Yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila is dominating the news today. (Take a look at the Benefits Buzz at Benefitslink.com today and you’ll see that 12 out of the 18 articles posted pertain to the case.) So I would be remiss, I guess, if I didn’t highlight a few of the articles here. Just a few headlines that caught my eye are as follows:
From Forbes.com, “When Fighting HMOs, Shoot First.”
From USA Today.com, “HMOs win, patients lose, and Congress stays in coma.”
From the AZDailysun.com, “Supreme court: States can’t make up own laws about suing HMOs.” (Apparently, nine other states–Arizona, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia–have laws similar to the Texas Health Care Liability Act which was at issue in the case.)
Also from USA Today.com, “Democrats renew push for patient bill of rights.”
The Kaiser Network.org reports on the case here, showcasing reactions to the case:
According to USA Today, the Supreme Court decision likely will “put more pressure on Congress to broaden ERISA to allow greater remedies for injured patients” (Biskupic, USA Today, 6/22). The decision also “may well reignite the political battle over the long-stalled patients’ bill of rights in Congress,” the Los Angeles Times reports (Los Angeles Times, 6/22). Congressional efforts to pass patients’ rights legislation “fizzled” in 2001, in part because some states had passed their own laws and because “health plans were already offering broader coverage and the ability to appeal decisions,” according to CQ Today (Schuler, CQ Today, 6/21).
SCOTUSblog has a listing of articles here as well.