HCL 7040 Module 8 Final Legal Analysis Paper Example

Six Stories, Four Themes: What a Term of Health Law News Shows About Privacy, Enforcement, Federalism and Ownership

Student Name

MBA in Healthcare Management, Thomas Edison State University

HCL-7040: Healthcare Law

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Six Stories, Four Themes: What a Term of Health Law News Shows About Privacy, Enforcement, Federalism and Ownership

Introduction

For the final project I kept a weekly journal from the second through the seventh week of the term, choosing for each module a current development in health law, summarizing it and evaluating the legal issue. This paper synthesizes the six entries. Read separately, they cover different topics: a cyberattack, a privacy rule, criminal fraud, emergency care, a hospital system's collapse and preventive coverage. Read together, they reveal four themes about the legal forces now shaping healthcare: the fragility of health data, the scale of enforcement, the tension between federal and state law, and the growing legal significance of who owns healthcare organizations. The paper ends with implications for managers, including professional liability and insurance, the subject of Module 8.

The Six Journal Entries in Brief

Entry 1, reporting requirements (Module 2): after the February 2024 cyberattack on Change Healthcare, a claims processing company owned by UnitedHealth Group, the company reported in early 2025 that the breach affected the protected health information of about 190 million people, the largest health data breach reported under HIPAA. The attack also halted claims for providers nationwide, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services distributed $3.3 billion in relief payments (Neprash et al., 2025).

Entry 2, data and records (Module 3): in June 2025 a federal district court in Texas vacated most of the 2024 HIPAA rule that had restricted disclosures of information about lawful reproductive health care for use in investigations, holding that the Department of Health and Human Services had exceeded its authority (Purl v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2025). The Fifth Circuit later dismissed an appeal, ending the rule, and providers that had changed their release procedures to comply had to reconsider them.

Entry 3, criminal acts (Module 4): in late June 2025 federal prosecutors announced cases against 324 people accused of health care fraud with alleged intended losses above $14.6 billion, among them a medical supply billing scheme that the Department called its biggest alleged-loss fraud prosecution to date (U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, 2025).

Entry 4, decision-making (Module 5): in Moyle v. United States (2024), the Supreme Court dismissed as improvidently granted a case on whether the federal emergency care statute obliges hospitals to provide stabilizing abortion care that a state law forbids, leaving the conflict between federal emergency care duties and state law unresolved and clinicians uncertain about what they may do for patients in emergencies.

Entry 5, ethics (Module 6): Steward Health Care, a hospital system long owned by a private equity firm, filed for bankruptcy in May 2024 after years of selling its hospitals' real estate and taking on obligations its hospitals could not meet; its chief executive was later held in contempt by the U.S. Senate for refusing to testify about the collapse. Research suggests the concern is broader: Kannan et al. (2023) found that hospital-acquired adverse events rose 25.4 percent among Medicare patients after private equity acquisitions of hospitals, compared with control hospitals.

Entry 6, HIV and AIDS (Module 7): in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc. (2025), the Supreme Court upheld the structure of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, preserving the Affordable Care Act's requirement that most private plans cover recommended preventive services, including HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, without cost sharing.

Theme 1: Health Data Is Both Valuable and Fragile

Two entries concern health information. The Change Healthcare attack showed how concentration of data and claims processing in a single company can turn one breach into a national crisis, exposing millions of records and stopping payments to providers who had no direct relationship with the attackers. The reproductive health privacy litigation showed that the rules governing who may obtain records are themselves unstable. For managers, both point to the same conclusion: privacy compliance cannot be a static checklist. Organizations must manage vendor risk, maintain contingency plans for claims and records, and monitor legal changes that alter when information may be disclosed.

Theme 2: Enforcement Is Large and Increasingly Sophisticated

The 2025 fraud takedown, with 324 defendants and $14.6 billion in alleged losses, shows that criminal enforcement in healthcare operates at a very large scale and increasingly relies on data analytics to detect patterns. Most providers will never face criminal charges, but the same tools are used in civil False Claims Act cases and audits. Effective compliance programs, with auditing of billing, training on the Anti-Kickback Statute and clear channels for employees to raise concerns, are the main protection, and they also distinguish organizations that make honest mistakes from those that commit fraud.

Theme 3: Federal and State Law Pull in Different Directions

Moyle and the reproductive privacy case both arose from conflicts between federal health law and state law after the Supreme Court's 2022 decision returning abortion regulation to the states. EMTALA imposes a federal duty to stabilize emergency patients; some state laws restrict the care that stabilization may require. The Supreme Court's dismissal in Moyle left that conflict unresolved, and hospitals in affected states must make decisions under legal uncertainty. Braidwood, by contrast, settled a federal question in favor of continuity. Managers in multistate systems must track these conflicts state by state and give clinicians clear guidance and legal support so that patients are not harmed by hesitation.

Theme 4: Ownership Has Legal and Ethical Consequences

The Steward collapse and the research on private equity acquisitions raise questions that law has only begun to address: whether owners who extract value from hospitals bear responsibility when quality falls or facilities close. Kannan et al. (2023) found increases in falls and infections after acquisitions, consistent with concerns that financial strategies can affect patient safety. Several states have since moved to strengthen review of healthcare transactions. For managers, ownership is now part of risk management: the financial structure of an organization can affect staffing, supplies and ultimately liability.

Implications for Professional Liability and Risk

The six stories also illuminate why professionals and organizations need liability insurance and how risks are changing. Traditional malpractice coverage protects clinicians and hospitals against claims of negligent care, but several of these developments create exposures outside that coverage. Cyber liability insurance has become essential after events like the Change Healthcare attack. Directors and officers coverage matters when governance decisions, such as those at Steward, are challenged. Regulatory and billing errors can lead to civil penalties that malpractice policies exclude. Clinicians facing conflicting federal and state obligations in emergencies need assurance that their organizations will support and defend them. A manager reviewing an organization's insurance program should therefore look beyond malpractice limits to cyber, regulatory and management liability coverage.

Conclusion

Keeping a legal journal for six weeks showed that health law is not a fixed set of rules but a moving field shaped by technology, enforcement, politics and finance. The six entries point to four themes, the fragility of health data, large-scale enforcement, federal-state conflict and the consequences of ownership, each of which requires managers to anticipate legal change rather than react to it. Building compliance, contingency planning and broad insurance protection into ordinary management is the practical lesson of the term.

References

Kannan, S., Bruch, J. D., & Song, Z. (2023). Changes in hospital adverse events and patient outcomes associated with private equity acquisition. JAMA, 330(24), 2365-2375. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2023.23147

Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc., 606 U.S. ___ (2025).

Moyle v. United States, 603 U.S. ___ (2024).

Neprash, H. T., Beebe, T. J., Yost, G., & Carroll, C. (2025). Lessons from CMS relief funding after cyberattack on Change Healthcare. Health Affairs, 44(12), 1466-1472. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2025.00990

Purl v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, No. 2:24-cv-228-Z (N.D. Tex. June 18, 2025).

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. (2025, June 30). National health care fraud takedown results in 324 defendants charged in connection with over $14.6 billion in alleged fraud [Press release]. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/national-health-care-fraud-takedown-results-324-defendants-charged-connection-over-146