Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reached its widely anticipated decision in Texas vs. Azar, ruling that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017’s elimination of the mandate’s financial penalty. The Court has remanded the case to the District Court to further address the question (known as the “severability” question) of whether the remaining provisions of…

As we noted in our November 1, 2019 Healthcare Law Blog post, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra rejected the proposed merger between Adventist Health System/West and St. Joseph Health System (the “Proposed Merger”) in a denial letter issued on October 31, 2019. The Proposed Merger would have created a joint operating company to manage each health system’s facilities in Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Solano, and Sonoma Counties. In this blog post we will be…

On October 31, 2019, the California Department of Justice (“DOJ”) issued a denial letter rejecting a proposed merger between Adventist Health System/West and St. Joseph Health System. The parties had submitted notices to the DOJ requesting approval to form a joint operating company to manage the health systems’ nine health facilities in Northern California. According to the denial letter, the proposed transaction was rejected because the Attorney General concluded that it was not in the…

One of the most controversial taxes of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is in danger of repeal. The tax colloquially known as the “Cadillac Tax” was supposed to take effect in 2018, but Congress has delayed it twice. With the tax now slated to take effect in 2022, opponents of the tax have taken the opportunity to attempt to repeal it for good. On July 17, 2019, the House of Representatives overwhelming voted, 419-6, to…

On June 24, 2019, President Trump signed an executive order that purports to create a more transparent health care market for both patients and providers. The order attempts to decrease the prevalence of opaque pricing, while increasing the amount of health care data available to health care users and stakeholders alike. The executive order lays out a series of deadlines by which regulations, proposals and recommendations must be completed that intend to generate: (i) more…

In our December blog post, we discussed Texas v. United States, No. 19-10011 (5th Cir.), a Texas federal district court decision which struck down the entirety of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”). The case is being appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, although a hearing date has not been scheduled. Last week, however, the United States Department of Justice stated in a court filing that the Department’s formal…