Policy & Compliance

  • May 01, 2026

    5th Circ. Pauses Mail-Order Access To Abortion Pills

    The Fifth Circuit on Friday reinstated an in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion medication mifepristone, blocking mail-order access while a challenge to a Biden administration regulation brought by Louisiana officials moves forward.

  • May 01, 2026

    Calif. Sued Over Ballot Measure For Health Clinic Fund Use

    Federally designated community health clinics that serve vulnerable populations sued the California secretary of state and a union to keep an initiative off the November 2026 ballot that would control their budgets and expenditures, warning it could lead to shutdowns, disrupt patients' access to services and have other devastating consequences.

  • May 01, 2026

    DOJ Asks 4th Circ. To Revive Children's Hospital Subpoena

    The U.S. Department of Justice is asking the Fourth Circuit to reverse a district court order quashing its subpoena of transgender minor records from Children's National Hospital in Maryland, arguing that the patients' families — who sued to block the subpoena — lacked standing to bring a HIPAA challenge.

  • May 01, 2026

    Med Groups Say HHS Stalling Challenge To Vax Changes

    A Massachusetts federal judge on Friday rejected the government's request to pause discovery in a challenge by medical groups to the Trump administration's new childhood vaccination schedule while it appeals his March order blocking the changes.

  • May 01, 2026

    Medical Practice's Assets Targeted After $49M Verdict

    The Westchester Medical Group PC has only disclosed $2 million worth of insurance against a $49 million malpractice verdict that could nearly double during an expected appeal, a Connecticut cancer patient and her husband said in seeking to secure the defendant's property and other assets now.

  • May 01, 2026

    Mylan Inks $11M Deal With NC Over EpiPen Pricing

    North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced Thursday that the state has inked an $11 million settlement with EpiPen distributor Mylan Pharmaceuticals, resolving claims of anticompetitive conduct and funneling millions back into public healthcare programs.

  • April 30, 2026

    Gov't Pauses Medicaid Data Use For ICE Amid Injunction Fight

    The Trump administration agreed at a hearing Thursday to temporarily halt the use of 22 states' Medicaid data for immigration enforcement purposes until a San Francisco federal judge clarifies the boundaries of an injunction that the largely Democratic-controlled states had accused the government of flouting.

  • April 30, 2026

    Debt Collectors Owe Charity Care Notice, Wash. Justices Say

    Just as hospitals must inform low-income patients they might qualify for financial assistance, so too must agencies collecting on medical debt, the Washington Supreme Court clarified Thursday.

  • April 30, 2026

    Jury Begins Mulling If Doctors Are Liable For Fatal Overdose

    A Philadelphia jury on Thursday began deliberations in a lawsuit accusing two doctors of enabling a 26-year-old man with chronic back pain to become hooked on opioid painkillers and fatally overdose.

  • April 30, 2026

    Trump Taps 3rd Surgeon General Pick, Drops Casey Means

    President Donald Trump nominated his third pick to be surgeon general on Thursday, withdrawing consideration for Casey Means after her confirmation stalled in the Senate. 

  • April 30, 2026

    Supplement Industry Says FDA Wrongly Muzzled Label Claims

    A coalition of dietary supplement companies and an alternative medicine advocacy group filed suit Wednesday against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, claiming that the agency violated First Amendment commercial speech protections when it blocked product label claims connecting certain nutrients or ingredients to health outcomes.

  • April 30, 2026

    Mental Health Co. Can't Undo Jury Verdict In NC Wage Suit

    A mental healthcare company's bid to throw out a jury verdict finding it willfully violated federal and state wage laws fell short because its post-trial arguments lacked supporting evidence, a North Carolina federal judge ruled Thursday.

  • April 30, 2026

    NC Biz Court Bulletin: Corporate Raid, MV Realty Settlement

    A major case settled in the North Carolina Business Court in April as new lawsuits emerged, including a complaint by health information technology company IQVIA Holdings Inc. accusing its former top brass of orchestrating a corporate raid and defecting to a competitor. In case you missed this story and others, here are the highlights.

  • April 30, 2026

    Express Scripts, Cigna Seek End To Ohio PBM Price Suit

    After the Sixth Circuit ruled that a legal dispute between Ohio and a group of pharmacy benefit managers belongs in federal court, Express Scripts and Cigna now want dismissed the lawsuit accusing them of participating in an antitrust conspiracy that is driving up prescription drug prices. 

  • April 30, 2026

    Kroger's Health Plan Tobacco Fee Shirks ERISA, Suit Says

    Supermarket giant Kroger violated federal benefits law by requiring workers to pay an extra fee through their health plan if they used tobacco while failing to give them a fair opportunity to avoid the charge, according to a proposed class action filed in Ohio federal court.

  • April 30, 2026

    Feds Appeal Order Freezing CDC Childhood Vaccine Changes

    The Trump administration said late Wednesday that it's appealing a court order that stopped its pared-down childhood vaccine schedule from going into effect.

  • April 29, 2026

    CEO Stole From His Company To Buy Mansion, SEC Says

    The former CEO of a California-based pharmaceutical company agreed Wednesday to pay the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission $30,000 to end a lawsuit accusing him of misappropriating $3.2 million in company funds partly to buy a Beverly Hills mansion.

  • April 29, 2026

    Novo Nordisk Rejects Claim It Influences GLP-1 Market

    Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk told a Texas federal judge that it does not control the GLP-1 market and has not attempted to crush its competition in a bid to dismiss an antitrust suit it is facing.

  • April 29, 2026

    PBMs Say Michigan AG Price-Fixing Suit Is Unsound

    Pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts, Evernorth Health and Prime Therapeutics have bolstered their effort to escape a federal price-fixing suit brought against them by Michigan's attorney general by arguing the statutes cited in the complaint do not apply to them.

