Most states have laws prohibiting corporations from owning healthcare practices or employing physicians, collectively forming the corporate practice of medicine doctrine (CPOM). CPOM laws were designed to ensure that licensed professionals, not corporate laymen, decide patient treatment.
Large corporations and private equity firms routinely circumvent CPOM laws by creating subsidiary companies that ostensibly “manage” healthcare practices....
The federal government relies on private parties to deter and enforce fraud with the False Claims Act (FCA). Unlike practically every other federal law on the books today, the FCA not only empowers the Department of Justice to go after fraudsters, but it also enlists everyone else by promising a financial reward to individuals who bring claims on behalf of the government. This qui tam enforcement regime is based on the rationale that encouraging...
Defendants may be liable under the False Claims Act (FCA) if they acted with “reckless disregard.” But can defendants be reckless if the laws they break are unclear? The Eighth Circuit says no: A defendant cannot be reckless if there is any “inherent ambiguity” in the relevant law. Its reasoning suggests that textual ambiguity alone is enough to foreclose liability completely. This Note argues to the contrary: if all other elements of the...