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Showing posts with label Health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health care. Show all posts

Thursday, June 10, 2021

OSHA Finally Acts: Is It Too Little and Too Late?

Today OSHA released a COVID Emergency Temporary Standard [ETS] for health care workers and guidance for workers, not in a health care setting. OSHA’s action comes about a year and a half after the COVID-19 Pandemic began and when over half of the nation’s workforce has already the protection of received an initial vaccination.

Friday, April 30, 2021

NJ Governor Murphy Signs the Healthy Terminals Act

NJ Governor Phil Murphy today signed the Healthy Terminals Act (S989) which creates new minimum wage and benefits requirements for certain Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and Newark Liberty International Train Station workers. The legislation will expand access to livable wages and affordable health care for workers at the airport and train station who often cannot afford employer-provided health care plans.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Medical Errors - The Third Leading Cost of Death

Costing almost $1 Trillion dollars per year and a leading of death are medical errors.

Medical doctors specializing in patient safety testified on preventable medical errors that can lead to death or serious financial problems as bills mount to correct the medical mistake.

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Primary Health & Aging

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Drilling down on the necessity of dental X-rays

Dental x-rays
When my son and daughter were youngsters, once a year I'd have a disagreement with their pediatric dentist. He wanted to do routine annual X-rays, and I would protest because neither child ever had any cavities. His response: Dental X-rays are an important diagnostic tool, representing a small speck in the sea of radiation that we receive by inhabiting planet Earth.
It turns out we both were right. Dental X-rays are essential for detecting serious oral and systemic health problems, and generally the amount of radiation is very low. But new thinking on dental X-rays is that the "one size fits all" schedule is outdated.
"The notion of bite-wing X-rays every year and a full set of X-rays every three years for every patient should go in the garbage can," says Stuart White, a dentist and professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Dentistry. Instead, decisions should be made individually.
Emphasizing that "without dental X-rays we would go back 120 years, and disease detection would be primitive and awful," White says dentists must strive to minimize unnecessary exposure.
And this is where the discussion gets complicated because the amount of radiation you receive depends on how the dentist takes pictures of your teeth.
For example, if your dentist uses slow film and round collimation (the piece of equipment placed near your face during X-rays), you're going to get approximately double the dose that you would from digital imagery and rectangular...
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Thursday, November 28, 2013

Dying Young: Why your Social and Economic Status May be a death sentence in America

