The Courts

Democratic lawmakers, beneficiary advocates, insurers, hospitals, and other stakeholders cheered the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision to throw out the GOP challenge to the Affordable Care Act and called on Congress to now take steps to build upon the law.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (June 1) denied Johnson & Johnson’s request that it review a Missouri court’s decision to award billions of dollars to 22 women who claimed J&J’s talcum powder products caused ovarian cancer.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Sandoz’s petition to review a patent dispute over the company's biosimilar Erelzi, so the earliest Erelzi can be sold in the United States is 2029, even though FDA approved it in 2016.

The Supreme Court on Monday (May 17) agreed to take up a case over Mississippi’s law that bans abortion after 15 weeks, a move seen as the first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade in decades, setting up a high-profile decision to come out in the runup to the mid-term elections.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on Friday (May 7) told a Hawaii district court that FDA will review and consider potential modifications to its in-person prescribing and dispensing restrictions on abortion drug mifepristone, coming less than a month after the agency announced it had temporarily lifted the restrictions for the duration of the public health emergency.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Democrats are trying to restore the Federal Trade Commission’s power to make companies return illegal profits and pay back victims of scams after the Supreme Court last week ruled that FTC does not have that authority.

HHS is considering administrative measures to enforce 340B program rules, according to an HHS court filing, and hospitals believe that means the administration will stop drug companies from denying drug discounts when providers use contract pharmacies to obtain drugs.

The Biden administration asks the Supreme Court not to take up a pair of insurers’ lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing reductions, saying in an April 9 brief the federal appeals court had correctly determined that money insurers gleaned by hiking silver-level premiums can be deducted from the damages owed to them.

The Biden administration has until April 26 to weigh in on whether it thinks the Supreme Court should take up insurers’ suit challenging the Trump-era decision not to pay the full amount of cost-sharing reduction payments owed insurers since 2017, despite the “silver loading” workaround.