Tag Archives: Supreme Court

SCOTUS ruling allows states to regulate what PBMs pay pharmacists

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Photo by dbking via Flickr

States seeking to regulate pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) won an important victory on Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0, rejecting a challenge to a law the state of Arkansas passed in 2015 to put restrictions on PBMs. The ruling could allow states to regulate PBMs, as Darrel Rowland reported for The Columbus Dispatch.

Rowland is a member of an award-winning team of reporters and editors at the Dispatch who have covered PBMs in Ohio and elsewhere since January 2018, as we reported on this blog.

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Joseph Burns (@jburns18), an independent journalist who resides in Brewster, Massachusetts, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform. He welcomes questions and suggestions and tip sheets at joseph@healthjournalism.org.

Will the ACA individual mandate case go directly to the Supreme Court?

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Supreme Court

Photo by dbking via Flickr

Under the most usual course of events, the Supreme Court would not consider (again) the fate of the Affordable Care Act smack in the midst of the 2020 presidential elections.

But we aren’t living amid “usual” course of events. A coalition of state attorneys general wants the legal process speeded up. And while it’s not that likely that the high court will agree, it’s not impossible either.

In December the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voided the ACA’s individual mandate. But it didn’t agree with the earlier District Court ruling from December 2018 that because the mandate is unconstitutional, the whole law is invalid. Continue reading →

Contributing editor to Politico Magazine and former health care editor-at-large, Politico, Commonwealth Fund journalist in residence and assistant lecturer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

New tip sheet explains ‘partial Medicaid expansion’ – and why it hasn’t happened (yet)

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Map: Kaiser Family Foundation (as of Nov. 15, 2019)

Since the Supreme Court ruling in 2012, states have been warring over whether or not to expand Medicaid.

Now, some states want to pursue a “partial” expansion – under the same generous federal funding rules. So far, no state has been able to do this – but they are trying. Continue reading →

Contributing editor to Politico Magazine and former health care editor-at-large, Politico, Commonwealth Fund journalist in residence and assistant lecturer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Case over risk corridor payments to go before Supreme Court

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Photo by dbking via Flickr

We wrote earlier this spring about a batch of ACA litigation still slogging its way through the courts, including one that the Supreme Court has just agreed to take. This is a challenge from health insurers who say the federal government owes them a great big bushel of money.

The case, which is consolidating three lawsuits known as Moda Health Plan v. United States, Maine Community Health Options v. United States, and Land of Lincoln Mutual Health Insurance v. United States, means that the government could have to pay out billions of dollars under the Affordable Care Act – while that very same federal government is still trying to dismantle the ACA in the Texas vs. Azar lawsuit that goes before an appeals court in July. Continue reading →

Contributing editor to Politico Magazine and former health care editor-at-large, Politico, Commonwealth Fund journalist in residence and assistant lecturer at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Newspaper’s suit over food stamp data headed to Supreme Court

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Photo: Christopher Reilly via Flickr

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case brought eight years ago by a South Dakota newspaper asserting the public’s right to know how much taxpayer money goes to grocers and other retailers who participate in the federal food stamp program.

The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls won at the federal appellate court level last year, but a new challenge asserting the confidentiality of business records has pushed the case to the nation’s highest court. Continue reading →

Irene M. Wielawski (@wielawski), an independent journalist based in New York, is a founder and former board member of AHCJ and serves on the organization’s Right to Know Committee.