Health eSource November 2019

    Vol. 16 No. 3  

    Health

    Chair's Column: Focus on Innovation

    By John H McEniry IV, Fagron North America, Fairhope, AL

    For this bar year, your Health Law Section leaders were asked to focus on innovation in how the Section generates and delivers content to its members, how the Section communicates with its members, and how the Section otherwise provides value to its members. Though we are only a couple of months into the bar year, your leaders are off to a great start!

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    HHS Issues Landmark Proposed Regulations for Stark, AKS and the Beneficiary Inducements Provision of the CMP Statute

    By Reesa N. Benkoff, Esq. Benkoff Health Law, PLLC, Bloomfield Hills, MI and Donald H. Romano, Esq., Foley & Lardner, LLP, Washington, DC

    On October 9, 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed its long-awaited proposals to update the Physician Self-Referral Law (Stark), the federal Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), and the Beneficiary Inducements provision of the Civil Money Penalty (CMP) Statute as part of its Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care.

    Health

    Hospitals Jump Into the Opioid Litigation Fray

    By Lynn M. Barrett, Esq., CHC, CCP, Barrett Law, PA, Weston, FL

    Every week – if not every day - it seems like one can pick up a newspaper or magazine and read a story related to the national opioid crisis and the impact it has had on the country. Recently, many of the stories focus on the multitude of states, cities, and counties that have sued pharmacies and the manufacturers and distributors of opioids whose actions, they claim, caused the crisis.

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    Eleventh Circuit Makes It "Objectively" More Difficult for Relators and the Government to Prove Falsity in AseraCare

    By Robert T. Rhoad, Esq., Nichols Liu, LLP, Washington, DC and Matthew W. Turetzky, Esq., The Norton Law Firm, PC, Oakland, CA

    Anyone familiar with the False Claims Act (FCA) knows that the Eleventh Circuit imposes demanding requirements upon FCA from the outset of the case.1 But the court’s recent AseraCare decision extends that high bar to proof at trial, making clear that a plaintiff must show an objective falsehood for the purposes of proving falsity in cases involving a physician’s clinical judgment.