Bills and Regulations Advocacy

Athene Law is on the cutting edge of healthcare policy before it becomes policy.  We proactively provide our technical expertise to support our individual or association clients in their engagement with policymakers.  Athene Law’s professionals have spent years working to evolve healthcare policy and using statutory and regulatory change to achieve objectives. The team’s strategic approach includes partnerships with lobbyists, economic analysis, developing creative legislative and regulatory solutions to problems, legislative drafting, rulemaking comments, and regulatory challenges. Our comprehensive approach brings a fresh set of eyes to each of our clients’ advocacy initiatives to drive results.

Much of Athene Law’s policy work relates to reimbursement issues.  Our lawyers have drafted current statutory language regarding Medicare hospital reimbursement, state Medicaid provider fee and intergovernmental transfer programs, supplemental payments, and Medi-Cal managed care rules.  We are closely watching developments at the federal level on Medicaid financing changes so that we can prepare our clients to respond.

Capabilities

We provide advocacy support to individual providers such as physicians and groups, hospitals, and hospital systems, ambulance companies, clinics, as well as associational clients to respond to policy issues. 

Important policies we have worked on include:

• Corporate practice of medicine
• Professional liability caps
• Medicaid financing, including hospital and ambulance quality assurance fee and intergovernmental transfer programs 
• Charity and discount care requirements for California hospitals
• Ambulance balance billing and commercial reimbursement
• Public-private ambulance alliance models
• Medicaid managed care rules, including directed payments and regulatory requirements
• Network provider requirements for directed payments
• Medicare inpatient hospital classifications