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

Monday, December 29, 2014

In North Dakota, a Tale of Oil, Corruption and Death

Today's post is shared from nytimes.com/
Tex G. Hall, the three-term tribal chairman on this remote, once impoverished reservation, was the very picture of confidence as he strode to the lectern at his third Annual Bakken Oil and Gas Expo and gazed out over a stuffed, backlit mountain lion.
Tall and imposing beneath his black cowboy hat, he faced an audience of political and industry leaders lured from far and wide to the “Texpo,” as some here called it. It was late April at the 4 Bears Casino, and the outsiders endorsed his strong advocacy for oil development and the way he framed it as mutually beneficial for the industry and the reservation: “sovereignty by the barrel.”
“M.H.A. Nation is No. 1 for tribal oil produced on American soil in the United States right now currently today,” Mr. Hall proudly declared, referring to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.
But, in a hall decorated with rigs and tepees, a dice throw from the slot machines, Mr. Hall’s self-assurance belied the fact that his grip on power was slipping. After six years of dizzyingly rapid oil development, anxiety about the environmental and social costs of the boom, as well as about tribal mismanagement and oil-related corruption, had burst to the surface.
By that point, there were two murder cases — one person dead in Spokane, Wash., the other missing but presumed dead in North Dakota — tied to oil business on the reservation. And Mr. Hall, a...
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Sunday, December 28, 2014

Zadroga fund payouts to 9/11 responders gain speed as claims process gets 'better'

Today's post is shared from newsday.com/
Nell McCarthy, the deputy special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, pointed to two boxes. One contained files about 2 inches thick; the other, a file about 2 feet thick.
That, she said in the fund's nondescript Washington, D.C., offices, showed the range of differences among claims filed by 9/11 responders.
The thinner file was submitted online by a former first responder in law enforcement who had hired an experienced lawyer. The second was filed by a former deliveryman for a restaurant -- with no attorney -- and included entire notebooks containing handwritten statements in nearly indecipherable block printing that often spilled over and encircled the pages.
Both received compensation, McCarthy said. But the first -- who recently died of brain cancer -- was a fairly straightforward case and it took eight months to determine his compensation. The second -- who for a time called the VCF help line every day, even on the weekends -- was not so straightforward. That claim took 2½ years to resolve.
"I am really proud of the work we did with him," McCarthy said of the second claimant, who still calls the VCF.
McCarthy -- a former White House staffer who herself was a block from Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001 -- was hired in April to help expedite claims for ailing responders under the $2.775 billion James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010. The VCF had come under heavy criticism for the...
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Gov. Chris Christie and NJ Workers' Compensation: Declining Approval

What has NJ Gov. Chris Christie done for Workers' Compensation? It appears that he has done little to nothing except, complain it needs reform.

NJ continues with high unemployment, a failing infrastructure, steep taxes, a mass migration of both Industry and Labor out-of-the state, high debt, and declining public pension reserves. The State continues with a spiraling rate of income inequality that reflects high and almost unobtainable maximum workers' compensation rates for the vast majority of low and middle income wage earners.

The State's antiquated workers' compensation system continues with a reverse social security offset that favors insurance companies to the detriment of the nation's taxpayers. NJ administratively refuses to allow COLA increases under the Triennial Redetermination Social Security program to those totally disabled workers who receive benefits and NJ continues to allow insurance companies and employers to reap benefits at the detriment of injured employers. NJ still maintains an antiquate, objectionable, obsolescent and costly Second Injury Fund for pre-existing injuries when the vast majority of states have terminated such programs.

Additionally, NJ, that lacks a medical provider fee schedule, continues to control medical treatment by requiring injured workers to obtain only employer authorized medical care and prohibits injured workers freedom to choose their own medical providers.

Unproductive bullying of the public at the NJ Governor's "town hall meetings" has become a trademark of his administration. The excitement and approval of "the entertainment value" of those events in the past caught the attention of the public at the emergence of his administration and allowed him to gain popularity. That has now faded has Governor Christie's public approval, according to recent polls in NJ, is declining.



In the meantime, Gov. Christie criticizes NJ workers' compensation and lacks an announced plan to correct the ailing system.

“'We’re  going to be coming up with a package of proposals that’s going to work both sides of that,' Christie told a caller on his monthly NJ 101.5 FM radio show tonight.

'The employers who may not be stepping up and meeting their obligations and also the employees who are committing fraud on the worker’s comp system,' he said."



