Health Law & Policy

Professor Einer Elhauge ‘86 has released an e-book—titled “Obamacare on Trial” —on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case decided by the Supreme Court. Elhauge raises points that were not aired in the courtroom, including the fact that the constitutional framers themselves had approved mandates to buy health insurance.

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried has written a major article analyzing the Supreme Court’s late-June decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The article, which is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, and also in a volume to be published by Oxford, has been given a rare advance publication by SCOTUSblog, which posted it on August 2.

A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether Congress has the power to mandate individuals to have private insurance coverage isn’t expected until the end of June. But Georgetown University Law Center professor and libertarian legal theorist Randy Barnett ’77 is already claiming victory of sorts for his argument that the mandate is unconstitutional.

In an April 16 article entitled “It’s Not About Broccoli: The False Case Against Health Care” published in The Atlantic, Professor Einer Elhauge ’86 tackles the primary case made against President Obama’s [’91] individual health care mandate.

The Supreme Court opened its review of the national health-care overhaul on Mar. 26, the first of three days of oral arguments on the 2010 law. In light of the historic arguments, law schools professors at HLS and elsewhere in the Boston area have incorporated the debate into their classrooms, and, In the media, HLS Professors I. Glenn Cohen. Einer Elhauge, Noah Feldman, Charles Fried and Laurence Tribe weighed in on the case.

On Feb. 1, the Harvard Law School Federalist Society sponsored a debate on the philosophical and legal issues surrounding the field of embryonic research. The event, “Embryo Ethics and the Law,” featured Christopher Tollefsen, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, and HLS Assistant Professor Glenn Cohen, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

HLS Professor Charles Fried was counsel of record in an amicus brief filed on Jan. 13 with the Supreme Court on behalf of 104 health law professors supporting the constitutionality of the insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will be challenged before the Supreme Court in Department of Health and Human Services v. State of Florida in March.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, is the author of three recently published articles on health law topics.

HLS Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, the founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, wrote “The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate,” which was published online Dec. 21 by the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Prospects for the Professions in China” (Routledge, 2010) edited by William P. Alford ’77, William Kirby and Kenneth Winston. Through its meditations on Chinese professional…

On November 8, Emily Savner ‘13 of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation testified at a regional listening session convened by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The session was convened to elicit comments from individuals and groups about the health services that should be included in the soon-to-be created Essential Health Benefits package mandated through health care reform. Once finalized and implemented by HHS, the Essential Health Benefits package will provide a federally mandated set of health services to millions of currently uninsured Americans through both Medicaid and newly-created subsidized private health insurance plans. 

On Nov. 3, Dr. Franz Adlkofer, former executive director of the VERUM Foundation for Behavior and Environment, spoke to a Harvard Law School audience as part of the lectures and events series hosted by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. 

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen joined medical and legal experts live via Skype on Oct. 25 at Mississippi College School of Law to debate the implications of Mississippi’s Personhood initiative, which will appear on the state’s ballot Nov. 8. The initiative asks: “Should the term 'person' be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent thereof?”

The Harvard Food Law Society recently co-sponsored “TEDxHarvardLaw,” a full-day conference held on Oct. 21, focused on food policy and public health, and the legal and policy approaches to increasing the supply and demand of healthy foods. The campus-wide event was independently organized and co-sponsored by 18 different HLS organizations under the auspices of TEDx, a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

At an event sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society on October 18, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) ’77 spoke about proposed legislation that would end the federal ban on marijuana, as well as the need for drug policy reform at the federal level and why marijuana policy is an issue better handled by the states.

In the first lecture of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics series, Paul Thacker, an investigative journalist and former U.S. Senate Finance Committee staffer, said that big pharmaceutical dollars not only own physicians but also many prominent medical school faculty who are paid to lobby for drugs.

Where others see entrenched problems, the HLS Mississippi Delta Project—an interdisciplinary effort in the HLS Clinical and Pro Bono Programs—sees opportunity for transformation. Since launching less than three years ago, the project has made strides in improving public health, promoting economic development and assisting children in the Delta.

The new CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck, Kenneth Frazier ’78 is driven by high hopes for the company and what it can do

On May 20 through 21, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School convened an international, multidisciplinary conference providing legal and ethical analysis of one of the broadest reaching developments in health care of the last 20 years: its globalization.

The United States cannot afford to allow ongoing legal ambiguities to compromise the vast potential of stem-cell research, yet the struggle over federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells may well be waged for years to come, write Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen and Dr. Eli Y. Adashi in an article published by the New England Journal of Medicine on May 18.

Debating what Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow called “one of the most important public policy issues and one of the most important constitutional issues,” three law professors offered different perspectives on whether the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) violates the commerce clause of the Constitution and infringes on personal liberties.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired a hearing on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and the provision that requires, beginning in 2014, every American to maintain health insurance coverage. The law requires all citizens without work-based insurance to purchase plans in the private market.