Lisa F. Berkman, Ph.D., Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Epidemiology, Director, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies 
I will discuss two issues today. First, I will describe trends in U.S. life expectancy and the unequal distribution of mortality risk by socioeconomic status in the United States. Secondly, I will elaborate on options for improving the nation’s health, especially related to labor policies for low wage workers. I will frame our options for improving health in terms of what we can do to create a healthy population and prevent disease. 
Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging Hearing on “Dying Young: Why your Social and Economic Status May be a death sentence in America” 
November 20, 2013 
First, U.S. overall life expectancy—that is the expected number of years someone born today can expect to live—has lost ground compared to that of other nations in the last decades, especially for women. I was a member of a recent National Academy of Science Panel on diverging trends in longevity. It found that the U.S. ranked at the bottom of 21 developed, industrialized nations1 and poor rankings were particularly striking for women. In 1980’s our rankings were in the middle of OECD countries in this study. While it is true that LE improved during this time from by 5.6 years for men and 3.6 years for women, other countries gained substantially more in terms of life expectancy, leaving us behind. Furthermore, almost all those gains were concentrated among the most socioeconomically advantaged segments of the U.S. population. And they were more substantial for men than for women. The poorest Americans experienced the greatest health disadvantage compared to those in other countries2,3. At a recent NIH conference, the discussion was focused on the steps required for the US to reach just the OECD average in the next 20 years—not even the top. It seems we have given up on achieving better than average health. 
More concerning is the widening gap in mortality—or risk of death—between those at the bottom and at the top in the US. These gaps have widened over the last 25 years. These patterns are evident whether we look at education, income or wealth differentials, but because the evidence is clearest that education itself is causally linked to health and functioning4,5, I will focus on these associations. For instance, the mortality for men with less than a high school education in 2007, was about 7 per 100. For those with 16 years or more of education, the rate was less than 2 per 100. This corresponds to a three and half fold risk of dying in 2007, compared to 2.5 times the risk in 1993. For less educated women, their mortality risk actually increased absolutely during this time giving rise to an increased risk from 1.9 to 3 in 20076 and this pattern holds even if we confine our analyses to white women7. While it is true that fewer adults are in the less educated pool in later years, giving rise to questions about selection issues, it is also true that adults in the highest educated categories have grown over this same time suggesting increased compositional heterogeneity in these groups. Overall while selection into education level occurs, it accounts for only a small part of this widening gap. 
While mortality gaps in socioeconomic status have existed for centuries, the magnitude of these differences has grown substantially over time in the United States. These widening disparities suggest that either disparities in the underlying determinants of illness and mortality have also been growing over time or that support to buffer these stressful conditions has changed. In either case, while we may not be able to eliminate health disparities, the fact that the size of the risks varies so much suggests that such large inequalities are not inevitable or innate and, gives hope that there are ways to reduce the burden of illness for our most vulnerable citizens. 
Now, using a public health framework, I discuss the identification of health risks. While health insurance and access to medical care help reduce risks of financial catastrophe and can improve the health of those suffering from illness, health care alone cannot ensure good health and prevent the onset of disease. To illustrate this point, we can think of the aspirin/headache analogy. “While Aspirin cures a headache, lack of aspirin is not the cause of headaches.” Headaches are not caused by aspirin deficiency— to reduce headaches we need to focus on what causes headaches. This is what prevention and public health approaches offer. Obviously it would be better to maintain health than have to treat illness once it occurs. Treatments are financially very costly, but more importantly, waiting to treat disease is costly to the quality of lives of all Americans. 
What would be required to produce better health among Americans and reduce socioeconomic disparities in health? What do poor socioeconomic conditions influence that could cause such increased risk across such a huge number of diseases across all age groups from the infancy to old age? You are all probably thinking about the usual suspects— smoking, poor diet, and lack of exercise. I’m not going to focus on these usual suspects today, not because I don’t believe they pose substantial risks to health, but because we know that it is very hard to change these behaviors without considering the social and economic conditions that shape them. These social and economic conditions are fundamental determinants of health because they influence so many behaviors and access to so many opportunities and resources. Change here will influence a number of channels leading to increased mortality risk. In my testimony I will focus on one of these conditions relating to participation in the labor market 
Several years ago, I embarked on a study to assess the relationships between employment, family dynamics and health. We found that employment was almost always associated with better health. These associations lasted well into old age.
Women who had the lowest mortality risk in later adulthood had spent some time out of the labor market (a few years over the career path) but maintain steady labor force participation for most of their lives until retirement. Drawing on data from the Health and Retirement Study, we find that the among married mothers, those who never worked had an age-standardized mortality rate of 52.6 whereas mothers who took some time off when their children were young but who later joined the work force and mortality rates of around 40. Single mothers who never worked had the highest mortality of 98 compared to 68 for single mothers who worked. 
Selection into the labor force may account for some of this association, but more experimental evidence confirms the positive health benefits of working especially for low-income women and men. 
