Conditional Spending and Compulsory Maternity
More than 45 million Americans are uninsured, and even more are seeking government assistance accessing healthcare, rendering the conditions placed on government spending a timely and significant issue. Federal funding often demands a sacrifice of the recipient, meaning that Congress can condition the receipt of federal funds on certain statutory prerequisites. Given the demand to expand the nation's major public healthcare programs, it is important to reconsider the Supreme Court's Spending Clause jurisprudence. The Court's major decisions regarding conditional spending have facilitated a disconnect that analytically separates the individual from the conditional spending program, a divide that has allowed Congress to impinge on individual rights when it could not otherwise do so. The Court's decisions allowing government to burden the privacy right to obtain abortion by withholding funds in public healthcare programs, particularly Medicaid, provide a striking example of this disconnect. The so-called Hyde Amendment and the jurisprudence upholding its constitutionality spawned many similar federal funding limitations; at least eight federal laws prohibit spending on abortion and related services. This article divides these statutes into two categories and dubs them "pure funding statutes" and "conscience clause funding statutes." The number of pure funding and conscience clause funding statutes highlights the breach created and maintained in the law between the condition on spending and the individual at the macro level and protecting women's reproductive access at the micro level. This article suggests that the Court's existing test for the constitutionality of conditions on federal spending could protect the interests of individuals when applied in full, which has not been the Court's practice. The article also concludes that, given the makeup of the Roberts Court and the balance of Congress, the more likely solution is one of legislative constitutionalism. In other words, Congress should remove these funding limitations from legislation, not only because such limitations may be unconstitutional, but also because they represent an ongoing disconnect in the law that aggrandizes the spending power.
Clear Notice for Conditions on Spending, Unclear Implications for States in Federal Healthcare Programs
This article explores an important case from the 2005-06 Supreme Court term, Arlington Central School District Board of Education v. Murphy. Murphy is a benchmark for Spending Clause jurisprudence, as the new Roberts Court adopted what was the dissenting view for years, but its significance has gone largely unnoticed. Additionally, Murphy may have critical implications for the federalism revolution and for the country's largest healthcare programs. These broad observations are focused in this article by the example of the Clawback Provision, a new Medicaid requirement that has been challenged by New Jersey, Texas, Maine, Missouri, and Kentucky. The Supreme Court denied original jurisdiction, but the states are likely to proceed in district court (they stand to lose millions of dollars under the Clawback Provision). This article finds that the Murphy analysis alters long-standing Spending Clause doctrine in a way that is likely to narrow Congress' ability to place conditions on federal funds. Also, if the Court was seeking to strengthen the states' position regarding conditions on federal spending, it missed the mark because it ignores the reality of long-standing spending programs and states' inability to reject federal conditions in such programs (as with the Clawback Provision). This piece also observes that Congress could not have anticipated the clarity required by Murphy when drafting the Medicare and Medicaid statutes and that this new standard could have far-reaching effects on these forty-year-old healthcare programs. Ultimately, the article calls for a fresh look at spending power jurisprudence in light of both Murphy and long-entrenched spending programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Second-Generation Process Research Towards Eletriptan: A Fischer Indole Approach
The development of a second-generation process for the synthesis of eletriptan via a Fischer indole cyclisation is described. The finalised process offers several potential advantages over the current route of manufacture including cost, throughput, and safety.