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Showing posts with label Washington DC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington DC. Show all posts

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Appeals Court Deals Major Blow to Implementation of Affordable Care Act


Today's post is shared by WSJ Law Blog and comes from blogs.wsj.com

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a serious blow to the Obama administration’s implementation of its signature health-care law, striking down subsidies available to some consumers who purchase health coverage on insurance exchanges set up by the federal government.

WSJ’s Brent Kendall has more on the breaking legal development out of Washington:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, on a 2-1 vote, invalidated an Internal Revenue Service regulation that implemented a key piece of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The regulation said subsidies for health insurance were available to qualifying middle- and low-income consumers whether they bought coverage on a state exchange or one run by the federal government.

The ruling potentially could cripple the Affordable Care Act by making subsidies unavailable in as many as 36 states where the federal government has run some or all of the insurance exchanges.

The court sided with challengers, four individuals and three employers, who argued the health law allowed subsidies only for insurance purchases made through state exchanges. The issue became an important one after the law was enacted because more than two-thirds of the states chose not to set up their own exchanges, relying on federally run exchanges instead.

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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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Monday, September 16, 2013

Bridge Safety: Many U.S. Spans Are Old, Risky And Rundown

Transportation accidents are one of the leading cause of work-related compensation claims. Today's post was shared by Huffington Post and comes from www.huffingtonpost.com

Bridge Safety

Motorists coming off the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge into Washington are treated to a postcard-perfect view of the U.S. Capitol. The bridge itself, however, is about as ugly as it gets: The steel underpinnings have thinned since the structure was built in 1950, and the span is pocked with rust and crumbling concrete.

District of Columbia officials were so worried about a catastrophic failure that they shored up the horizontal beams to prevent the bridge from falling into the Anacostia River.

And safety concerns about the Douglass bridge, which is used by more than 70,000 vehicles daily, are far from unique.

An Associated Press analysis of 607,380 bridges in the most recent federal National Bridge Inventory showed that 65,605 were classified as "structurally deficient" and 20,808 as "fracture critical." Of those, 7,795 were both – a combination of red flags that experts say indicate significant disrepair and similar risk of collapse.

A bridge is deemed fracture critical when it doesn't have redundant protections and is at risk of collapse if a single, vital component fails. A bridge is structurally deficient when it is in need of rehabilitation or replacement because at least one major component of the span has advanced deterioration or other problems that lead inspectors to deem its condition poor or worse.
Engineers say the bridges are safe. And despite the ominous sounding classifications, officials say that even bridges that are structurally...
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