There is an interesting article in the Guardian on the subject of structural and policy barriers in the United States to the elimination of poverty, which is addressed in a new book by a MacArthur award winning sociologist. I think the New Yorker has a new article out on the same topic, probably based on
There is an excellent article in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly this week by Eric Berkman on a new District Court decision by Judge Woodlock in Massachusetts concerning mental health benefits and the nature of the review provided by an insurer. The decision, K.D. v. Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, found that the insurer had an insufficient basis
I enjoyed this article from CFO on whether smaller employers should switch over to self-funded health plans, to take advantage of potential cost savings in comparison to insured plans, and to obtain comparatively favorable treatment under the ACA. I would throw in another point that favors self-funding a plan, which is that ERISA preemption provides
Its entirely politically incorrect in 2015, and rightfully so, to ever equate litigation (or football, or anything else) to war, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are historical lessons to be learned from military history and wonderful allusions and metaphors to be drawn from it. See, for instance, my early article on excessive
For those of you who have a professional or personal interest in the ACA, litigation arising from it and insurance coverage for litigation it is likely to spawn, I am speaking on a webinar this afternoon that covers those subjects. If you are interested in listening in (and/or amusing yourself by asking complex questions that will
I have often joked that, to seem intelligent at social events, a person really just has to have two things handy – the first, a Noam Chomsky reference, and the second, a Shakespeare quote, preferably from a lesser play. If you are good, you can find a way to fit one or the other into
I expect to be litigating, down the road, issues, complications and conundrums created by health care reform. Let’s be honest – its impossible to imagine any large structural undertaking not generating problems, including unforeseen ones, that will have to be resolved by the courts. For now, though, the issue is more one of planning for
For reasons too obscure and uninteresting to mention, I have had almost nothing to do with the cable tv industry since, well, it was invented. What’s a DVR, anyway, and why would I want one? But yesterday, I had to obtain digital cable from my local cable company, and called them, braced to be gouged.
I had two disparate items that I wanted to post on, one of which I didn’t really think had anything to do with the subject matters of this blog but that, nonetheless, was too cool a graphic not to pass on. Sitting here this morning, though, I figured out how to hook them together, so
For a long while, I have felt like a lone voice or (to mix my metaphors) at least the skunk at the garden party, when I have criticized employer mandates and, even more so, the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act. As I have frequently discussed in various posts, the problem with these statutes is that