For example, the EITC is associated with improvements in infant health and decreases in smoking among mothers8. In an analysis of state variation in the Earned Income tax Credits (EITCs) between 1980 and 2002, Strully finds that EITC’s increase birth weights by, on average, 16 grams. To put that in context, it is equal to about a third of the association between birth weight and having a mother with a high school degree. Living in state with EITC reduces the odds of maternal smoking by 5%, and increases mother’s odds of working and increases her wages and salary. 
Recent evidence from a several studies of maternity leave policies in the United States and Europe suggests that, by protecting employment among mothers in the period around birth, maternity leave leads to better long-term labor market outcomes after maternity including wage level and growth, career prospects, labor market attachment and employability9,10,11,12. Thus not only may maternity leave benefit children and mothers around the period of birth, they may have on term benefits for mothers that extend for decades in later adulthood. 
In an observational study of employees in long term care facilities, we found that workers whose managers were attentive to work-family issues had half the cardiovascular risks as assessed by objective biomarkers from blood or clinical exam and healthier patterns of sleep compared to those who worked for less family-friendly managers13. Specifically, employees whose managers maintained family friendly practices were less likely to be overweight, had lower risk of diabetes and lower blood pressure. Based on objective measures of sleep using actigraphy monitors, these same employees slept almost 30 minutes more per night than their counterparts. For nurses and certified nursing assistants in low and middle wage jobs, these are important risks to which they were exposed. 
Such research suggests that labor policies and practices that support men and women in the labor force and especially help those with caregiving obligations are health promoting. These policies and practices have health effects that are not often “counted” as we think about their costs and benefits. Men and women will need opportunities and flexibility and schedule control to enter and remain in the labor force given the inevitability of having to care for children, parents, or partners at some point in time. Our goal for women should be to enable them to be successful in their productive as well as reproductive lives. Right now, we make this very difficult. Our labor policies challenge working class families to remain committed to work and to their families. For example, over half (54%) of low wage earners lack sick leave or vacation to take care of families and around 30% of middle income families lack such leave14. Even fewer have parental leave. 
We have shown that we can identify the socioeconomic disparities in health with some precision. Solutions that help to maintain low and working class men and women in the paid labor force have clear health benefits. The EITC, pro-family work policies and practices and parental leave are examples of polices that impact health of low income working families. Targets enabling adults to participate in the paid labor force while not risking the health and wellbeing of their family members show particular value. Metrics for evaluating social and economic policies do not currently include health metrics. The health spillovers of such policies would increase the benefits of such policies in any cost-benefit equations. We want to ensure that Americans, particularly those living in poverty and working class families aren’t robbed of healthy years of life. 
 -------------
1 National Research Council (US) Panel on Understanding Divergent Trends in Longevity in High-Income Countries; Crimmins EM, Preston SH, Cohen B, editors. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2011. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62369/ 
2 Avendano M, Glymour MM, Banks J, Mackenbach JP. Health disadvantage in US 
adults aged 50 to 74 years: a comparison of the health of rich and poor Americans 
with that of Europeans. Am J Public Health. 2009 Mar;99(3):540-8. doi: 
10.2105/AJPH.2008.139469. Epub 2009 Jan 15. PubMed PMID: 19150903; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2661456. 
3 Banks J, Marmot M, Oldfield Z, Smith JP. Disease and disadvantage in the 
United States and in England. JAMA. 2006 May 3;295(17):2037-45. PubMed PMID: 
16670412. 
4 Lleras-Muney, Adriana. "The Relationships Between Education And Adult Mortality In The United States," Review of Economic Studies, 2005, v72(250,Jan), 189-221. 
5 Glymour MM, Kawachi I, Jencks CS, Berkman LF. Does childhood schooling affect 
old age memory or mental status? Using state schooling laws as natural 
experiments. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2008 Jun;62(6):532-7. doi: 
10.1136/jech.2006.059469. PubMed PMID: 18477752; PubMed Central PMCID: 
PMC2796854. 
6 Ma J, Xu J, Anderson RN, Jemal A (2012) Widening Educational Disparities in Premature Death Rates in Twenty Six States in the United States, 1993–2007. PLoS ONE 7(7): e41560. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041560 
7 Montez JK, Hummer RA, Hayward MD, Woo H, Rogers RG. Trends in the Educational Gradient of U.S. Adult Mortality from 1986 to 2006 by Race, Gender, and Age Group. Res Aging. 2011 Mar;33(2):145-171. PubMed PMID: 21897495; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3166515. 
8 Strully KW, Rehkopf DH, Xuan Z. Effects of Prenatal Poverty on Infant Health: 
State Earned Income Tax Credits and Birth Weight. Am Sociol Rev. 2010 Aug 
11;75(4):534-562. PubMed PMID: 21643514; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3104729. 
9 Brugiavini, A., Pasini, G. and E. Trevisan (2013) "The direct impact of maternity benefits on leave taking: evidence from complete fertility histories", Advances in life course research, 18: 46-67 
10 Rossin M. The effects of maternity leave on children's birth and infant health 
outcomes in the United States. J Health Econ. 2011 Mar;30(2):221-39. doi: 
10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.01.005. Epub 2011 Jan 18. PubMed PMID: 21300415; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3698961. 
11 Rossin-Slater M, Ruhm CJ, Waldfogel J. The effects of California's paid family 
leave program on mothers' leave-taking and subsequent labor market outcomes. J 
Policy Anal Manage. 2013;32(2):224-45. PubMed PMID: 23547324; PubMed Central 
PMCID: PMC3701456. 
12 Ruhm CJ. Policies to assist parents with young children. Future Child. 2011 
Fall;21(2):37-68. PubMed PMID: 22013628; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3202345. 
13 Berkman LF, Buxton O, Ertel K, Okechukwu C. Managers' practices related to 
work-family balance predict employee cardiovascular risk and sleep duration in 
extended care settings. J Occup Health Psychol. 2010 Jul;15(3):316-29. doi: 
10.1037/a0019721. PubMed PMID: 20604637; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3526833. 
14 Heymann SJ. The Widening Gap: Why Working Families Are in Jeopardy and What Can Be Done About It. New York: Basic Books, 2000.  

