Health Law Informer

On May 1, the federal government brought a False Claims Act (“FCA”) suit against three health insurers, as well as three insurance brokers. The Justice Department’s suit alleges that the insurers paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to brokers in exchange for obtaining enrollments into their Medicare Advantage (“MA”) plans in the form of “marketing,” “co-op,” or “sponsorship” payments. In the same suit, two of the insurers were also accused of discriminating against disabled MA beneficiaries.

The Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) recently proposed a policy that would require all new vaccines to undergo placebo-controlled clinical trials prior to FDA approval. The proposal, while controversial, is rooted in calls for greater methodological rigor and transparency in vaccine research—two concerns of increasing interest to both health care practitioners and legal professionals in the regulatory and bioethics space.