Years Ago, Kavanaugh Side-Stepped Ruling On Merits Of Health Law Thus Ducking Any Political Consequences
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh said in 2011 that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ACA lacked standing until the tax penalty took effect. “When his decision came down, I remember thinking ‘Oh, well that’s savvy,’" said Orin Kerr, a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
Bloomberg:
The Artful Dodge That Saved Kavanaugh From Supreme Court Doom
In 2011, Judge Brett Kavanaugh was selected at random to rule on whether President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, was constitutional. It was a career-defining moment for the aspiring Supreme Court justice, who was 46 at the time. The case promised to be a political bomb splitting two powerful forces. On one side was the Republican Party, which made Kavanaugh a judge and wanted to see the law invalidated under a limited vision of federal authority to regulate interstate commerce. On the other were millions of Americans poised to gain access to health insurance -- in some cases for the first time ever -- backed by scholars who said axing the law would be a grave error of judicial activism and taint the courts. Kavanaugh ducked the issue. (Kapur, 7/16)
In other national health care news —
The New York Times:
Drug To Treat Smallpox Approved By F.D.A., A Move Against Bioterrorism
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first drug intended to treat smallpox — a move that could halt a lethal pandemic if the virus were to be released as a terrorist bioweapon or through a laboratory accident. The antiviral pill, tecovirimat, also known as Tpoxx, has never been tested in humans with smallpox because the disease was declared eradicated in 1980, three years after the last known case. (McNeil, 7/13)
The New York Times:
Breast-Feeding Or Formula? For Americans, It’s Complicated
For as long as there have been babies, there have been debates over how to feed them. Wet nursing, which began as early as 2000 B.C., was once a widely accepted option for mothers who could not or did not want to breast-feed, but it faced criticism during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The profession eventually declined with the introduction of the infant feeding bottle in the 19th century. (Caron, 7/14)
The New York Times:
McDonald’s Removes Salads Linked To Intestinal Parasite Outbreak In Midwest
McDonald’s pulled salads from 3,000 restaurants in the Midwest after health experts announced that more than 100 people had been infected by an intestinal parasite in recent weeks. Public health officials in Illinois and Iowa have reported a surge in cases of cyclosporiasis, with at least 15 infections in Iowa and 90 others in Illinois. Everyone who became ill in Iowa and about a quarter of those who became sick in Illinois said they had eaten McDonald’s salads in the days before symptoms appeared, according to the states’ health departments. (Haag, 7/13)