President Obama's recently proposed fiscal-year 2017 budget includes two new healthcare proposals: (1) requiring drug companies to disclose various production costs for specific drugs, including research and development costs; and (2) and allowing the HHS Secretary to negotiate with drug companies on certain high-cost drug prices under Medicare Part D. Read about these proposals, and […]
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A fascinating and heart-wrenching piece, here.
Law professor Robert Rabin has written Intangible Damages in American Tort Law: A Roadmap. Here is the abstract: This paper is meant to provide a succinct roadmap to the many pathways taken in providing recovery for intangible harm in tort. The paper was initially prepared for a comparative law conference, and in that setting, I assumed […]
NPR reports on a troubling proposal: penalizing insured individuals who don't maintain a low enough body mass index or BMI. New proposed regulations would permit employers to charge workers more for health insurance if they are overweight as measured by BMI. There are several problems here. For instance, experts explain that millions of healthy Americans […]
This article by Scott Graham explains that Uber has settled a couple cases about the way it advertises its $1-$2 so-called "safe ride" fee. Here are some excerpts: The on-demand ride service Uber Technologies Inc. has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle two San Francisco class actions over the way it advertises its services. Uber announced […]
According to this Gallup report, the U.S. obesity rate has hit a new high — 28% — up 2.5 percentage points since just 2008. Here are some excerpts from the report: In addition to the 28.0% who are obese, another 35.6% of adults are classified as overweight, with 34.6% normal weight and 1.8% underweight, as reported […]
A recent Public Citizen report maintains that the idea of the "no-injury" class action is a fiction. After all, wrongful corporate conduct may be harmful to consumers, and worthy of deterrence, even when it is difficult for many individuals to quantify the particular harms to them. Many state and federal consumer-protection laws authorize consumers to sue […]
Here, complete with a white paper from Mark Budnitz. Here are the first four paragraphs of that white paper: As the popularity of mobile payments grows, it becomes increasingly important to understand the legal framework in which these transactions take place. Consumers need to know their rights and responsibilities. They need to be alert to […]
Do expiration (or "sell by") dates on packaged/bottled foods protect consumers' health and safety, or do they just encourage consumers to throw out perfectly good food (and then buy more)? Or is the answer somewhere in between? In September 2013, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic published The Dating […]
The issue has been getting attention recently and is the subject of The Case for Tipping and Unrestricted Tip-Pooling by law profs Samuel Estreicher and Jonathan Remy Nash. Here is the abstract: Going against the well-established tipping norm in the United States, a growing number of restaurant owners are moving to ban tipping, and instead raise prices, […]