NJ Gov. Christie, April 2013

Today's post is shared from nytimes.com/

When the Chris Christie-for-president chatter first started, in 2011, voters in his home state of New Jersey took pride in having a celebrity governor. As Nancy Reagan escorted Mr. Christie to his speech at her husband’s presidential library, and hedge fund billionaires, The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages urged him to run, his approval ratings jumped. Voters told pollsters the national attention made him more effective, and improved their state’s long-maligned image.

Four years later, with Governor Christie again considering a run for president, his constituents appear to be tiring of the whole routine.

Polls taken over the last three months reveal a list of home-state complaints: Mr. Christie’s favorability is at its lowest point, with more voters disapproving than approving of his job performance. New Jersey residents think he is making decisions with an eye on his national standing rather than on what is good for their state. They do not think he should run for president — they are, as the slogan goes, ready for Hillary — but most expect he will, and want him to resign if he does. Political talk in New Jersey centers less on Mr. Christie running for president and more on which one of three Democrats quietly seeking to succeed him will win — even though that election is three years away.

Click here to read the entire NY Times article.

New York State Department of Health Completes Review of High-volume Hydraulic Fracturing

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Overtime bonanza at Port Authority; 13 officers set to make more than agency’s director

Wages in workers' compensation determine the rat of workers' compensation payments. Today's post is shared from northjersey.com/
Three years after New York State issued a scathing report criticizing what it characterized as excessive overtime at the Port Authority, 131 of the agency’s employees worked so much overtime in the first nine months of this year that they already more than doubled their annual base salaries.
Thirteen agency police officers received more in salary, overtime and other payments in that period than did Executive Director Patrick Foye, whose annual salary is $289,000.

Most of the top overtime earners are police officers, including one who has been averaging an estimated 100 hours of work a week this year, including 60 hours of overtime. That is the equivalent of working more than 14 hours a day, seven days a week. The top 10 overtime earners are averaging an estimated 46 extra hours each week, a workload that experts say raises questions about efficiency and public safety, and is quite high even in a profession where significant overtime is routine.
The legislatures in both New Jersey and New York have passed identical bills that call for sweeping changes in the way the agency operates, but neither Governor Christie nor New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has indicated whether he will sign the legislation.
Cuomo faces a critical deadline: He must decide by Saturday. Christie must decide by mid-January. Both states...
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Christie, Cuomo veto N.J.-N.Y. Port Authority overhaul

Today's post os shared from northjersey.com
The governors of New Jersey and New York late Saturday vetoed legislation passed unanimously by each state's legislature to overhaul the operations of the Port Authority, and instead endorsed their own plan to revamp the troubled bistate agency.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, had until Saturday to take action on the legislation, which needed the signature of each state's governor.
About 6 p.m., Cuomo and Gov. Christie, a Republican, jointly released and endorsed a 103-page report compiled by a special panel the governors convened in May in the aftermath of the George Washington Bridge scandal, which laid bare cross-Hudson rivalries among leaders of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Christie and Cuomo proposed changes to the authority's governance structure and recommended modernizing its commerce facilities, among other ideas.
Their actions were immediately criticized by New Jersey lawmakers who said the vetoes wrongly delayed an overhaul of an agency that has come under penetrating scrutiny since January, when documents surfaced linking two former Christie allies to the lane closures at the center of the bridge scandal.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark is investigating the September 2013 lane closures, which snarled traffic...
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Twenty states will raise their minimum wage on Jan. 1

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



The minimum wage will rise in 20 states and the District of Columbia on Thursday, as laws and automatic adjustments are made with the start of the new year.
In nine states, the hike will be automatic, an adjustment made to keep the minimum wage in line with rising inflation. But in 11 states and D.C., the rise is the result of legislative action or voter-approved referenda, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Two more states — Delaware and Minnesota — will get legislatively driven hikes later in the year. Twenty-nine states will have minimum wages above the federal minimum of $7.25.
The size of the hikes range from 12 cents in Florida to $1.25 in South Dakota. Among those states hiking the minimum wage, Washington state’s will be highest at $9.47. Oregon’s is next at $9.25., followed by Vermont and Connecticut at $9.15. Massachusetts and Rhode Island will have $9 minimum wages.
Of the states where the minimum wage is rising due to legislative or voter action, five — Alaska, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota, Vermont — and D.C. will also newly implement inflation indexing, bringing the number of states that tie future minimum wage hikes to inflation to 15.
The minimum wage hikes will have a direct impact for nearly 2.3 million workers who currently earn less per hour than the new minimum wage. EPI estimates that an additional roughly 900,000 people would be affected indirectly, as...
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U.S. Alerts Public to Guardrails That Plaintiffs Say Turn Into Spears on Impact