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Chart of the Day: Hands-Free Talking Is as Bad as Talking on a Handset. Maybe Even Worse.

Distracted driving doesn't get better by the use of hands free technology. Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com


Michael O'Hare points us this morning to a study of cell phone usage in cars that confirms the obvious: it's dangerous. More dangerous than driving drunk, in fact. What's more, as the chart on the right shows, hands-free talking doesn't help. In fact, for certain
tasks it makes things even worse. O'Hare explains what's going on:
To understand the reason, consider driving while (i) listening to the radio as I was (ii) conversing with an adult passenger (iii) transporting a four-year-old (iv) sharing the front seat with a largish dog.
Why are the first two not dangerous, and the last two make you tense up just thinking about them? 
The radio is not a person, and you subconsciously know that you may miss something if you attend to something in the road ahead, but also that you won’t insult it if you “listen away”, and it won’t suffer, much less indicate unease. The adult passenger can see out the windshield and also catch very subtle changes in your tone of voice or body language. 
If you stop talking to attend to the car braking up ahead, the passenger knows why instantly, and accommodates, and because you know this, you aren’t anxious about interrupting the conversation. The dog and the child, in contrast, are completely unaware of what’s coming up on the road or what you need to pay attention to; the former is happy to jump in your lap if it seems like a good idea at any moment, and the child demands attention on her own schedule and at...
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Saturday, August 31, 2013

CDC: Public Health Practices to Include Persons with Disabilities

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.cdc.gov

This is another in a series of occasional MMWR reports titled CDC Grand Rounds. These reports are based on grand rounds presentations at CDC on high-profile issues in public health science, practice, and policy. Information about CDC Grand Rounds is available at http://www.cdc.gov/about/grand-rounds.

"Persons with disabilities" is a vague designation that might not always be understood.

 Persons with disabilities are persons with limitations in hearing, vision, mobility, or cognition, or with emotional or behavioral disorders. What they have in common is that they all experience a significant limitation in function that can make it harder to engage in some activity of daily living without accommodations or supports.

According to the World Health Organization, disability has three dimensions: 1) impairment in body function or structure, such as loss of a limb or loss of vision; 2) limitation in activity, such as difficulty seeing, hearing, walking, or problem solving; and 3) restriction in participating in normal daily activities, such as preparing a meal or driving a car. Any of these impairments, limitations, or restrictions is a disability if it is a result of a health condition in interaction with one's environment (6).

These limitations all relate to health conditions experienced within the environment in which persons live, as well as to other personal factors. Environmental barriers can be physical barriers, such as stairs; communication barriers, such...
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Thursday, August 29, 2013

An “F” for Quality

Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com

Huge numbers of older persons transition from hospitals to the nursing home. Often, an older hospitalized patient needs skilled nursing care before they are ready to return home. In other cases, a nursing home patient who needed hospitalization is returning to the nursing home. Older patients and their families certainly hope that great communication between the hospital and nursing home would assure a seamless transition in care.

