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Medical roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:02:10 +0000

Primer on “severability”: would ObamaCare fall if individual mandate struck down? [Loyola, Epstein, Shapiro, American Interest] Maybe the President picked the wrong fight: “Supreme Court’s Ratings Jump Following Health Care Hearings” [Randy Barnett]
Heritage on med-mal reform and federalism [Hans von Spakovsky; my take] A case for New Hampshire’s “early offer” med-mal proposal [Robinette, TortsProf] “Ohio’s tort reform has curbed soaring malpractice costs” [Columbus Dispatch editorial]
Madison County: plaintiff’s lawyer seeks gag order in med-mal case [MC Record]
Academics debate whether authorities should crack down on medical tourism [Cohen et al, Opinio Juris]
Shortage of physician volunteers at marathon sports events, readers of this site can guess the reason [Outside mag via White Coat]
Connecticut Gov. Malloy proposes letting home health workers rather than nurses administer pills to homebound patients, major savings foreseen [Connecticut Mirror] Related, David Henderson;
Governments now often cite HIPAA as reason not to release information regarding accidents, crimes and disasters [Glenn Cook, Las Vegas Review-Journal] How HIPAA implementation can keep patient history out of emergency medical responders’ hands [EP Monthly]
London: Red Ken has pay doc, NHS being Not His Style [Marian Tupy, Cato at Liberty]

Tags: Connecticut, emergency medicine, HIPAA, medical, medical malpractice insurance, New Hampshire, Ohio

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High court rejects medical-method patent

Walter Olson — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:12:52 +0000

A unanimous Supreme Court has struck down a patent over diagnostic methods in medicine, the latest in a series of controversies over the bounds of patentable subject matter. [Mayo v. Prometheus Labs; Marcia Coyle/NLJ, SCOTUSBlog, Timothy Lee/ArsTechnica] As I noted last fall, my Cato Institute colleagues Ilya Shapiro, Jim Harper and Timothy Lee filed an amicus brief on behalf of the side that prevailed yesterday, arguing against the spread of “a dangerous exception to traditional patent law… the Court should reject medical-diagnostic patents as impermissibly restricting the freedom of thought.”

Tags: medical, patent law, Supreme Court

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From comments: web accessibility trips up a state medical board

Walter Olson — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 04:10:31 +0000

Thanks to reader Hugo Cunningham for spotting this in a new Boston Globe report on the failure of the Massachusetts state medical board to post physicians’ disciplinary problems and other performance issues online:

Another major omission has resulted from a Catch-22-like requirement in state law. Russell Aims, the … chief of staff
[of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine], said the board used to post digital copies of its disciplinary orders [for medical malpractice]. But an online accessibility law requires that documents be available in a text-to-speech format for the visually impaired.

Because the PDF format of the disciplinary records is not compatible with text-to-speech software, Aims said, the law dictates that such records cannot appear in the database. If the visually impaired cannot access the information, then no one can.

Tags: Massachusetts, medical, web accessibility

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No one caught on

Walter Olson — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:51:32 +0000

A Newburyport, Mass. attorney formerly with the big personal injury firm of Kreindler and Kreindler has been suspended from practice for two years “after Suffolk County judges ruled she falsely claimed she was also a medical doctor.” The firm reportedly was unaware of the imposture (no one checked, then? ) and cited her nonexistent credential in its promotional materials. [Newburyport News]

Tags: lawyers, Massachusetts, medical

No one caught on is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Scope of existing state employer-contraceptive mandates

Walter Olson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:28:34 +0000

It has been asserted in various outlets that many states already mandate contraceptive coverage, that the Catholic church has been content to live with those mandates, and so that the current firestorm over the ObamaCare provision must just be something cooked up by Republican consultants. Here is a response from the National Council of Catholic Bishops via NR’s Kathryn Lopez:

6. The federal mandate is much stricter than existing state mandates. HHS chose the narrowest state-level religious exemption as the model for its own. That exemption was drafted by the ACLU and exists in only 3 states (New York, California, Oregon). Even without a religious exemption, religious employers can already avoid the contraceptive mandates in 28 states by self-insuring their prescription drug coverage, dropping that coverage altogether, or opting for regulation under a federal law (ERISA) that pre-empts state law. The HHS mandate closes off all these avenues of relief.