Today's post is shared from Bloomberg,com/

A U.S. highway regulator opened an Internet portal this week allowing the public to report accidents tied to a Trinity Industries Inc. (TRN) guardrail system, which has been linked by lawsuits to at least eight deaths.

The Federal Highway Administration’s move is the latest sign of intensifying government scrutiny of Trinity and its shock-absorbing guardrail end-terminal, the ET-Plus. Drivers and their families have claimed that the system can seize up on impact, spearing cars instead of giving way as intended.

Earlier this month, the highway agency told U.S. lawmakers it would consider mandating additional crash tests on the system if it finds the current round, which started Dec. 10, isn’t sufficient. One of those lawmakers, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said he plans to press Trinity in the new year for accountability over undocumented changes it may have made to the ET-Plus.

Blumenthal, a Democrat, has joined the FHWA in asking whether Dallas-based Trinity quietly adjusted the dimensions of its system. Such a revision would represent the third version of the end-terminal since Trinity introduced it in 2000. The company admitted once already to changing the ET-Plus in 2005 and not telling the agency. It has denied allegations in lawsuits that the modified, second version poses an unnecessary danger to crashing...
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Read more about Guardrail Safety fro the Federal Highway Administration:

Fracking: NY State Report Reveals Significant Health Uncertainties



"As with most complex human activities in modern societies, absolute scientific certainty

regarding the relative contributions of positive and negative impacts of HVHF* on public

health is unlikely to ever be attained. In this instance, however, the overall weight of the

evidence from the cumulative body of information contained in this Public Health

Review demonstrates that there are significant uncertainties about the kinds of adverse

health outcomes that may be associated with HVHF, the likelihood of the occurrence of

adverse health outcomes, and the effectiveness of some of the mitigation measures in

reducing or preventing environmental impacts which could adversely affect public

health. Until the science provides sufficient information to determine the level of risk to

public health from HVHF to all New Yorkers and whether the risks can be adequately

managed, DOH recommends that HVHF should not proceed in New York State."

*high volume hydraulic fracturing

Click here to read the entire report.

Friday, December 26, 2014

Coal ash is not hazardous waste under U.S. agency rules

Today's post is shared from http://planetark.org/

In a disappointment to environmentalists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued rules on Friday labeling coal ash, a byproduct of coal-based power production containing toxic materials such as arsenic and lead, as non-hazardous waste.

The label means that states and environmental groups taking legal action, and not the EPA, will be the primary enforcers of the first-ever federal rules targeting coal ash, which will require the closure of some coal ash holding ponds leaking contaminants into surrounding water but will not cover others.

Also critical of the new rules were some Republican lawmakers, who said they will prove harmful to the economy.

"This rule is a huge step forward in our effort to protect communities from coal ash storage impoundment failures as well as the improper management and disposal of coal ash in general," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters.

The agency first proposed rules governing coal ash storage in 2010, in the wake of a massive spill at a ruptured holding pond in Tennessee that has cost more than $1 billion to clean up. The process took on renewed urgency with another large-scale breach at a pond in North Carolina in February.

Environmental groups expressed disappointment with the long-anticipated rules, which do not require the phase-out of all the hundreds of existing holding ponds and do not prohibit new coal ash from being disposed of in them.

Click here to read the complete article.

….
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.

Ebola Doctor Makes Tough Choice To Save The Lives Of Two Colleagues

Co-workers sometimes face difficult decisions. This was one of them. Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from kaiserhealthnews.org

Dr. Lance Plyler prayed. He had a choice to make. Two colleagues at a hospital in Liberia, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were battling the deadly Ebola virus. The air ambulance had turned back with a mechanical problem, and Plyler feared they wouldn't survive much longer. Against the odds, the medical missionary from North Carolina had managed to find some of the last available supplies of a promising new drug, ZMapp, in neighboring Sierra Leone.