On Nov. 18, as part of the 2010 National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C., HLS Professor Chares Fried participated in a debate on the constitutionality of the federal health care legislation—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—signed into law by President Barack Obama ’91 last March.

Glenn Cohen, Assistant Professor of Law and co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, addressed health care professionals as a guest speaker at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s 66th annual meeting, as part of the Ken Ryan Ethics Symposium - Cross-Border Care, on Oct. 25 in Denver, Colo.

When she was 19, Rebecca Onie ’03 created a program that takes a holistic approach to treating low-income patients; one “genius grant” later, she’s determined to change the health care system.

I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health and Law Policy and assistant professor of Harvard Law School, was a guest on the radio program “The Takeaway,” a national morning news program produced in partnership with The New York Times, the BBC World Service, WNYC, Public Radio International and WGBH Boston.

The article “Don’t accept injustice,” by Harvard Law School Professor Anne Alstott, appeared in the July/August 2010 edition of the Boston Review.

From filing an emergency guardianship petition in probate court ensuring that the children of a dying mother are raised by the person she chooses, to appealing the denial of a disability claim in federal court for a critically ill client, the Harvard Law School Health Law and Policy Clinic prides itself on taking the toughest cases and working to shape policy to protect some of society’s most vulnerable people.

In April, Dorothée Alsentzer ‘05, senior clinical fellow at the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center, and Lecturer on law Robert Greenwald, founding director of the clinic, received the Positive Leadership Award from the National Association of People with AIDS, during AIDS Watch, a federal grassroots HIV/AIDS advocacy event held in Washington, D.C.

Credit: Christopher Dydyk Joshua Greene, assistant professor of Psychology Harvard University; William Fitzpatrick, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech University, I Glenn Cohen,…

Founded five years ago as a think tank to respond to the need for leading legal scholarship at the intersection of medicine, science, and law, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School tackles a wide range of issues, bringing together top scholars from a variety of fields in an interdisciplinary approach to some of the thorniest problems faced by society today.

Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, recently appeared on the PBS television show "Inside E-Street" to discuss his recent work on medical tourism. 

"A measure of history," an op-ed by Professor Kenneth Mack '91, appeared in the Mar. 25 issue of the Boston Globe.

Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center, has written a working paper titled “Protecting Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism and the Patient Protective-Argument.” The working paper examines the growth of “medical tourism” – travel of patients who are residents of one country to another country for medical treatment. 

Robert Greenwald, Managing Director of the WilmerHale Legal Services Center at HLS, was appointed on Feb. 1 to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). PACHA provides advice, information, and recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the President regarding programs and policies intended to promote effective care, treatment, and prevention of HIV disease, and to advance research on HIV disease and AIDS.

This year's outbreak of the H1N1 influenza has demonstrated that contagions know few boundaries and spread wherever they can find an available host. Likewise, because of their broad jurisdictional rules, U.S. courts can be easy targets for "forum shopping" by foreign plaintiffs seeking redress against American companies for torts they claim have taken place abroad.

Far more is at risk in the health care reform debates than the well-being of the 47 million Americans who are currently uninsured, according to Jeff Crowley, the White House director of the Office of National AIDS Policy and senior adviser on Disability Policy, who spoke to an engaged crowd of about 60 students and others at HLS Wednesday night.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced that Rebecca Onie ’03 is one of 24 recipients of the 2009 MacArthur Fellowship, more commonly known as the Macarthur “Genius Award.”

On July 28, HLS Professor Hal Scott testified before the Senate Banking Committee at hearings held by committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., addressing how the insurance sector could be better regulated.

Assistant Professors of Law I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Benjamin Roin ’05 are the new co-directors of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, who has served as faculty director since the Center’s founding in 2005, will remain associated with the research program as its Founding Director.

What if the government forced all citizens to get genetic testing to find out if they were carriers of a deadly disease such as Tay-Sachs? “Any constitutional problem with that?” I. Glenn Cohen ’03 asks the 25 students in his popular course, Genetics and Reproductive Technology: Legal and Ethical Issues, as he paces before the blackboard in a Hauser classroom.

Two more HLS alumni have been named to high-level posts in the Obama Administration. Nancy-Ann DeParle ’83 has been appointed director of the White House Office for Health Reform, and Jeremy Bash ’98 will be CIA Director Leon Panetta’s chief of staff.

Staff and students from the WilmerHale Legal Services Center’s Health Law Clinic attended this year’s United States Conference on AIDS last month, where they introduced and described their new program to educate the public about the current state of health care law.

Assistant Professors I. Glenn Cohen '03, Adriaan Lanni, Jed Shugerman, and Matthew Stephenson '03 each had papers selected for the ninth annual Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum, which will take place at Yale Law School in June.

A hard hat sits on a bookshelf in her office. It's a requirement for visiting the construction site across from the Dimock Community Health Center, but the prop fits Ruth Ellen Fitch '83, the center's president and CEO, in more ways than one.