More on the controversy from my Cato colleague Roger Pilon and from Jonathan Rauch. And: John Cochrane on the wider folly of letting the feds mandate contraceptive coverage in the first place: “Sure, churches should be exempt. We should all be exempt.”

Tags: Catholic Church, medical

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Court: IVF clinic cannot turn away single customers

Walter Olson — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:20:17 +0000

“A single woman who was denied treatment by a west Michigan in vitro fertilization clinic can proceed with a lawsuit claiming unlawful discrimination, the state Court of Appeals ruled in a decision released today. The case against Grand Rapids Fertility and IVF was filed after a doctor there told Allison Moon that his clinic could not provide the service out of concern that Michigan paternity law is so vague that a child conceived by IVF and born to a single mother could successfully sue the clinic for child support.” [Dawson Bell, Detroit Free Press] The appeals court said Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits services of public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of marital status among other grounds, extinguishes doctors’ common law right to decide with whom to undertake a physician-patient relationship. [Michigan Health Law Link]

Tags: discrimination law, medical, Michigan

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Medical roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:57:05 +0000

View from Massachusetts General Hospital: drug shortages getting “dire” [WBUR, earlier here, here, here, etc.]
Medical liability roundup: Sheriff arrives at Ohio doctor’s home to enforce $9.7 million award blaming lack of Caesarean section for cerebral palsy [TribToday] North Carolina legislature overrides Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto of liability limits [News & Observer via White Coat] Trial-lawyer-friendly Florida Supreme Court could strike down malpractice award limits in pending case [Orlando Business Journal]
“Antitrust rules handcuff physician-led delivery models” [American Medical News]
Relatedly, who was it who imagined anonymous denunciation of doctors was going to be a good idea? [Jay Hopkinson via Larry Ribstein]
New Medicare paperwork threat to clinical trials? [Beck]
Study: Elected coroners less likely to label deaths as suicide than appointed counterparts, family’s access to insurance benefits may be factor [Kevin B. O'Reilly, American Medical News]
“Gee, why wouldn’t Obama administration want judges and “public interest” lawyers running its new health care law?” [Mickey Kaus on New Republic report]

Tags: antitrust, Florida, insurance, medical, Medicare, North Carolina, obstetrics

Medical roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Process patents” at the Supreme Court

Walter Olson — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:38:57 +0000

My Cato Institute colleagues have filed an amicus brief arguing against the spread of “a dangerous exception to traditional patent law… the Court should reject medical-diagnostic patents as impermissibly restricting the freedom of thought.” [Mayo v. Prometheus Labs; Ilya Shapiro, Jim Harper and Timothy Lee, Cato]

Tags: medical, patent law

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Update: “Court dismisses Duluth doctor’s lawsuit against patient’s son”

Walter Olson — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:57:27 +0000

“A judge [last week] threw out a lawsuit filed by a Duluth physician who said he was defamed by a man who publicly criticized his bedside manner.” [Grand Forks Herald, earlier] More: Heller, OnPoint News.

Tags: libel slander and defamation, medical, Minnesota

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“Plaintiff seeks phantom damages 6 times greater than actual costs”

Walter Olson — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 05:11:08 +0000

According to the Colorado Civil Justice League, the decision by the state’s high court last fall in Volunteers of America v. Gardenswartz prohibits juries from learning the amounts actually paid, as opposed to “billed,” for medical services whose reimbursement is demanded in accident cases. The distinction is important because those who cover medical bills in practice (e.g., health insurers with their bulk buying clout) often pay much lower sums than the “rack rates” that hospitals and others officially charge (more on HB 1106, which would restore the evidence of paid as well as billed amounts).

P.S. As Jack Leyhane notes, the Colorado controversy is related to, though not identical with, the longstanding controversy over the “collateral source” rule, which provides that payments by third parties to a plaintiff over an injury will not reduce or offset the liability of a tortfeasor. “It is the lien or subrogation rights of third parties — [which] vary widely from state to state — that make sweeping generalities about the collateral source rule difficult to formulate.”

Tags: Colorado, medical

“Plaintiff seeks phantom damages 6 times greater than actual costs” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system