A Styrofoam box containing three frozen vials of straw-colored fluid was flown to the border, canoed across a river and put on a plane to Monrovia, the Liberian capital. But there was enough to treat only one person. The developers were insistent: It would take all three doses to knock out the virus. "Whatever you do," they told him, "don't split the course." (Alexandra Zavis, 12/23)
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Thursday, December 25, 2014

Ebola Sample Is Mishandled at C.D.C. Lab in Latest Error

Today's post is shared from nytimes.com/

A laboratory mistake at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta may have exposed a technician to the deadly Ebola virus, federal officials said on Wednesday. The technician will be monitored for signs of infection for 21 days, the incubation period of the disease.
Word of the accident provoked concern and disbelief from some safety experts. Dangerous samples of anthrax and flu were similarly mishandled at the C.D.C. just months ago, eroding confidence in an agency that has long been one of the most respected research centers in the world.
Other employees who entered the lab where the mistake occurred were being examined for possible exposure. There are fewer than a dozen, and so far it appears that none were infected, said Thomas Skinner, a C.D.C. spokesman.
The samples were properly contained and never left the C.D.C. campus, so there is no risk to the public, officials said.
The error occurred on Monday, when a high-security lab, working with Ebola virus from the epidemic in West Africa, sent samples that should have contained killed virus to another C.D.C. laboratory, down the hall.
But the first lab sent the wrong samples — ones that may have contained the live virus. The second lab was not equipped to handle live Ebola. The technician there who worked with the samples wore gloves and a gown, but no face shield, and may have been exposed.
The mixup was discovered on Tuesday, Dr. Stuart Nichol, chief of the C.D.C.’s Viral Special Pathogens...
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Will leadership shakeup help Takata tackle airbag safety concerns?

Today's post is share from pbs.org/
GWEN IFILL: It’s been a record year for auto recalls, with disturbing stories about deaths, injuries and warning signs that were either missed or ignored by manufacturers and the government.
One of the biggest recalls of the year involved air bags in more than 24 million vehicles from a dozen automakers. But the manufacturer of the air bags, Takata Corporation, has resisted calls to do more.
And, today, its president stepped down.
Hari Sreenivasan picks up the story from there.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Today’s change is the biggest move inside Takata since the troubles became well known.
Stefan Stocker, the company’s first non-Japanese president, will be replaced by the company’s chairman and CEO, Shigehisa Takada. He’s the grandson of the company’s founder. But does the move help Takata deal with much bigger concerns over safety and get out from the cloud that has hung over the business since the reports began?
David Shepardson of The Detroit News has been covering this story, joins me from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
So why did they finally make this move?
DAVID SHEPARDSON, The Detroit News: Well, I think this is clearly another indication of Mr. Takada and the family exerting more control over the company’s operations.
As you said, Mr. Stocker was the first non-Japanese president of the company. And over the last 10 months, as the company has seen tens of millions of vehicles recalled around the globe, it’s raised the...
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Strong Safety Rules for Taxis and Uber



Popular and fast-growing companies like Uber and Lyft have advertised themselves as superior in nearly every way to traditional taxi services. Not least among these lofty claims is the assertion that they are safer than taxis.
This may or may not be true. What is true is that Uber and Lyft generally do not require their drivers to submit to the kinds of background checks that local and state regulators require for taxi operators. These companies can hardly claim to be a cut above the others when they have failed to meet even baseline standards.
The importance of strong background checks was underscored by news that a driver working for Uber in New Delhi has been accused of raping a passenger. In San Francisco, a driver who was working for Uber struck and killed a 6-year-old girl last year on New Year’s Eve. In both cases, the drivers had driving or arrest records that should have sent up red flags. (Uber has said it does not conduct criminal background checks on drivers it uses in India and has suspended its service in Delhi while it reviews that policy.)
Companies like Uber and Lyft insist that they screen drivers carefully and that the private security firms they use are as good or better than the traditional fingerprint-based background checks regulators have long used. The security firms, they say, check driving histories, court files, sex-offender registries and other public records. Such background checks, Uber and Lyft argue, can be completed in a day or two,...
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As Docs Face Big Cuts In Medicaid Pay, Patients May Pay The Price

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

Andy Pasternak, a family doctor in Reno, Nev., has seen more than 100 new Medicaid patients this year after the state expanded the insurance program under the Affordable Care Act.
But he won’t be taking any new ones after Dec. 31.  That’s when the law’s two-year pay raise for primary care doctors like him who see Medicaid patients expires, resulting in fee reductions of 43 percent on average across the country, according to the nonpartisan Urban Institute.


