Alerts

As many of you are wrapping up operations today, I wanted to bring together some of my thoughts on TPP as 2015 comes to a close.

Overnight, Congressional leaders unveiled a $1.15 trillion fiscal year 2016 omnibus spending bill after weeks of contentious negotiations between the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Congressional leadership, and the White House.

Details on the long-awaited bipartisan, bicameral tax extender package were released yesterday evening and are expected to be considered by the House of Representatives on Thursday.

By January 1, 2016, all employers  in the District of Columbia with 20 or more employees must provide certain transportation benefits to their employees who work in the District.

In an important development, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued additional final regulations implementing the Stark Law as part of the Physician Fee Schedule for calendar year 2016 (see 80 Fed. Reg. 70,886 (Nov. 16, 2015)).

On Monday, November 30, 2015, Nordstrom and denim manufacturer AG Adriano Goldschmied filed a motion to approve a settlement in California federal court, agreeing to pay more than $4 million to settle a consumer class action suit that accused them of falsely labeling jeans as “Made in USA.”

The FTC may start to scrutinize marketers that engage in cross-device tracking. Advertisers engaged in cross-device tracking should review their online disclosures to ensure that the tracking is adequately described.

Effective January 1, 2016, New York City’s Commuter Benefits Law requires that non-government employers with 20 or more full-time non-union employees in New York City must offer all full-time employees the opportunity to use pre-tax income to purchase certain transportation benefits.

Federal regulations require institutions and institutional review boards (IRB) that are responsible for review and oversight of human subject research to prepare and maintain adequate documentation of IRB activities, including minutes of IRB meetings.

On November 10, New York’s attorney general ordered DraftKings and FanDuel to stop accepting bets from the state’s residents, arguing the games constituted illegal gambling.

Puerto Rico continues to face a fiscal crisis of unprecedented proportion. The island of only 3.5 million people carries a massive debt load of $72 billion and $44 billion of unfunded pension liabilities.

The Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, a division of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, issued a Medicaid Drug Rebate Program notice to state Medicaid contacts emphasizing appropriate access to, and coverage of, direct-acting antiviral drugs used to treat hepatitis C virus.

On November 2, 2015, President Obama signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 into law. The two year budget deal increases overall spending limits and prevents the United States from defaulting on its debts by suspending the debt limit through March 2017.

On October 21, 2015, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed eight pieces of legislation, known collectively as the Women’s Equality Act and effective in January 2016, into law.

The E-Warranty Act of 2015 was recently signed into law, amending the Magnuson-Moss Warranty-Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, to permit manufacturers and sellers of consumer products the option to post written warranties online.

Brazil has made international headlines with an exploding pension crisis that is wreaking havoc on public finances and threatening to take down the economy of Latin America’s biggest country.

There has been no let-up in the push for a final Trans-Pacific Partnership since the accord was signed by the 12-member countries on October 5th. This is especially true in the US, where US Trade Representative Michael Froman said that the agreement will be the template for future trade pacts.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently reversed a 2014 decision of the National Labor Relations Board prohibiting mandatory arbitration of class or collective actions in employment disputes.

The Department of Justice recently announced that Tuomey Healthcare System has agreed to pay $72.4 million and enter into a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement to finally resolve the long-running U.S. ex rel., Drakeford v. Tuomey Healthcare System, Inc. False Claims Act/Stark Law litigation.

The Federal Trade Commission has lost an important mechanism for privacy and data security enforcement in data flowing across the Atlantic with the invalidation of the Safe Harbor framework, according to Commissioner Julie Brill.

Free trade agreements have a generic template that negotiators follow. After the various “feel good” provisions outlining the lofty objectives of said agreement, the text quickly turns to the nuts and bolts of the negotiations…

US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General released an OIG Alert reminding the public that electronic health records furnished to referral sources may not meet the federal anti-kickback statute’s EHR safe harbor if EHR system has limited or restricted interoperability.

Health care providers and their contractors have been put on notice by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that the next round of HIPAA compliance audits will begin in early 2016.  The previous round of HIPAA audits was completed in 2014.

California passed Assembly Bill 60 (AB60) which allows the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a driver’s license to any person, which could include an undocumented person, who cannot establish their legal presence in the US but otherwise meets licensing requirements to drive a motor vehicle.