Harvard Law & Policy Review

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Repealing the ACA Would be a Step Backwards in Treatment of HIV

By Mark Satta* “It was a holocaust…All of my peers died of AIDS, and I have no one to celebrate my past or my journey, or to help me pass down stories to the next generation. We lost an entire generation of storytellers with HIV.” Those are the words of David Mixner, a civil rights activist and author, who lived through the horror of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s in the United States—a time in which a diagnosis of HIV was, for most, a death sentence, and in which the treatment …

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The Moral Foundations of the Insurance Mandate

By Tina Rulli* Republicans’ new plan to replace the Affordable Care Act ditches the health insurance mandate, the requirement for individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. Instead, their American Health Care Act favors tax credits to incentivize people to purchase insurance. There are many vantage points from which to assess the health insurance law, including legal, economic, and public health perspectives. My focus is on the moral foundations of the individual mandate, …

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Unhealthy Citizens, Unhealthy Democracy

 By Josh Carpenter* The United States has two distinct health systems for the poor: generally, one for blue states and one for red states. One system provides health insurance to the disadvantaged through Medicaid expansion. Over 30 states have elected to expand Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act or opted for a modified version. Democrats in statehouses across the country have led this push, although Kentucky and Ohio are important exceptions.  Unfortunately, individuals in 19 states …

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The Unintended Uninsured: The Affordable Care Act’s Coverage Gap

By Julian Polaris* This is a golden age for access to healthcare in America. In 2015, over 90% of Americans had health coverage, the highest insurance rate in the 50 years the federal government has collected insurance data. This astonishing progress is due in large part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA): President Obama recently announced that 20 million people are covered thanks to the ACA. The victory is bittersweet, however: had the ACA been implemented as designed, an additional three …

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Case Comment: McCullen v. Coakley

Second in the HLPR Case Comment series: McCullen v. Coakley: How Should We Reconcile the First Amendment with Abortion Rights? Revisiting the Supreme Court's June decision regarding protestors or "counselors" who located near the entrances to abortion clinics, Ana Choi examines the conflict between free speech rights and abortion rights in this case. …

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Why did the D.C. Circuit Strike Down an ACA Regulation?

By Tom Watts Yesterday morning, the D.C. Circuit decided Halbig v. Burwell, and the Fourth Circuit decided King v. Burwell. They addressed whether the text of the Affordable Care Act permits subsidies for individuals who purchase insurance on the federal health care exchange. The D.C. Circuit decided that it did not, while the Fourth Circuit decided that it did. Vox has a summary of the cases, and the Lexington Herald-Leader has an excellent FAQ on the rulings. The decisions split along …

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