“I don’t want to do this,” Pasternak said about his refusal to see more Medicaid patients next year. But when the temporary pay raise goes away, he and other Nevada doctors will see their fees drop from $75 on average to less than $50 for routine office visits.
“We will lose money when they come to the office,” he said.
Experts fear other doctors will respond the same way as Pasternak, making it harder for millions of poor Americans to find doctors. The pay raise was intended to entice more physicians to treat patients as the program expanded in many states. In the last year, Medicaid enrollment grew by almost 10 million and now covers more than 68 million people nationwide.
The challenge is to convince physicians not just to continue accepting such patients but to take on more without getting paid what they’re used to, said Dr. J. Mario Molina, CEO of Molina Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest Medicaid insurers.
Charles Duarte, CEO of a large community...
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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

CDC worker monitored for possible Ebola exposure in lab error

Health care workers are particularly susceptible to becoming effective with disease. Today's post is shared from cdc.gov/

A laboratory technician for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been placed under observation for possible exposure to the deadly Ebola virus due to an apparent mix-up in lab specimens, the Atlanta-based agency said on Wednesday.

The technician, who was working on Monday with Ebola specimens that were supposed to have been inactivated but which may instead have contained live virus, will be monitored for signs of infection for 21 days, the disease's incubation period, CDC officials said.

The error follows two high-profile cases of mishandled samples of anthrax and avian influenza at the CDC earlier this year that called into question safety practices at the highly respected research institute and drew criticism from Capitol Hill.

CDC spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds told Reuters the technician's risk of exposure to Ebola, even if the virus were active, was believed to be low and that the worker was not being quarantined while under observation.

She said a small number of other CDC employees who entered the lab where the samples in question were handled also "were assessed and none require monitoring."

"There was no possible exposure outside the secure laboratory at CDC and no exposure or risk to the public," the agency said in a statement. Lab scientists discovered on Tuesday what had transpired, and reported it to superiors within an hour, it said.

The problem occurred when active Ebola virus samples were believed to have been mixed up with specimens that had been rendered inactive for further testing in a lower-security lab down the hall, Reynolds said.

When inactivated specimens turned up the next day in storage, lab personnel realized that they apparently had transferred the wrong samples, ones that had contained active virus material, out of the higher-security lab, Reynolds said.

CDC officials could not be certain because the material in question had by then been destroyed and the lower-security lab decontaminated under routine safety procedures, she said.


Related:

Dec 01, 2014
Today's post is shared from nytimes.com/ A day after a doctor who had returned from Guinea about a week earlier became New York's first Ebola case, the governors of New York and New Jersey announced that they would ...
Nov 01, 2014
The newest legal practice area is Ebola Law. Like the rapidly developing infectious disease the legal ramifications of Ebola are quickly emerging. Issues from medical treatment, lost time payments, medical and product liability ...
Oct 18, 2014
Hazmat workers help each other put on protective clothing before entering The Village Bend East apartment complex where a second health care worker who has tested positive for the Ebola virus resides on October 16, 2014 ...
Oct 25, 2014
The governors of New York and New Jersey on Friday ordered quarantines for all people entering the country through two area airports if they had direct contact with Ebola patients in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Newt Gingrich Is Back: Now Wants To Protect Workers From Unions

Today's post is shared from washingtonpost.com/
On Election Day, voters didn’t just rebel against President Obama. There was another pattern in the candidates they chose: Across the country, they picked pols who explicitly supported individual employee rights.
This wasn’t just a canned part of every Republican’s platform. Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Snyder of Michigan, for instance, both won reelection after pushing through significant employee-friendly reforms in their first terms. Even in deep-blue Illinois, Republican Bruce Rauner campaigned on a platform to give state employees the right to decide for themselves whether to join a union.

Pro-employee rights candidates now hold majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate, and it’s time for Congress to deliver the pro-employee agenda that has gained so much momentum in the states. Here’s how members can enhance employee rights in the workplace.

The best legislative vehicle for advancing those rights is the Employee Rights Act (ERA). Led by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the ERA has 29 co-sponsors in the Senate and more than 100 in the House. It’s the most significant rewrite of the National Labor Relations Act in decades, with a twist: Instead of the gridlock that comes with trying to rig labor law to benefit either unions or employers, it focuses squarely on the rights of the employees. (All of the law’s provisions can be viewed at EmployeeRightsAct.com.)

