Cultivated Compendium

The New York Times' Robert Pear reports that, even as the rolls of people getting healthcare coverage through Medicaid are swelling, Medicaid reimbursements for primary care will be cut by 43 percent, on average. Why? Some healthcare providers will not take Medicaid patients at the lower rates. Moreover, the extension of higher Medicaid payments faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Congress. 

Separately, there is a case pending in the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Obama administration has taken the position that healthcare providers have no right to enforce a requirement that Medicaid rates must be sufficient to "'enlist enough providers' so that beneficiaries have at least as much access to care as the general population in their geographic area," Pear further reports.

The governors of New York and New Jersey are both going to veto a bill that aimed to clean up political patronage at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York Times' Jesse McKinley reports. The bill was passed with broad support from legislators in both states. But the governors do support applying Freedom of Information Law to the port authority.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld the convictions of drunk-driving defendants based on blood samples taken by force, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Bruce Vielmetti reports. The court held in two cases that police relied in good faith on the law in place at the the time, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police must get warrants to draw blood in most cases. In a third case, the Wisconsin justices found that a coerced blood draw met an exception for exigent circumstances set out in the U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Missouri v. McNeely.

Could the FAA's drone policies violate the First Amendment?, TechDirt's Mike Masnick asked in a post on Christmas Eve, citing a post from law professor Margot Kaminski. If the FAA can authorize Hollywood to use drones for commercial purposes on a pilot basis, why can't other drone operators fly their machines wihtout restrictions? "'The Supreme Court has long acknowledged that a too-discretionary licensing regime can raise serious First Amendment concerns. This is true even where a complete ban might be permissible,'" Kaminski noted.

Banks will have another two years before they have to start abiding by the Volcker rule, which would force them to sell their stakes in private-equity and hedge-fund investments, Bloomberg's Jesse Hamilton and Cheyenne Hopkins reported earlier this month. The rule was enacted to make the financial system less vulnerable to risky investments as happened in the 2008 Great Recession. The banking industry lobbied for the delay, among other reasons, because they said having to sell their stakes quickly might force them to "accept discount prices."

The National Association of Attorneys Genearl has voted to stop accepting corporate sponsorships amid increasing scrutiny around the country of how attorneys general interact with lobbyists, The New York Times' Eric Lipton reports. Moreover, "in Missouri, a bill has been introduced that would require the attorney general, as well as certain other state officials, to disclose within 48 hours any political contribution worth more than $500. And in Washington State, legislation is being drafted to bar attorneys general who leave office from lobbying their former colleagues for a year. Perhaps most significant, a White House ethics lawyer in the administration of George W. Bush has asked the American Bar Association to change its national code of conduct to prohibit attorneys general from discussing continuing investigations or other official matters while participating in fund-raising events at resort destinations, as they often now do," Lipton also reports.

The waiting time for appeals over Medicare coverage has been cut in half, Kaiser Health News reports: "The Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA) has decided most of the 5,162 cases filed by beneficiaries in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, plus 1,535 older cases, according to statistics provided to Kaiser Health News. That’s a dramatic change from the year before, when a third of beneficiary cases (1,493) were not decided and nearly half (1,705) of the 2012 cases also were unresolved."

The office is still a long way from meeting the federal requirement that an appeal be decided within 90 days after a request for a hearing.

The progress in addressing the Medicare-coverage backlog has been at the expense of appeals filed by healthcare providers like hospitals, nursing homes and medical-device suppliers. There are 900,000 appeals from healthcare providers, and the wait times for their appeals have doubled because appeals from beneficiaries have been prioritized.

The Stanford Law Review has an interesting essay from University of Iowa College of Law Professor Maya Steinitz suggesting that there should be an international court of civil justice. Steinitz reasons the civil equivalent for a International Criminal Court would be just for plaintiffs and efficient for corporate defendants. She notes that there is no forum for cross-border torts after the Supreme Court ruled in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. that the Alien Tort Claims Act presumptively does not apply extraterritorially and closed American courts to most cross-border mass torts. "The core reason the problem of the missing forum is deeply troubling is, of course, that it creates an access-to-justice deficit. ... In addition to injustice to individual tort victims, the lack of deterrence leads to a tremendous wealth transfer from the developing to the developed world; the world’s most disempowered constitu­encies internalize the costs of the economic activities of the world’s wealthiest corporations," Steinitz argues.

After a federal judge upheld the constitutionality of Oklahoma's new lethal injection protocol, a group of inmates slated to be executed next year are planning to appeal the decision, according to the Associated Press. U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot ruled that the 500-milligram dose of the sedative midazolam makes it a "'virtual certainty'" that inmates will be unconscious before drugs are administered to stop their hearts and their respiratory systems.

But the inmates argue the drug poses a substantial risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering. When the state used a 100-milligram dose of midazolam, inmate Clayton Lockett "writhed on the gurney, mumbled and lifted his head during his 43-minute execution," the AP further reports.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that cyberharassment and lies posted online encouraging that bullying is not speech protected by the First Amendment, the Boston Herald reports. The court upheld the criminal harassment convictions of two real estate developers who arranged postings online to harass two business executives they were feuding with. The postings falsely claimed the couple had golf carts free for the taking and wanted to sell their "fictitious dead son’s Harley Davidson motorcycle for $300," the Herald further reports. The husband also was sent an email from a "make-believe former teenage male employee accusing him of sexual molestation."

The speech was unprotected, the court ruled, because their conduct was a "'hybrid of conduct and speech integral to the commission of a crime ... Their conduct served solely to harass the (victims) by luring numerous strangers and prompting incessant late-night telephone calls to their home by way of false representations, by overtly and aggressively threatening to misuse their personal identifying information, and by falsely accusing (the husband) of a serious crime.'"