Robert Greenwald

In his State of the Union address in February 2019, Donald Trump vowed to end the HIV epidemic by 2030. But if Trump has his way and the supreme court strikes down the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the resulting seismic disruption to the healthcare system would end that dream. Democrats have expressed grave concern that if Amy Coney Barrett is seated on the supreme court, the conservative jurist could cast a decisive vote to destroy the ACA in the California v Texas case scheduled for oral argument starting 10 November. The Senate judiciary committee committee voted to advance Barrett’s nomination on Thursday. A full Senate vote is expected on Monday. The brainchild of Dr Anthony Fauci and other top brass at the Department of Health and Human Services, the ambitious Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America has received for its debut year $267m in new federal spending, largely targeted at HIV transmission hotspots across the US. The central aim of the Trump-backed plan is to improve access to antiretrovirals, given that successfully treating HIV with such medications eliminates transmission risk...Given antiretrovirals’ enormous cost, the ACA and its broadening of insurance access serves as backbone to the HIV plan, which seeks a 90% reduction by 2030 to the otherwise slowly declining or stagnant national HIV transmission rate of about 37,000 new cases annually...When individuals stop taking such medications, HIV can spread more widely as viral load rises to a transmissible level in people with the virus and HIV-negative people lose PrEP’s protection. The pandemic has already disrupted such access. Preliminary analyses pointto rising rates of unsuppressed HIV and major declines in PrEP refills and testing for the virus in recent months. “In light of the extraordinary public health and economic challenges we are currently facing, the idea that the supreme court would reverse the great progress we have made in efforts to eliminate HIV in the United States is heartbreaking and morally reprehensible,” said Robert Greenwald, director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School.

The private data mining company Palantir is best known for its work with law enforcement agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local police departments, the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. It has received considerable criticism for helping the Trump administration track immigrants. But in recent months and with the debut of its stock on public markets approaching, Palantir has a new focus: tracking the fast-spreading coronavirus. According to U.S. procurement records reviewed by NBC News, Palantir has been awarded contracts worth more than $42 million with federal agencies on the pandemic response. That includes two contracts in April worth $24.9 million with the Department of Health and Human Services to build a new platform, HHS Protect, which will aid the White House coronavirus task force's efforts to track the spread of the virus. HHS awarded Palantir an additional $2 million in May...In April, Palantir’s president, Shyam Sankar, called the pandemic the new “driving thrust” of the company. Robert Greenwald, a professor and the director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, said that turning to a firm known for its work in deportation will discourage immigrants from getting the health care they need. “Companies like Palantir have made their choices and they have gone in a direction that does not make them appropriate for sensitive public health projects,” Greenwald said.

An article by Robert Greenwald and Will Dobbs-Allsopp '20: Even in the midst of the worst domestic crisis in over a century, the White House and Republican state officials still want the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act in a case set for review later this year. It’s a baffling decision given the circumstances: amid escalating health-care needs, increased strain on our health systems, rising rates of uninsured, and an impending recession, the ACA offers policymakers critical tools that can help steer the nation through the Covid-19 pandemic. Because many Americans receive health insurance through their employer—itself a vestige of an earlier crisis—a pink slip frequently also entails a loss of health insurance coverage. In recent weeks, the Department of Labor has reported record-shattering unemployment insurance claims, more than 22 million to date. One analysis predicts that the number of employees losing health coverage will grow to between 12 million and 35 million by the crisis’s end.”

An article by Carol Rose and Robert Greenwald: During the 1918 influenza pandemic, local governments in the United States placed special placards on the doors of homes where sick people were subject to quarantine. The measure was an attempt to contain the spread of a virus that ultimately killed nearly 700,000 people in the United States alone. Sadly, this well-intentioned move backfired: Many doctors chose not to report cases in order to prevent homes from being quarantined. Families of sick people sought to evade the stigma of a placard on their homes by not seeking medical attention. In light of today’s coronavirus crisis, it’s useful to recall this history and to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Yet in an executive order dated March 18, the administration of Governor Charlie Baker directed local boards of health to submit to first responders the home addresses of people who have tested positive for the virus. The idea is that police, fire services, and EMTs should know which homes have COVID-19 cases so that responders can adequately protect themselves. Protecting the health of first responders is certainly an important priority that the state needs to address; however, some public health experts have noted that disclosing addresses does not ensure a first responder would be safe from exposure from asymptomatic people or from those who are infected but remain untested. It may seem counterintuitive, but this order could indeed do more harm than good.

