Mark Bina Interviewed in Law360 Article "Quarles & Brady's New Chicago Office Head Talks Health Care"
Mark Bina, Chicago managing partner and co-chair of the firm's Health Litigation Practice Group, spoke with Law360 on his goals as managing partner, health litigation trends and challenges his clients are concerned about and the proudest moment of his career.
An excerpt:
Legal counselor and litigator Mark Bina succeeds Eric Ledbetter, who will continue his practice as part of the firm's growing immigration team.
Bina, who began his new role Jan. 25, joined the firm in 2014. He will oversee 100 attorneys and will continue as co-chair of the health litigation practice group.
...
What are some of your goals as managing partner?
No. 1 is growth of Chicago. We are 100 lawyers strong in Chicago, which is great. And we've been able to keep that strength throughout the pandemic, and other financial challenges that have affected the country generally, we've been immune from that in a large sense. We were able to keep lots of good people around and continue to recruit folks. We have so many good folks in our network that are great lawyers that we want to see hopefully join us at some point. One of our top targets in terms of health and health care litigation is getting more attorneys to help manage the load. The government scrutiny that we're seeing both at the state and federal level is really increasing. The pandemic state of emergency is ending. So that's definitely going to be continuing both from an enforcement side and then also private litigation.
...
What are some health litigation trends and challenges your clients should be concerned about?
Enforcement is a huge one. We're going to see the federal government and a lot of states increase what we call the "pay and chase" model, which is where Medicare and Medicaid will often pay providers for services and then later have to chase them for alleged wrongdoing.
The other one is this notion of cross-state or cross-border regulations. And the Supreme Court actually has a case that's going to be decided this summer. It's a very, very big case that we're all following under the administrative law standpoint called National Pork Producers Council vs. [Ross, concerning California's Proposition 12]. The state agricultural department is telling pork producers the size of the cages that these pigs need to be in to be raised. And of course, California sends its pork all throughout the country and the consequences, in this case, are very significant, because if you asked the state, they should be able to regulate anything they want, right? But of course, if you're a pork producer or in our world — a pharmacy or you're rendering health care across state lines — it can be very problematic when you don't know whose law to follow. That's something from kind of the health care administrative side of things that we are following along very closely and we cannot wait for this summer's decision.