Public Program: "Policy, Politics and the Affordable Care Act" with Jim Blumenstein

The Affordable Care Act expands access to affordable care and enhances the quality of care by increasing Medicaid coverage for millions of low-income Americans. The Affordable Care act was signed into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barack Obama and is often called “Obamacare.” In a momentous decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Act in June 2015 and also ruled in favor of ACA in the June 2012 NIFIB v. Seleblius Case.

Jim Blumensteinis a prominent scholar of law and medicine, health law and voting rights. Blumenstein is one of thirteen University Professors at Vanderbilt, where he was the first to be avoided the title in law school and the first to receive a second tenured position in Vanderbilt Medical School. In addition, Blumenstein is the Director of Vanderbilt’s Health Policy Center. Blumenstein is a leader in health law and policy, which his peers recognized his achievements by electing him to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine and awarding him the Early Sutherland Prize (Vanderbilt’s university-wide recognition for lifetime scholarly contributions). Other awards Blumenstein has received include: the prestigious McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial Award for Excelling in Law and Medicine form the University of Indiana and Vanderbilt law school’s student-sponsored Hall-Hartman Teaching Award. Professor Blumentsein is the Olin Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, an Adjunct Professor at Dartmouth Medical School, a Visiting Professor at Duke Law School, a Visiting Professor at Duke’s Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs and in 2014 he was awarded a secondary appointment as a Professor of Management at the Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management.

In addition to Blumenstein’s numerous academic accolades, he has participated actively in a number of Supreme Court Cases, arguing three. Blumenstein has written numerous publications on establishing and enforcing realistic limits on the roll out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid and a formal Supreme Court Review. Blumenstein argued that the Federal government positioned the State’s such that they had to accept ACA, or risk losing all federal matching funds.

Please join us on Thursday October 29 at 4:30PM in Rocky 003 for a lecture by Jim Blumenstein on “Policy, Politics and the Affordable Care Act: A Look at Structure and Implementation.” The lecture is co-sponsored by the Healthcare Initiative at Tuck, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.