Policy & Compliance

  • May 15, 2025

    Ex-CEO Cops To Conspiracy Charge In $212M Fraud Case

    A New Jersey-based former CEO of a medical billing company has pled guilty to conspiring to commit securities fraud in connection with government claims he was part of a $212.5 million scheme to inflate the value of his company to defraud potential investors in a go-private transaction.

  • May 15, 2025

    Feds Freeze Parity Enforcement As Agencies Rethink Regs

    Federal agencies said Thursday they will hold off on enforcing a rule requiring employer group health plans to analyze how they restrict coverage for mental health and substance use disorder treatments, citing ongoing litigation aimed at blocking the policy and broader plans to reevaluate enforcement priorities.

  • May 14, 2025

    Mont. Court Blocks 'Ideological' Transgender Youth Care Ban

    A Montana judge on Tuesday struck down a state statute that banned gender-affirming care for minors, holding that the state's interest is "ideological rather than medical" and violates the constitutional rights of transgender youth seeking gender-affirming care and of healthcare professionals who provide it.

  • May 14, 2025

    9th Circ. Doubts Wash. Anti-Vaxxers' Stance In Med Board Suit

    A Ninth Circuit judge expressed skepticism on Wednesday that the federal appellate court could revive Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s suit against the Washington Medical Commission for initiating disciplinary proceedings against physicians who publicly aired anti-vaccination views, pointing out that federal courts generally "don't interfere" with ongoing state litigation.

  • May 14, 2025

    Sage Therapeutics Brass Sued Over Drug Candidate Claims

    The top brass of Sage Therapeutics Inc. have been hit with a shareholder derivative suit in New York federal court alleging they misled investors about the safety, efficacy, durability and commercial prospects of three of the company's drug candidates and overstated their likelihood to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

  • May 14, 2025

    Houston Midwife Says AG Has No Evidence To Close Clinics

    A Houston-area midwife who was arrested earlier this year on a charge of providing an illegal abortion is arguing to a state appellate court that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton "came nowhere close to meeting the state's burden" in his bid to shut down her clinics.

  • May 14, 2025

    RFK Jr. Defends HHS Cuts, Pledges To 'Spend Smarter'

    In his first appearance on Capitol Hill since his confirmation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday characterized a massive reorganization and reductions in workforce as practical moves to optimize the sprawling agency.

  • May 13, 2025

    Healthcare Hires: Ex-DOJ, Fresenius Attys On The Move

    An ex-federal prosecutor who led healthcare fraud investigations in Texas has joined Hicks Thomas LLP, and an attorney with in-house experience at Fresenius Medical Care and GE Healthcare joined King & Spalding LLP in its government investigations practice. Here, Law360 Healthcare Authority looks at the week's most notable lateral hires in the healthcare industry.

  • May 13, 2025

    Health Co. Elevance Faces Suit Over Post-COVID Costs Claims

    Health insurance provider Elevance Health Inc. and some of its executives face a proposed investor class action alleging the company hurt shareholders by mismanaging expectations about its Medicaid business's costs amid the post-pandemic eligibility redetermination process in certain markets it served.

  • May 13, 2025

    A Trump Do-Over On 'Most Favored Nation' Drug Prices

    President Donald Trump's move this week to "equalize" U.S. drug prices with lower overseas prices hearkens back to a similar effort made in his first term that faced a swarm of legal challenges before being shelved.

  • May 13, 2025

    Planned Parenthood Wants Teen Program Fund Rule Blocked

    Planned Parenthood on Monday urged a D.C. federal judge to vacate the U.S. government's "unlawful" requirements to "align" with President Donald Trump's executive orders lest risk losing Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program funding, arguing its facilities will suffer staff cuts and loss of medically accurate, age-appropriate education services absent an injunction.

  • May 13, 2025

    FDA Move On Industry Influence Only 'Cosmetic,' Experts Say

    A Trump administration move to boot pharmaceutical employees off U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panels won’t do much to address conflicts of interest or change how regulators interact with the industry, experts say. But that doesn't mean other measures shouldn't be considered.