  • April 29, 2026

    Mass. AG, Insurer Settle Deceptive Marketing Claims For $5M

    A Texas-headquartered health insurance agency will pay $5 million to settle allegations that it engaged in deceptive and unfair marketing to sell plans and other types of health programs to thousands of Massachusetts consumers, the state's attorney general announced on Wednesday.

  • April 29, 2026

    5th Circ. Will Rehear Aetna Arbitration Bid In Aramark Suit

    The full Fifth Circuit will reconsider insurance company Aetna's bid to force uniform and food services company Aramark to arbitrate its dispute over employee health benefit claims, staying a panel's ruling from December that had kept proceedings in court.

  • April 29, 2026

    AbbVie Seeks Early Win Over HHS In Botox Drug Price Suit

    When the federal government included Botox in Medicare's drug price negotiation program, which allows Medicare officials to negotiate for lower drug prices, it overstepped its authority, drugmaker AbbVie Inc. told a D.C. federal court, arguing the cosmetic drug and migraine treatment is a "plasma-derived" product ineligible for price controls.

  • April 29, 2026

    Medical Equipment Co. Settles Patient Overbilling Claims

    Patients who claim Pennsylvania-based AdaptHealth Corp. overcharged them for returned medical equipment have reached the final version of a class settlement and will soon submit it to a North Carolina federal court for approval, they told the court this week.

  • April 29, 2026

    Justices Rule NJ Info Demand Chilled Anti-Abortion Speech

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously revived an anti‑abortion pregnancy center network's constitutional challenge to a New Jersey subpoena seeking years of donor information, holding that the state's demand infringed free speech.

  • April 28, 2026

    Ohio Justices Nix 'Would Have Been Married' Obergefell Test

    The Ohio Supreme Court held Tuesday that a state law establishing parental rights for the spouse of a woman who conceives a child through artificial insemination doesn't retroactively apply to same-sex couples when a child was born before gay marriage was legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015.

Expert Analysis

  • How States Are Regulating Health Insurers' AI Usage

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    The absence of a federal artificial intelligence framework positions states as key regulators of health insurers’ AI use, making it important for payors and service providers to understand the range of state AI legislation being passed in California and elsewhere, and consider implementing an AI-focused compliance infrastructure, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

  • HHS Plan To Cut Immigrant Benefits Spurs Provider Questions

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    A recent notice from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services identifying new federal public benefit programs for which nonqualified aliens are not eligible may have a major impact on entities that participate in these programs — but many questions remain unanswered, say attorneys at Foley.

  • Noncompete Forecast Shows Tough Weather For Employers

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    Several new state noncompete laws signal rough conditions for employers, particularly in the healthcare sector, so employers must account for employees' geographic circumstances as they cannot rely solely on choice-of-law clauses, say lawyers at McDermott.

  • Previewing State Efforts To Regulate Mental Health Chatbots

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    New York, Nevada and Utah have all recently enacted laws regulating the use of artificial intelligence to deliver mental health services, offering early insights into how other states may regulate this area, say attorneys at Goodwin.

  • How DOJ's New Data Security Rules Leave HIPAA In The Dust

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    The U.S. Department of Justice's recently effective data security requirements carry profound implications for how healthcare providers collect, store, share and use data — and approach vendor oversight — that go far beyond the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, say attorneys at Nelson Mullins.

  • Texas Med Spas Must Prepare For 2 New State Laws

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    Two new laws in Texas — regulating elective intravenous therapy and reforming healthcare noncompetes — mark a pivotal shift in the regulatory framework for medical spas in the state, which must proactively adapt their operations and contractual practices, says Brad Cook at Munsch Hardt.

  • DOJ-HHS Collab Crystallizes Focus On Health Enforcement

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    The recently announced partnership between the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to combat False Claims Act violations, following a multiyear trend of high-dollar DOJ recoveries, signals a long-term enforcement horizon with major implications for healthcare entities and whistleblowers, say attorneys at RJO.

  • How The Healthline Privacy Settlement Redefines Ad Tech Use

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    The Healthline settlement is the first time California has drawn a clear line in the sand around how website tracking must function in practice, so if your site uses tracking technologies, especially around sensitive content like health or finance, regulators are inspecting your website's back end, not just its banner, say attorneys at Baker Donelson.

  • How Sweeping Budget Bill Shakes Up Health Industry

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    With the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act marking one of the most significant overhauls of federal health policy since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, providers, managed care organizations and life sciences companies must now shift focus from policy review to implementation planning, say advisers at Holland & Knight.

  • New DOJ Penalty Policy Could Spell Trouble For Cos.

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    In light of the U.S. Department of Justice’s recently published guidance making victim relief a core condition of coordinated resolution crediting, companies facing parallel investigations must carefully calibrate their negotiation strategies to minimize the risk of duplicative penalties, say attorneys at Debevoise.

  • A Look At Key 5th Circ. White Collar Rulings So Far This Year

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    In the first half of 2025, the Fifth Circuit has decided numerous cases of particular import to white collar practitioners, which collectively underscore the critical importance of meticulous recordbuilding, procedural compliance and strategic litigation choices at every stage of a case, says Joe Magliolo at Jackson Walker.

  • What US Medicine Onshoring Means For Indian Life Sciences

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    Despite the Trump administration's latest moves to onshore essential medicine manufacturing, India will likely remain an indispensable component of the U.S. drug supply chain, but Indian manufacturers should prepare for stricter compliance checks, says Jashaswi Ghosh at Holon Law Partners.

  • FCA Working Group Reboot Signals EHR Compliance Risk

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    The revival of the False Claims Act working group is an aggressive expansion of enforcement efforts by the Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services targeted toward technology-enabled fraud involving electronic health records and other data, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.