But a rather stunning study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests the quality of communication between the hospital and the nursing home is horrendous. The study was led by researchers from the University of Wisconsin, including nurse researcher, Dr. Barbara King and Geriatrician Dr. Amy Kind.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Has the Internet Raised or Lowered Healthcare Costs?

The next trip to see the company doctor my be by computer. Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com


Matt Yglesias writes about the awesome power of information technology to diagnose illnesses and save a trip to the doctor:
I was having a kind of weird problem with my left thumb over the course of the past few days....Finally I figured out that it looked to me like an infection of the cuticle....That brought me to a Wikipedia page...."paronychia"....led to a bit more Googling....typically happens to habitual fingernail biters (guilty) or people who've recently been in the water a lot (swimming pool on vacation).
Everyone basically agrees that this isn't a huge deal and that you can obtain some physical relief by occasionally soaking the thumb in hot water while waiting for it to clear up. I took that advice starting yesterday morning, and today I feel a lot better....So there we have it. In a small but real way, information technology reduced the cost of this particular health care service. Productivity for the win.
Obviously there are lots of things we aren't going to treat in this way, but I'm quite optimistic that information technology in the health care sector is going to do us a lot of good.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Health Law Adds New Expense For Farmers: Insurance For Field Workers

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

Farm labor contractors across California -- the nation's biggest agricultural engine -- are anxiously studying a provision of the Affordable Care Act, which will require hundreds of thousands of field workers to be covered by health insurance.

And while the requirement to cover workers was recently delayed until 2015, the contractors, who provide farmers with armies of field workers, say they are already preparing for the potential cost, inconvenience, and liability the new law will bring to their business, which typically operates on a slender profit margin.

"I've been to at least a dozen seminars on the Affordable Care Act since February," said Chuck Herrin, owner of Sunrise Farm Labor, a contractor based here. "If you don't take the right approach, you're wiped out."

The effects of the new law could be profound. Insurance brokers and health providers familiar with California's $43.5 billion agricultural industry estimate that meeting the law's minimum health plan will cost about $1 per hour per employee worked in the field.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Medicare Classifies Over 9.6 Billion Each Year as Overpayments-Some Are Uncollectible

CMS identifies billions of dollars in Medicare overpayments to health care providers each year. In fiscal year (FY) 2010, overpayments totaled $9.6 billion. However, not all overpayments are recovered. 

Overpayments for which the provider has not made a repayment for at least 6 months after
the due date on the Medicare demand letter are classified as "currently not collectible" (CNC) and are not reported on CMS's annual financial statements. These overpayments are not reported on the financial statements because they are likely not to be recovered.

CMS reported $543 million in new CNC overpayments across all contractors in FY 2010. However, CMS provided detailed information on $69 million in CNC overpayments for only seven contractors. Citing contractor transitions, CMS did not provide detailed data for the remaining 32 contractors. For 54 percent of CNC overpayments associated with the seven contractors, the provider type was missing in HIGLAS. For the seven contractors, 97 percent of FY 2010 CNC overpayments were not recovered. According to contractors, inaccurate provider contact information delays or prevents some overpayment demand letters from reaching providers. In addition, CMS and contractors reported that expanding the types of provider identifiers used to recover payments could improve debt collection efforts.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Workers are too scared in the US to file claims

A recent research report indicated that workers fail to report occupational illness and accidents for fear of retribution by their employers. Most state laws prohibition retaliation by employers, but it is very difficult to enforce that aspect of workers' compensation statutes.

 2013 May 13. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.12066. [Epub ahead of print]

The Proportion of Work-Related Emergency Department Visits Not Expected to Be Paid by Workers' Compensation: Implications for Occupational Health Surveillance, Research, Policy, and Health Equity.

Source

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cincinnati, OH.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To examine trends in the proportion of work-related emergency department visits not expected to be paid by workers' compensation during 2003-2006, and to identify demographic and clinical correlates of such visits.