  • May 13, 2025

    NIH Letters Ending Grants Lack Factual Support, Judge Says

    A Massachusetts federal judge said Tuesday that a "blast" of hundreds of virtually identical letters in March canceling National Institutes of Health-funded research projects appeared to offer no factual basis, only unsupported assertions that the projects were unscientific or discriminatory.

  • May 13, 2025

    Michigan Judge Strikes Down State's Abortion Restrictions

    A Michigan judge struck down several of the state's abortion restrictions Tuesday, including a mandatory waiting period, required counseling materials and a rule that only doctors may perform abortions, finding the laws make it harder for people to access abortion and don't protect patients' health. 

  • May 13, 2025

    PBMs Get Bipartisan Bashing At Hearing On Drug Costs

    Senators across party lines slammed pharmacy benefit managers on Tuesday, sometimes in coarse language, as they wrestled with how to reduce drug prices for patients while also preventing the closure of rural pharmacies.

  • May 13, 2025

    DOJ Puts New Target On Medicare Advantage 'Steering'

    U.S. Department of Justice officials' decision to back whistleblower claims that major health insurance companies paid millions in illegal kickbacks to brokers marks a dramatic escalation of an effort to crack down on Medicare Advantage "steering."

  • May 13, 2025

    Feldesman Grants Atty On 'Chaos' Of HHS Funding Cuts

    Massive cuts in federal funding for healthcare programs are testing the avenues of recourse for safety-net hospitals and others that depend on grants to keep their doors open.

  • May 13, 2025

    Ind. Tells Nonprofit Hospitals To Curb Prices, Or Else

    A new Indiana law gives charitable hospitals a stark choice: Lower prices or face the loss of their nonprofit status.

  • May 13, 2025

    Attys Push 11th Circ. To Weigh Judge Shopping Sanctions

    The Eleventh Circuit can hear three attorneys' appeal of sanctions against them for judge shopping during their legal challenge to an Alabama law criminalizing gender-affirming care, because the underlying case was dismissed, making the jurisdictional question moot, two of those lawyers told the appellate court.

  • May 13, 2025

    Associate GC Of University Hospital In NJ Joins Frier Levitt

    New Jersey-based national healthcare boutique Frier Levitt has hired a former in-house counsel at University Hospital in Newark this week as a partner in the firm's healthcare practice group.

  • May 13, 2025

    Express Scripts, FTC Say Defamation Suit 'Should Proceed'

    The Federal Trade Commission's new Republican leadership is ready to defend against an Express Scripts defamation lawsuit targeting an agency report excoriating it and other pharmacy benefit managers for allegedly inflating drug costs, the agency and the PBM told a Missouri federal judge Monday.

  • May 13, 2025

    Canada Drug Import Plan On The Rocks Amid Tension With US

    In his first turn through the White House, President Donald Trump said a plan to import cheap prescription drugs from Canada would be a "game-changer." Five years later, the roadblocks to the program have only gotten higher.

  • May 12, 2025

    W.Va. High Court Declines 4th Circ. Request For Opioid Input

    The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals on Monday declined the Fourth Circuit's request to answer whether the state's public nuisance law applies to the distribution of opioids, saying disputed facts in litigation between local governments and drug distribution companies must first be resolved.

  • May 12, 2025

    Pa. Mental Health Rejection Suits Could Rise, Atty Says

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's recent decision to greenlight a suit accusing two hospitals of negligently rejecting a man seeking mental health treatment who later murdered his girlfriend could spark a rise in such lawsuits, one attorney warned.

  • May 12, 2025

    Missouri Hit With Sanctions In Generics Price-Fixing Fight

    A Connecticut federal judge Monday agreed to sanction and potentially dismiss for good the state of Missouri from antitrust litigation by state enforcers accusing generic-drug makers of conspiring to raise drug prices, finding Missouri violated a court order by ignoring the drugmakers' repeated discovery requests.

