Daily Rounds: Supreme Court; Mass. Mandate Resisters; Fertility Tourism, And Two Kinds Of Dead

On last day of health care hearing, Supreme Court considers severability, Medicaid expansion (Washington Post) - "The Medicaid expansion decision might have the most lasting impact on the federal government’s ability to use its spending power to pressure state action. The Supreme Court has said there is a limit to what the government can force states to do in order to receive federal funds — a condition cannot be “so coercive as to pass the point at which pressure turns into compulsion.” But the court has yet to find a case where the federal government has gone too far."

Also, NPR explains the possible broad implications, and JAMA offers a clear backgrounder on the Medicaid issue here.

In Massachusetts, insurance mandate stirs some dissent (The New York Times) - "Wayde Lodor is part of the 2 percent: the roughly 120,000 residents of Massachusetts who lack health insurance despite the state’s landmark 2006 law requiring almost every adult in the state to have it. He is likely to face a penalty this year, having made enough money under the state’s guidelines to afford a health plan. But Mr. Lodor, an independent product development consultant from Leominster, remains defiant."

Mother Country: The perils on getting an assist abroad on having a baby — for Americans and foreigners both (Slate)  - "Legal experts say that Lavi’s situation isn’t that common, especially since the State Department manual includes provisions for Americans seeking fertility care abroad, as long as one parent can prove a blood relation to the child. More often, it’s actually foreigners traveling to our shores for what’s called “fertility tourism” who are the ones at risk. The United States has the least regulated fertility industry in the world. So people from abroad come here for everything we allow here that’s barred in their home countries."

Organ harvesters blur line between life and death (NPR) - "Backed by the federal government, doctors in Michigan are trying to expand the use of a controversial form of organ donation that raises disturbing ethical concerns, including questions about whether the donors are really dead. Defining dead turns out to be pretty complicated. There are two ways to declare someone dead."