DATA SOURCE:

A total of 3,881 work-related emergency department visit records drawn from the 2003-2006 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys.

STUDY DESIGN:

Secondary, cross-sectional analyses of work-related emergency department visit data were performed. Odds ratios and 95 percent confidence intervals were modeled using logistic regression.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:

A substantial and increasing proportion of work-related emergency department visits in the United States were not expected to be paid by workers' compensation. Private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and workers themselves were expected to pay for 40 percent of the work-related emergency department visits with this percentage increasing annually. Work-related visits by blacks, in the South, to for-profit hospitals and for work-related illnesses were all more likely not to be paid by workers' compensation.

CONCLUSIONS:

Emergency department-based surveillance and research that determine work-relatedness on the basis of expected payment by workers' compensation systematically underestimate the occurrence of occupational illness and injury. This has important methodological and policy implications.
© Health Research and Educational Trust.
PMID:
 
23662682
 
[PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Just Go to The Emergency Room

Emergency room medicine is becoming an easy avenue for work-related medical care as employers and insurance carriers keep restricting traditional medical care access. Over the past decades it is becoming increasingly difficult for workers who have suffered occupational accidents or diseases to obtain quick, efficient and authorized diagnostic services and medical treatment.

A recent RAND study now validates that an alternate route is increasingly being used to access the medical care system, the emergency room. Few restrictions exists to enter an emergency room door. The red tape imposed by insurance carriers is eliminated, and the concept of deny and delay are non-existent in emergency room medicine.

Hospital emergency departments play a growing role in the U.S. health care system, accounting for a rising proportion of hospital admissions and serving increasingly as an advanced diagnostic center for primary care physicians, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

While often targeted as the most expensive place to get medical care, emergency rooms remain an important safety net for Americans who cannot get care elsewhere and may play a role in slowing the growth of health care costs, according to the study.

Emergency departments are now responsible for about half of all hospital admissions in the United States, accounting for nearly all of the growth in hospital admissions experienced between 2003 and 2009.

Despite evidence that people with chronic conditions such as asthma and heart failure are visiting emergency departments more frequently, the number of hospital admissions for these conditions has remained flat. Researchers say that suggests that emergency rooms may help to prevent some avoidable hospital admissions.

"Use of hospital emergency departments is growing faster than the use of other parts of the American medical system," said Dr. Art Kellermann, the study's senior author and a senior researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "While more can be done to reduce the number of unnecessary visits to emergency rooms, our research suggests emergency rooms can play a key role in limiting growth of preventable hospital admissions."

Saturday, January 19, 2013

The Obama Agenda: The Road to Workplace Wellness

As workers compensation programs are being diluted by soaring medical costs, The Obama Administration's policy makers are taking a bold new step to focus on promoting wellness and disease-prevention efforts in the workplace. 

Immediately following the presidential elction last November, the Department of Labor, Internatl Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services proposed regulations to enforce workplace wellness programs under thre Affordable Care Act. The proposed regulations will stimulated employer programs to invite healthier workers and may go as far as penalizing those who maintian poor diets and inadequate exercise regiems. 
"... regulations would increase the maximum permissible reward under a
health-contingent wellness program offered in connection with a group
health plan (and any related health insurance coverage) from 20 percent
to 30 percent of the cost of coverage. The proposed regulations would
further increase the maximum permissible reward to 50 percent for
wellness programs designed to prevent or reduce tobacco use. These
regulations also include other proposed clarifications regarding the
reasonable design of health-contingent wellness programs and the
reasonable alternatives they must offer in order to avoid prohibited
discrimination."
One analysis of the proposal concludes......
"We are cautiously optimistic about the potential of workplace-wellness programs to help contain healthcare costs and to improve the health and well-being of millions of California’s workers. Preventing illness and injury through workplace-based strategies potentially benefits employees and their families, employers, and public and private insurance providers. There is emerging evidence about the effectiveness of WWPs in improving chronic disease outcomes, and a long history of occupational health and safety practices reducing workplace injury and death. Incentives in the ACA have the potential to serve as a catalyst for expanding WWP’s broadly in California. However, policy solutions need to respond to potential unintended consequences and account for the state’s incredibly diverse communities and businesses in order to make wellness programs work for all Californians."