Take...
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Related:
Sep 25, 2008
Gingrich is suggesting that employees be “self-insured” for injuries and illnesses and resulting disability freeing the employees of the need to contribute to insurance coverage or Social Security benefits at all. A recent article in ...
May 11, 2011
Common themes of a single payer medical system are emerging. History can repeat itself. The announcement by Newt Gingrich to run for the presidency in 2012, and the anticipated signing of the Vermont Single Payer ...
Dec 07, 2011
The NY Times reports today that presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich is taking the lead in the Iowa state Caucus poles. Over the past years, during his absence from Washington politics, Gingrich has been involved in lobbying ...
Nov 22, 2011
Newt Gingrich's poll numbers are soaring for the US Presidential nomination. He has announced that he will offer radical proposals including the elimination of child labor laws. For decades child labor laws and penalties have ...

Florida has a Large Percentage of Medicare's top "Controlled-Drug" Prescribers

Today's post is authored by Judge David Langham and shared from flojcc.blogspot.com/

A story was recently published on the WUSF website, Health News Florida. It says that the "prolific prescribers" of some medications are facing "Medicare scrutiny."

A chart in the story reflects the distribution of 192 top prescribing medical providers in 12 states. Of these, 52, or 27% are located here in the Sunshine State. 

The article notes that in 2012, "Medicare covered nearly 27 million prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers and stimulants with the highest potential for abuse and dependence." 

Despite efforts at addressing narcotic use, the article notes that this was a "9 percent" increase compared to 2011. 

Thankfully, though Florida has the largest volume of providers represented in this chart, the top prescriber is not in Florida. Dr. Shelinder Aggarwal of Huntsville, Alabama has that distinction. He prescribed "more than 14,000 Schedule 2 prescriptions in 2012." This amounted to "more than 80 percent of his Medicare patients" receiving "at least one prescription for a Schedule 2 drug, in many cases oxycodone."Apparently he is no longer a physician, the article notes he "surrendered his medical license" in 2013. 

The prescription practices are a "real area of concern" for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to the director, quoted in the article. 

The article suggests that data in existing resources can...

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Lawyers: A Vanishing Breed


"No one is going to law school. Fewer people enrolled in law school this year than at any point in the last four decades. The number of first-year law students has declined by 28 percent since 2010, hitting a historic low of less than 38,000 in 2014. That might have something to do with their dimming job prospects. "

Click here to read "The 9 Worst Questions Your Parents Will Ask You This Week, and the Data You Need to Answer Them" businessweek.com

Where the Workers' Compensation Medical Dollar Goes in Florida


"Medical cost drivers, particularly in the areas of drugs, hospital inpatient, hospital
outpatient and ambulatory surgical centers (ASC) are noticeably higher in Florida than a
countrywide average. Legislative reform in the reimbursement of these services could
produce substantial savings for Florida employers. "
Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, Workers’ Compensation Annual Report December 2014

Defense Base Act Claims: More Private Military Contractors Head for Iraq

A Shi'ite fighter walks during an intensive security deployment against Islamic State militants in Balad, north of Baghdad December 15, 2014. REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud
As the US begins to deploy military troops back to Iraq  the number of private military ccontractors will also increase. Logically the number of Defense Base Act claims will also begin to esculate as injuries and illnesses with increase   Today's post is shared from reuters.com/

The U.S. government is preparing to boost the number of private contractors in Iraq as part of President Barack Obama's growing effort to beat back Islamic State militants threatening the Baghdad government, a senior U.S. official said.

How many contractors will deploy to Iraq - beyond the roughly 1,800 now working there for the U.S. State Department - will depend in part, the official said, on how widely dispersed U.S. troops advising Iraqi security forces are, and how far they are from U.S. diplomatic facilities.

Still, the preparations to increase the number of contractors - who can be responsible for everything from security to vehicle repair and food service - underscores Obama's growing commitment in Iraq. When U.S. troops and diplomats venture into war zones, contractors tend to follow, doing jobs once handled by the military itself.

"It is certain that there will have to be some number of contractors brought in for additional support," said the senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
After Islamic State seized large swaths of Iraqi territory and the major city of Mosul in June, Obama ordered U.S. troops back to Iraq. Last month, he authorized roughly...
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