Consumers in this country pay more for health care than in other developed countries. And maternity care provides a dramatic example, as explained in this article by Elisabeth Rosenthal. Check out this chart from Rosenthal's article: Here's an excerpt: [T]hough maternity care costs far less in other developed countries than it does in the United […]
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[Ed note: The following guest post is the third in a series of posts about payday lending or "deposit advance" loans issued by banks. Go here and here for the prior two posts.] Guest post by Jim Hawkins, University of Houston Law Center In reading Gary Kalman's guest post, I wondered why the Center for Responsible […]
Guest post from Gary Kalman, EVP, Center for Responsible Lending Earlier this week, Professor Jeff Sovern posted a piece here questioning whether banks should get out of the “deposit advance” lending business—i.e., payday lending. We appreciate his comments, but loan sharking is loan sharking. Banks are pushing triple-digit interest loans that are structured to create […]
Our readers may be interested in hearing about what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is doing on the enforcement front. Today, the agency issued a press release concerning consent orders against U.S. Bank and one of its affiliates: Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)ordered U.S. Bank and one of its nonbank partner companies, Dealers’ […]
That's the name of this new study by Deanne Loonin and Jillian McLaughlin of the National Consumer Law Center. They explain that A student loan "debt relief" industry has sprung up in response to the demand for student loan borrower assistance and this report documents multiple problems as well as potential violations of consumer federal […]
by Paul Alan Levy In a relatively brief opinion issued this morning, the DC Circuit has affirmed the trial court's refusal to strike Shirley Sherrod's libel action against bloggers Breitbart nd O'Connor, but on the narrowest possible ground that should not have any adverse long-term impact on future anti-SLAPP motions. After canvassing the way in […]
by Brian Wolfman The Supreme Court today held in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett that FDA approval of a generic prescription drug preempts a state-law damages claim premised on the drug's design defect. The 5-4 majority opinion is written by Justice Alito. Basically, Justice Alito says that a design-defect claim is, in effect, a claim […]
Here's the Supreme Court's order: 12-1281 NLRB V. NOEL CANNING, ET AL. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. In addition to the questions presented by the petition, the parties are directed to brief and argue the following question: Whether the President's recess-appointment power may be exercised when the Senate is convening every […]
That's the question addressed in "The First Amendment and Public Health, At Odds," American Journal of Law & Medicine, 39 (2013): 298-307, by Ted Mermin and Samantha Graff. Here's the article's first couple paragraphs (with the footnotes omitted): At the turn of the last century, allies of industry on the Supreme Court deployed a novel […]
Some of our readers may want to watch Ralph Nader on C-SPAN tomorrow, Saturday June 22, at 7:45 pm EDT. He'll be talking about his latest book, Told You So: The Big Book of Weekly Columns. He'll discuss his decades of writing on topics ranging from auto safety to the Freedom of Information Act. […]