Read The Greenlining Institute's report "Helth, Equity and the Bottom line: Workplace Wellness and California Business

Comments are due on or before January 25, 2013.

Read more about health care and workplace injuries and illnesses.

Jan 10, 2013
Curing the Profit Motive in Health Care. Soaring medical costs have afflicted the workers' compensation industry with economic distress and have severely impacted the efficient and effective delivery of medical care to injured ...
Nov 20, 2012
The National Institute For Occupational Safety And Health (NIOSH) has revised and republished informational material concerning the health hazards to healthcare workers were exposed to hazardous drugs. The publication ...
Nov 05, 2012
Access to health insurance is under attack. President's Obama's comprehensive health care reform law, intended to increase health care coverage for millions of Americans, faced extreme scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court ...
Sep 12, 2012
Throughout the nation Workers' Compensation systems have been impacted by health care costs that now take a large piece of the premium dollar. Traditional health care offered by employers mirrors the same problem of ...


Thursday, January 10, 2013

Curing the Profit Motive in Health Care

Soaring medical costs have afflicted the workers' compensation industry with economic distress and have severely impacted the efficient and effective delivery of medical care to injured workers.  Both increased costs/profits and a related spike in mortality addresses the need for more governmental control in the United States.

A study "...found that patients’ mortality rates spiked when nonprofit hospitals switched to become profit-making, and their staff levels declined."

Read "Health Care and Profits, a Poor Mix" NYTimes

Friday, September 28, 2012

The President signs the Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I want to thank everybody who is here because they all did outstanding work to help us get this legislation completed.

As you know, I think all Americans feel we have a moral, sacred duty towards our men and women in uniform. They protect our freedom, and it’s our obligation to do right by them. This bill takes another important step in fulfilling that commitment.

I want to thank the members of Congress who helped to make this happen. It is going to have immediate impact. It is going to improve access to health care, streamline services in the VA. It expands support for veterans who are homeless.

There are two parts to the bill, though, that I especially want to highlight. First of all, this bill ends a decade-long struggle for those who serve at Camp Lejeune. Some of the veterans and their families who were based in Camp Lejeune in the years when the water was contaminated will now have access to extended medical care. And, sadly, this act alone will not bring back those we’ve lost, including Jane Ensminger, but it will honor their memory by making a real difference for those who are still suffering.

The second part of this bill that I want to highlight -- prohibit protesting within 300 feet of military funerals during the two hours before and two hours after a service. I supported this step as a senator. I am very pleased to be signing this bill into law. The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. And obviously we all defend our Constitution and the First Amendment and free speech, but we also believe that when men and women die in the service of their country and are laid to rest, it should be done with the utmost honor and respect.

So I’m glad that Congress passed this bill and I hope that we can continue to do some more good bipartisan work in protecting our veterans. I’ve been advocating, for example, for a veterans job corps that could help provide additional opportunities for the men and women who are coming home as we’re winding down our operations in Afghanistan and having ended the war in Iraq. And so this is a good sign of a bipartisan spirit that I’m sure is going to carry through all the way to Election Day and beyond.

With that, I’m going to sign the bill. Make sure I sign the right place, though.

(The bill is signed.)

There you go. Congratulations, everybody. Good work. Thank you very much.

More about Camp Lejuene
Jul 21, 2012
C.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, announced that the Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012, H.R. 1627 a bill that improves services and care for ...
Feb 18, 2010
Newly reported information is now demonstrating that the water at Camp Lejeune NC military base may have been contaminated as a result of a toxic spill. Marines, sailors, their families and other civilian contractors may be ...
May 28, 2011
During June--December 2011, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will conduct a health survey of persons who resided or worked at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina before 1986 and ...
May 08, 2010
(5) contaminated drinking water at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina; and (6) pollutants from a waste incinerator near the Naval Air Facility (NAF) at Atsugi, Japan. It is imperative that regional office personnel are aware of these ...