In a growing number of cities and states, local governments are collecting the addresses of people who test positive for the coronavirus and sharing the lists with police and first responders...But some public health experts and privacy advocates have raised concerns about police departments maintaining a list of addresses of confirmed coronavirus cases. They say that it could make people reluctant to seek medical care or get tested for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, because of a fear of profiling by law enforcement. "With any infectious disease, there's going to be stigma and discrimination about who has it," Robert Greenwald, a professor and the director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, said. "If you're in a situation now where the word starts to get out that if you get screened then your address goes on a list that goes to first responders, it discourages screening for people who don't want to be on this list." Greenwald and three other public health experts also questioned the usefulness of a list of addresses with confirmed cases, noting that since the coronavirus has spread so widely, first responders ought to assume anyone they encounter could be infected. Still, police officials and officers said this information is a helpful reminder to exercise extra caution in the field, beyond the usual safety measures.

In a growing number of cities and states, local governments are collecting the addresses of people who test positive for the coronavirus and sharing the lists with police and first responders. Law enforcement officials say this information sharing — which is underway in Massachusetts, Alabama and Florida, and in select areas of North Carolina — will help keep officers and EMTs safe as they respond to calls at the homes of people who have been infected. The first responders can take additional precautions in those cases to avoid being exposed to the virus, state health departments and local police officials say...But some public health experts and privacy advocates have raised concerns about police departments maintaining a list of addresses of confirmed coronavirus cases. They say that it could make people reluctant to seek medical care or get tested for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, because of a fear of profiling by law enforcement. "With any infectious disease, there's going to be stigma and discrimination about who has it," Robert Greenwald, a professor and the director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, said. "If you're in a situation now where the word starts to get out that if you get screened then your address goes on a list that goes to first responders, it discourages screening for people who don't want to be on this list."

Alabama and Massachusetts health officials are sharing with law enforcement the addresses of people diagnosed with new coronavirus so emergency responders can be properly prepared when answering 911 calls involving those who have tested positive. The personal information is limited to the addresses of people who have known COVID-19 cases, and is only provided to first responders, such as police officers, according to the respective laws...But the order has received opposition from a number of people, such as Robert Greenwald, faculty director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School. Greenwald wrote a letter to Gov. Charlie Baker on March 20, in which he called the emergency order "misguided" and said it would "undermine both individual and public health." "Our first responders must treat everyone as if they potentially have COVID-19 and use universal precautions on all calls," he wrote. "Relying on information provided by state health officials is not helpful. There will be no effective 'list' as the overwhelming majority of people who are infected with COVID-19 do not know it. And sadly, over time, more than half the addresses in our state will likely end up on the list."

Legal and political battles have put the fate of the Affordable Care Act, and health care for millions of Americans, back into the spotlight and ensure that that it will play a pivotal role in the 2020 elections. ... Robert Greenwald, JD, faculty director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, concurred with Goodwin on the consequences of the ACA repeal. “If the lower court’s decision is affirmed, it would topple the entire ACA, including provisions entirely unrelated to the individual mandate such as the expansion of the Medicaid program. This would do untold damage to our health care system. It would leave over 20 million additional people uninsured,” he said in an interview.

Drugs that can cure hepatitis C revolutionized care for millions of Americans living with the deadly liver infection. The drugs came with a steep price tag—one that prompted state Medicaid programs to initially limit access to the medications to only the sickest patients. That eased, however, in many states as new drugs were introduced and the prices declined. But not in Puerto Rico: Medicaid patients in the American territory get no coverage for these drugs. ... “You know, we do not deny lung cancer treatment for a person who smokes or diabetes treatment to a person that doesn't eat well,” says Robert Greenwald, a professor at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.

The architect of Obamacare warned the Affordable Care Act could die if the U.S. Supreme Court backs a ruling by a Texas judge calling the law unconstitutional — a decision that would force Massachusetts to strip coverage or pay astronomical bills. ...  Robert Greenwald, director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, said nothing will change immediately as a result of the decision by the Texas judge that found the law to be unconstitutional and invalid . “This is certainly not the final word on the Affordable Care Act,” Greenwald said. “Obviously it’s going to be appealed, it’s going to be a long slog on this and other challenges to the ACA.”

