By ERICA MORRIS, GREGORY MOORE AND RUSSELL KOLSRUD
Mental Health Parity Really Does Mean Equal Benefits
By Erica Morris, Gregory Moore and Russell Kolsrud

In Danny P. v. Catholic Health Initiatives, 891 F.3d 1155 (9th Cir. 2018), the Ninth Circuit clarified the full extent of the “parity” required in the federal mental health parity law1 which has been in place since 2008.

In Danny P., the Ninth Circuit held that a particular group health plan (the Catholic Health Initiatives Medical Plan—Blue Cross Blue Shield) was prohibited from denying the same or equivalent room and board coverage in behavioral health facilities that it provided in non-behavioral health facilities, overturning the district court’s [Read More]

He’s Running As A Doctor But Can’t Practice . . . Does It Matter?
Matt Longjohn’s chief selling point in his Michigan 6th Congressional district run is that he’s a medical doctor. But he can’t practice medicine in Michigan because he isn’t professionally licensed in this state or in Illinois, where he formerly worked.

Longjohn, the Democrats’ nominee in the southwest Michigan district, has made a career on the administrative side of health care, most significantly as the first-ever National Health Officer for the 2,700 YMCAs in the United States when he worked in Chicago.

In campaign materials, he refers to himself as Dr. Matt Longjohn, MD, and uses the squiggly heartbeat signal [Read More]

By SARAH JANE TRIBBLE
David Herzberg was alarmed when he heard that Richard Sackler, former chairman of opioid giant Purdue Pharma, was listed as an inventor on a new patent for an opioid addiction treatment.

Patent No. 9861628 is for a fast-dissolving wafer containing buprenorphine, a generic drug that has been around since the 1970s. Herzberg, a historian who focuses on the opioid epidemic and the history of prescription drugs, said he fears the patent could keep prices high and make it more difficult for poor addicts to get treatment.

“It’s hard not to have that reaction of, like … these vultures,” said Herzberg, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.
James Doyle, [Read More]

House Democrats called on Republicans to hold hearings this week, specifically in the Natural Resources and Oversight committees, to have the Department of Environmental Quality present what it knows about PFAS contamination and how extensive the problem is in Michigan.

Eight Democrats, led by Minority Floor Leader Christine Greig (D-Farmington Hills), held a press conference Sept. 4 to demand the hearings and that lawmakers take immediate action to strengthen water quality standards for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a diverse group of compounds resistant to heat, water and oil. Such chemicals have been used in hundreds of consumer products and industrial applications including carpeting, apparels, upholstery, food paper wrappings, fire-fighting foams [Read More]

By GERALD NATZKE, JR., DO
Do you remember Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBBs) sowing fear and disease into the lives of Michigan citizens approximately 43 years ago? Those PBB’s entered the larger food chain through a single error made by a Gratiot County chemical company worker when a ton of Firemaster (a toxic fire retardant) was added to cattle feed. PBB’s were ingested by cattle throughout this area and spread throughout Michigan and the Midwest, producing one of the largest chemical poisonings in the Western world. Another much larger and more dangerous toxic chemical exposure has been discovered. This family of toxins, through ignorance, and poor oversight has been introduced to Michigan’s and [Read More]

By EWA MATUSZEWSKI
We know that “Fix the Damn Roads” is a critical imperative for one of Michigan’s gubernatorial candidates—and hopefully for both. But is “Fix the damn interoperability problem with electronic health records” another? The intersection of healthcare and politics is obviously not new. I would contend it’s more visible—and viscious—than ever. Still, the focus tends to be on access to care and delivery of care, and I understand that. Interoperability of EHR hardly pulls at the heartstrings or incites passionate conversation from either side of the aisle. Accordingly, it doesn’t garner much attention from the consumer media either. That is why it is important for healthcare decision makers to [Read More]

By JESSE A. MARKOS, ESQ.
Wachler & Associates, P.C.
The Michigan Opioid Laws include a 10-bill package of legislation passed in December, 2017, to help curb Michigan’s increasing substance abuse and drug diversion problem. The majority of these provisions came into effect on June 1, 2018 and healthcare providers must become familiar with and incorporate these provisions in to their practice to ensure they are compliant with the changes.

Healthcare providers use the Michigan Automated Prescription System (MAPS) to review a history of any Schedule 2-5 controlled substances that a patient has legally obtained. Not only does MAPS list the prescriber and type of controlled substance that has been prescribed, but it also [Read More]

By RALPH LEVY
In early August, the Internal Revenue Service issued proposed regulations that provide guidance to owners of pass-through businesses as to eligibility for a federal tax deduction of 20 percent of the income generated by the businesses. This deduction was part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Although the stated purpose of the proposed regulations is to provide clarity on eligibility for and the means to compute the deduction, this guidance is lengthy and complex. However, for healthcare providers, there are two important takeaways.

Takeaway No. 1: Guidance on whether a healthcare business is a “specified service trade or business.”

One of the important limitations to the pass-through [Read More]

Lyon’s Attorneys Seek To Dismiss Criminal Case
As expected, attorneys for Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon are asking the Genesee County Circuit Court to quash the bind over from district court and dismiss all criminal charges.
In court filings Sept. 10, defense attorneys John J. Bursch, Larry Willey and Charles “Chip” Chamberlain Jr. say Genesee County District Judge David Goggins’ made his “decision by closing (his) eyes to numerous principles well-settled in Michigan law” and that his decision to send Lyon to trial on two counts of involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office is the first in the state’s history to hold a director criminally liable for [Read More]

Editor:

Just A Few Questions
How can it be expected that all physicians and all citizens will succumb to the idea of socialized medicine without inquiring as to why they should? Is it somehow mandatory that we U.S. citizens duplicate the socialist-lite bloated welfare states that are the examples of how the rest of the “advanced” world’s approaches healthcare? How is it always correct to increasingly subvert the medical profession by employing ever more restrictive regulatory shackles? Isn’t it interesting to witness how the left-leaning elites write a check with money they do not have that comes from our bank accounts so that they can snoot and virtue signal? Isn’t social justice [Read More]