Expert Analysis

  • The Future Of GLP-1 Policy After Drug Shortage Ends

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    If and when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determines that GLP-1 RA drugs are no longer in short supply, regulators will face questions of how to balance access to GLP-1 RAs with statutory and policy considerations applicable to compounded drugs, say attorneys at Skadden.

  • Top 10 Whistleblowing And Retaliation Events Of 2024

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    From a Florida federal court’s ruling that the False Claims Act’s qui tam provision is unconstitutional to a record-breaking number of whistleblower tips filed with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, employers saw significant developments in the federal and state whistleblower landscapes this year, say attorneys at Proskauer.

  • How White Collar Defense Attys Can Use Summary Witnesses

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    Few criminal defense attorneys have successfully utilized summary witnesses in the past, but several recent success stories show that it can be a worthwhile trial tactic to help juries understand the complex decision-making at issue, says Jonathan Porter at Husch Blackwell.

  • Nutraceutical Patent Insights As Market Heats Up

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    Companies entering the expanding nutraceutical market and seeking patents to protect their innovations should evaluate successful nutraceutical claim language and common patent challenges in this field, say attorneys at Sterne Kessler.

  • How White Collar Attys Can Use Mythic Archetypes At Trial

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    A careful reading of a classic screenwriting guide shows that fairy tales and white collar trials actually have a lot in common, and defense attorneys would do well to tell a hero’s journey at trial, relying on universal character archetypes to connect with the jury, says Jack Sharman at Lightfoot Franklin.

  • What 2024 Election Means For Drugs, Medicare And Medicaid

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    With Republicans running the White House, U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, the incoming administration is likely to provide pathways — through new initiatives and others returning from Trump's previous presidency — for a range of potential changes to drug pricing, Medicare and Medicaid, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Justices Mull Sex-Based Classification In Trans Law Case

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in U.S. v. Skrmetti this week, it appears that the fate of the Tennessee law at the center of the case — a law banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender adolescents — will hinge on whether the majority read the statute as imposing a sex-based classification, says Alexandra Crandall at Dickinson Wright.

  • Key Takeaways From FDA's Latest Social Media Warnings

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    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's latest untitled letter concerning a drug company's social media promotion provides lessons for how companies should navigate risk presentation, FDA labeling requirements and superiority claims, say attorneys at Sheppard Mullin.

  • Rank-And-File DOJ Attorneys Will Keep Calm And Carry On

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    Career prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice often pride themselves on their ability to remain apolitical in order to ensure consistency and keep the department’s mission afloat, and the incoming Trump administration is unlikely to upend this tradition, says Michael Landman at Bird Marella.

  • Unpacking Arguments From High Court's Rural Hospital Case

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    During oral arguments in Advocate v. Becerra, the U.S. Supreme Court justices focused questions on the meaning of being "entitled to" supplementary security income assistance, and there's reason for optimism that the likely split decision will break in favor of hospitals, say attorneys at King & Spalding.

  • Health Policy Predictions For Trump's Second Administration

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    As President-elect Donald Trump's nominations for health policy and enforcement heads work their way through the confirmation process, healthcare organizations can look at nominee backgrounds, campaign statements and actions from Trump's previous presidency to predict incoming priorities, say attorneys at McDermott.

  • What Trump's Next Term May Mean For Biz Immigration

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    Leonard D'Arrigo at Harris Beach discusses the employment-based immigration policies businesses can potentially expect during President-elect Donald Trump’s second term, based on policies enacted during his first administration, statements made during his campaign and proposals in Project 2025.

  • Weak Reasoning Underlies Fla. Judge's Bold Qui Tam Ruling

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    U.S. District Judge Kathryn Mizelle's groundbreaking decision in U.S. ex rel. Zafirov v. Florida Medical Associates LLC, holding that qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act are unconstitutional, relies on weak logic to reach a conclusion that differs from every other court that has ruled on the issue, says Ethan Greenberg at Anderson Kill.