Roughly two dozen Harvard Law School professors have signed a New York Times editorial arguing that the United States Senate should not confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Harvard affiliates — including former Law School Dean Martha L. Minow and Laurence Tribe — joined more than 1,000 law professors across the country in signing the editorial, published online Wednesday. The professors wrote that Kavanaugh displayed a lack of “impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land” in the heated testimony he gave during a nationally televised hearing held Sept. 27 in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee....As of late Wednesday, the letter had been signed by the following: Sabi Ardalan, Christopher T. Bavitz, Elizabeth Bartholet, Christine Desan, Susan H. Farbstein, Nancy Gertner, Robert Greenwald, Michael Gregory, Janet Halley, Jon Hanson, Adriaan Lanni, Bruce H. Mann, Frank Michelman, Martha Minow, Robert H. Mnookin, Intisar Rabb, Daphna Renan, David L. Shapiro, Joseph William Singer, Carol S. Steiker, Matthew C. Stephenson, Laurence Tribe, Lucie White, Alex Whiting, Jonathan Zittrain

A series of recent court rulings and settlements, including one last week in Indiana, have found that states cannot withhold potentially life-saving but expensive medications from Medicaid beneficiaries and prison inmates who have chronic hepatitis C...“If there were a cure for breast cancer or Alzheimer’s or diabetes, people would be storming the White House to make sure those medicines were available to everyone, you can be sure of that,” said Robert Greenwald, a professor at Harvard Law School and the faculty director of the school’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation. “But we’ve responded completely differently with the cure for hepatitis C because of the stigma associated with that disease.” Greenwald and others insist that treating prisoners with hepatitis C is an indispensable step toward eradicating the disease in the whole population.

Half a century after Americans began fighting hunger with monthly food stamps, the nation’s physicians and policymakers are focusing more than ever on what’s on each person’s plate. In the 21st century, food is seen as medicine — and a tool to cut health care costs...“Food is medicine is an idea whose day has arrived,” said Robert Greenwald, faculty director of the Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, one of the experts who testified in January at the launch of the congressional Food is Medicine Working Group, part of the House Hunger Caucus.

With little public scrutiny, the health insurance industry has joined forces with data brokers to vacuum up personal details about hundreds of millions of Americans, including, odds are, many readers of this story. The companies are tracking your race, education level, TV habits, marital status, net worth. They’re collecting what you post on social media, whether you’re behind on your bills, what you order online. Then they feed this information into complicated computer algorithms that spit out predictions about how much your health care could cost them...Robert Greenwald, faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, said insurance companies still cherry-pick, but now they’re subtler. The center analyzes health insurance plans to see if they discriminate. He said insurers will do things like failing to include enough information about which drugs a plan covers — which pushes sick people who need specific medications elsewhere. Or they may change the things a plan covers, or how much a patient has to pay for a type of care, after a patient has enrolled. Or, Greenwald added, they might exclude or limit certain types of providers from their networks — like those who have skill caring for patients with HIV or hepatitis C.

...“It’s taken awhile for the concept to catch on that medically tailored meals are more than just food or a meal but high-tech specialty health care service for people living with complex medical needs,” said Robert Greenwald, faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.

Attempts to eliminate the Affordable Care Act have taken a new turn. Nearly two dozen states or their governors have filed a lawsuit against the United States government, HHS, IRS and several others claiming that Congressional action that lowered the tax on those who did not comply with the individual mandate to buy insurance voids the Affordable Care Act. The new lawsuit, known as Texas v. the United States (2018), has some experts and medical societies concerned about its ramifications...Robert Greenwald: “The state plaintiffs and the administration have taken somewhat different positions in this case. The states are asserting that repeal of the individual mandate necessitates a repeal of the ACA in its entirety. The administration has agreed with the states, but only in so far as to assert that the guaranteed issue and community rating provisions must be overturned as a result of Congressional changes to the individual mandate. If either of these assertions prevails, then the scope of health care would change,” he said in an interview.