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(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

De Blasio’s Plans to Reduce Worker Health Costs Have a Carrot and a Stick

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com



When Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his first labor agreements with New York City unions this spring, he was sharply criticized for granting long-awaited wage increases in exchange for promises of unspecified though sizable savings on health care expenses.
Now, some of the specifics are coming into focus: City officials and union leaders say they hope to push municipal workers to use walk-in clinics more and emergency rooms less, order generic drugs more often than brand-name ones, and buy them through the mail rather than at retail pharmacies to achieve bulk discounts.
The city hopes the unions will agree to steer workers to use centralized, cheaper centers for blood tests, X-rays or M.R.I.s, rather than having those tests performed in doctors’ offices or at costly physician-owned facilities. Patients who resist could face higher copayments, while savings would be passed on to the city in lower premiums.
The cost-cutting comes with high stakes: If the city and unions are unable to save a total of $3.4 billion on health care by 2018, a mediator will be empowered to order increases in workers’ premiums to cover the shortfall, officials said.
As an added inducement, if the unions help the city exceed that goal, the first $365 million in additional savings would be distributed as lump-sum bonuses to workers, officials said. Any savings beyond that would be split evenly between the city and its employees.
In interviews, Harry Nespoli, chairman of the Municipal Labor...
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Medicare Experiment Could Signal Sea Change For Hospice

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from www.kaiserhealthnews.org

Diane Meier is the director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care, a national organization that aims to increase the number of palliative care programs in hospitals and elsewhere for patients with serious illnesses. Meier is also a professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. We spoke about a recently launched pilot program under the health law that allows hospice patients participating in the pilot to continue to receive life-prolonging treatment. This is an edited  version of that conversation.
Q. There’s a lot of confusion about how hospice care differs from palliative care. Maybe we should start by clearing up what those terms mean. 
A. The short, quick elevator answer is that all hospice care is palliative care -- but not all palliative care is hospice. Palliative care is a team-based type of care focused on maximizing the quality of life for people and their caregivers at any stage of illness. It focuses on treating the pain, stresses and symptoms of serious illness. The emphasis is on need, not prognosis or how long you might have to live.
In contrast, the hospice benefit, which was written into the Medicare statutes about 25 years ago, had a number of limits in it to control spending.
Diane Meier (Photo courtesy of Mount Sinai Hospital)
...
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N.J. family denied workers' comp after mother died following 10 hours behind desk, high court rules

The state Supreme Court today ruled that the husband of an AT&T manager who died from a blood clot after sitting at her desk for more than 10 hours one night is not entitled to workers' compensation benefits, overturning a decision by a lower court.
Cathleen Renner, a mother of three, died in 2007 at age 47 from a clot in her lung about an hour after she finished working a sedentary, overnight shift at the computer in her home office in Edison, the ruling said.
In 2011, a state appellate court upheld a lower judge's decision that Renner's condition — known as a pulmonary embolism — was caused by her work and that her husband, James, was entitled to benefits under New Jersey's workers' compensation law. Experts said the case of was the first of its kind that they can recall.
But the Supreme Court voted 5-0 today to reverse that ruling, saying there wasn't enough evidence to prove Renner's work was to blame.
"Cathleen read, took telephone calls, sent and received, emails, had conferences with her superiors and co-workers, and made decisions," wrote Judge Ariel A. Rodriguez, who is temporarily sitting on the court to fill a vacancy. "These responsibilities did not
require her to remain in a seated position for long, uninterrupted stretches of time."
Marty Richter, a spokesman...
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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

Taking Job-Driven Training to Scale

Today's post was shared by US Labor Department and comes from social.dol.gov
Connecting the right worker with the right job is key to our vision of opportunity for all. At the Labor Department, it’s how we’re working to help more people punch their ticket to the middle class.
That’s why we’re investing in proven strategies that connect ready-to-work Americans with ready-to-be-filled jobs. As part of this effort, in April, we announced the availability of funds through a new Job-Driven National Emergency Grants program to help dislocated workers who have lost a job through no fault of their own.
And this week, I am very excited to announce the awards – nearly $155 million to 32 states, Puerto Rico and the Cherokee Tribal Nation – to help fund work-based training programs, like Registered Apprenticeship and on-the-job training, which have a proven record of success. That’s $155 million to give workers the chance to “learn and earn,” developing skills while earning a paycheck. With on-the-job training, employers who participate can use this funding to offset the cost of training and temporarily cover a portion of the wages for the people they hire.
We know these programs work. Earlier this year, I met with Gary Locke from New Hampshire, who – after being laid off for more than a year – found a job through the state’s innovative on-the-job training program. The funds we’ve announced this week will expand programs that helped Gary to more states around the country.


Nevada, for...
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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

House Passes Wasserman Schultz Longshore Harbor Workers' Compensation Clarification Act: Protecting Jobs and Keeping Workers Covered

Washington, D.C.– The Longshore Harbor Workers’ Compensation Clarification Act, introduced by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23), and passed by the House of Representatives today, reinstated congressional intent to ensure that workers in the recreational marine repair industry have adequate workers’ compensation coverage. This legislation provides a more clear definition of a recreational vessel which allows small businesses in the marine repair industry to forgo duplicative insurance policies while ensuring these small businesses, 95% of which have fewer than 10 employees, can adequately protect their employees without incurring exorbitant costs. 
In 2009, Congress passed Section 803 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which expanded an existing exception that allowed more recreational marine repair workers to receive workers’ compensation coverage under state law rather than under the Longshore Harbor Workers Compensation Act. This was necessary because repair workers were simply not buying the more expensive longshore policies and were thus left uncovered. Unfortunately, new regulations were issued in 2011 that adopted a definition of a recreational vessel that was far more complicated and onerous than the existing law. In doing so, this new regulatory definition ran counter to what Congress intended.
The Longshore Harbor Workers’ Compensation Clarification Act establishes a workable definition for a recreational...
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Verbal Assault: Threats Entitle Employee to Workers' Compensation

Verbal assault gives rise to a compensable event. Today's post is shared from courthousenews.com
A New York man whose co-worker's angry husband threatened to kill him is entitled to workers' compensation benefits, a New York state appeals court ruled.
     Arthur Mosley worked as an assistant store manager for Hannaford Brothers Co. supermarket in 2007. He called a co-worker at her home to discuss a work-related issue, according to the Memorandum and Order from the Appellate Division Third Department.
     "Following that telephone call, the coworker's husband became convinced that claimant and the coworker were engaged in a romantic relationship, prompting the coworker's husband to undertake a course of threatening and harassing conduct against claimant, culminating in an unsuccessful murder-for-hire plot against him," according to the July 3 Memorandum and Order.
     It continues: "Additionally, the coworker's husband contacted claimant's supervisor regarding the alleged affair, which triggered an internal investigation by the employer and ultimately resulted in claimant requesting a transfer to another store. As a result, claimant's preexisting posttraumatic stress disorder was exacerbated to the point that he was unable to continue to work. Claimant thereafter filed a claim for workers' compensation benefits."
     The New York Daily News reported that Mosley...
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