The past year was a historic one for health law, with the Supreme Court issuing the final word on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act alongside a host of other critical developments. In February, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, in partnership with the New England Journal of Medicine, held its first annual Health Law Year in P/Review event.
Bringing together leading experts to review some of the most important changes in the health law landscape over the past year, the event covered implications for the future and predictions of what is to come—in 2013 and beyond.
The day began with a panel entitled “The ACA and Health Care Reform,” featuring HLS Professor Einer Elhauge ‘86 and MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber. Elhauge, who recently released an e-book entitled “Obamacare on Trial,” has contributed several articles on the topic to The New York Times, The Atlantic and The New Republic.
HLS Professor Glenn Cohen ’03
Gruber, an economics professor at MIT and the key architect of the health reform effort under former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney J.D./M.B.A. ’75, was a technical consultant to the Obama Administration as they crafted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The second panel, “Personhood Amendments and Contraceptives Coverage,” featured Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Lecturer on Law Holly Fernandez Lynch.
Cohen, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center, is a specialist on the intersection of bioethics and law. His current projects relate to reproduction/reproductive technology and to medical tourism. Fernandez-Lynch, who serves as the executive director of the Petrie Flom Center, focuses her scholarship on law and bioethics, including the regulation of human subjects research domestically and internationally, pharmaceutical development and regulatory policy, conflicts of conscience in both the medical and legal professions, and conflicts of interest in health care.