U.S. Healthcare Reform Has Just Begun

I wrote here last March 26 about the issues of the anticipated Supreme Court opinion on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Around the time the decision was announced, it seemed redundant to comment when a barrage of words — first, predictive punditry, then, delight, outrage, and more punditry about the “real” future of U.S. Health care – poured from every news outlet and policy shop that exists to examine the health care industry and its regulation.

In August 2012, implementation is underway, complex and sometimes perplexing. And many problems are not addressed at all.

To recap: On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court announced its rulings on the constitutionality of the ACA. Most provisions of the law, including the individual mandate, were upheld. One important provision, requiring states to adopt the Medicaid expansion, was struck down. States could refuse to expand their Medicaid benefits and still receive federal funds that` pay at least 50% of the cost of their existing health care program for the poor. Several states have refused the expansion, although the federal government provides 100% of costs until 2020. The objective justification is that such a federal “hook” is eventually reduced, other incremental expansion is likely to follow, and once states begin to accept the funds it is virtually impossible, politically and practically, to stop.

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Brand Protection on the Internet

Professor Boyden’s Internet Law class and a legal internship, where many of my responsibilities dealt with online trademark protection of my employer’s brand name, opened my eyes to the complicated nature of brand protection on the internet.

As the internet, and internet crime, develops, trademark owners must confront the abuse of their marks as domain names in two particular ways. First, cybersquatting is registration of a domain name that contains a trademarked term with the intention of selling the domain name to the owner of the trademark at a bloated price. 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d) (2006). Second, typosquatting is the registration of a domain name that includes an intentionally misspelled famous trademark. Typosquatting creates revenue for the squatter by capitalizing on the recognition of the mark through the placement of advertisements on the page, so that a fraction of a cent is generated by each page view from visitors attempting to reach the mark’s owner’s legitimate page. Shields v. Zuccarini, 254 F.3d 476, 483 (3d Cir. 2001).

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Ice Gets Iced

Earlier this summer, in Southern Union Co. v. United States (No. 11-94), the Supreme Court seemed to reverse course yet again in its on-and-off revolution in the area of jury-trial rights at sentencing.  The revolution began with Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000), which held that a jury, and not a judge, must find the facts that increase a statutory maximum prison term.  The revolution seemed over two years later, when the Court decided in Harris v. United States that no jury was required for mandatory minimum sentences.  But, another two years after that, in Blakely v. Washington, the revolution was back on, with the Court extending Apprendi rights to sentencing guidelines.  Blakelywas especially notable for its hard-nosed formalism: Apprendi was said to have created a bright-line rule firmly grounded in the framers’ reverence for the jury; we are not in the business, declared Justice Scalia for the Blakely majority, of carving out exceptions to such clear rules in the interest of efficiency or other contemporary policy concerns.

Then came Oregon v. Ice in 2009, which seemed to signal that the Court had again grown weary of the revolution.  

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