An Interview with Sheila Burke

Sheila Burke was chief of staff to former Senator Robert Dole (R-KS), the Republican leader during the Clinton health reform effort. The O’Neill Institute’s Lester Feder spoke with her about what makes this time around different. Lester Feder: Compared to your experience in the ’90s, what do you make of the health reform process so [...]

Procedural Issues in HR 3962: Rather Disappointing

In my post of September 27, I observed that the legislation then under consideration in Congress—HR 3200 (the House tri-committee bill), the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) bill, and Baucus chairman’s mark—paid inadequate attention to important procedural issues. In my post of October 27, I noted that the Senate Finance bill had made [...]

Legal Issues in Health Reform Symposium

Please join the O’Neill Institute for our symposium, “State of the Debate: Legal Issues in Health Reform,” on October 26, 2009. “Legal Solutions in Health Reform” is a project of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  The project, an extensive analysis [...]

Substance Over Process

Tim Jost is correct that procedural issues are being neglected in the tortuous legislative process that hopefully is leading to some meaningful reform.  But, we all know the quip about making sausages and laws.  Administrative and judicial remedies may simply need to be part of the long list of issues that Congress comes back to later, [...]

Proposed Health Reform Legislation Raises (but does not resolve) Important Procedural Issues

In our last post we demonstrated that Congress has the authority under Article I of the Constitution to adopt all of the health reform proposals it is currently considering seriously (or at least that the current Supreme Court would uphold the authority of Congress to do so). This does not mean, however, that Congress is [...]