Vanderbilt experts weigh in on legal & business controversies of health care law and whether it’s constitutional
Health care economist says U.S. can’t sustain health care services, insurance world in jeopardy
Larry Van Horn, associate professor of health care management and executive director of health affairs at Owen, co-teaches a course with U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., on health care policy. His current research interests include nonprofit conduct, governance and objectives in health care markets, and the measurement of health care outcomes and productivity.
As Vanderbilt’s resident health care economist, Van Horn says the U.S. can’t sustain its outsized desire for health care services and yet be unwilling to pay for them. He also believes that a ruling against the insurance mandate would throw the insurance world out of whack. Van Horn regularly writes about health care policy and economics on his blog, “Second Opinion.”
Watch a video of Van Horn giving his opinion on the business of health care.
Legal expert says expanded Medicaid requirements raise biggest Constitutional concerns
James Blumstein, University Professor of Constitutional Law and Health Law and Policy at Vanderbilt Law School, and director, Health Policy Center, ranks among the nation’s most prominent scholars of health law, law and medicine and voting rights.
Blumstein believes the biggest constitutional concerns with the health care law lie in the expanded Medicaid requirements, which is the provision that Florida Federal District Judge Roger Vinson upheld. Blumstein says the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) overreaches federal authority by imposing new conditions on state Medicaid programs.
"Where a substantial modification of an ongoing federal spending program such as Medicaid occurs and affects a substantial portion of a state's budget, the federal government may not use its leverage to impose new conditions as a program modification," Blumstein said.
As founder of the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies and director of its Health Policy Center, Blumstein has served as the principal investigator on numerous grants concerning managed care, hospital management and medical malpractice. He co-authored a major study on TennCare, one of the first statewide experiments in universally enrolling Medicaid patients in managed care. Read an article and presentation Blumstein gave on the constitutional challenges to health reform.
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