around the recent measles outbreaks and the public health and public health law issues they raise. If you happened to pick up the June 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine you will have seen articles by both Julie and Ross (co-authored w/ Douglas Opel and Saad B. Omer) addressing aspects of the current law and policy debates. Other sources noted were this op-ed by Prof. Michael Willrich, Yiddish mistranslation, this New York Times risk-benefit analysis, and Angela Shen’s Measles Madness And Value post.

160. Protecting the Herd. Guests, Julie Cantor & Ross Silverman.

Jamila Michener

A welcome to first-time Pod guest, political scientist Jamila Michener, a Professor in the department of Government at Cornell University. Her research focuses on poverty and racial inequality in American politics. She is the author of a new book, Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism and Unequal Politics (Cambridge University Press). We tackle Medicaid from her original perspective—how and why federalism (not to mention Section 1115 waivers) allows for unequal treatment of Medicaid recipients across out nation, and some of the damage to democratic institutions that result.

134. Another “The Week in Medicaid.” Guest, Jamila Michener. 

Melissa Keyes

Stacey Tovino

Heather Walter-McCabe

Ruqaiijah Yearby

This episode was recorded at our recent conference entitled Getting Real About Health Care for All. An outstanding panel at the conference asked the question Can We Make Health Care Inclusive? To answer that question we welcomed Melissa Keyes, Heather Walter-McCabe, Stacey Tovino, and Ruqaiijah Yearby. They approached the question from the perspective of those commonly excluded from quality healthcare; those along the capacity spectrum, members of the LGBTQ communities, those suffering from mental health or substance use disorders, and those requiring home or facility-based long-term care.

170. Inclusive Health Care? Guests,Melissa Keyes, Heather Walter-McCabe, Stacey Tovino, & Ruqaiijah Yearby.

Jennifer Bard

145. Jennifer Bard: Teaching Public Health Law in the Age of Trump

This episode was recorded at the 2019 meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools during a panel reviewing the year in healthcare financing. In this episode I take a look at state regulation of health insurance, first, from the perspective of states playing defense and shoring up their own laws in case the ACA disappears and, second, how some are playing offense, actually seeing to improve upon the ACA baseline.

166. Too Much Information about State Health Law.

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