Copyright

(c) 2010-2026 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

For Workers Leaving Their Jobs, Health Exchanges Offer Insurance Choices Beyond COBRA

The Affordable Care Act will impact all areas of the delivery of medicine in the workplace.Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from www.kaiserhealthnews.org


Workers who lose their jobs and their employer-based health insurance will have new coverage options when the Affordable Care Act's state marketplaces open in October. But consumer advocates are concerned many may not realize this and lock themselves into pricier coverage than they need.

Today, the only option for many laid-off workers is to continue their employer-provided coverage for up to 18 months under the federal law known as COBRA. Because they have to pay the entire premium plus a 2 percent administrative fee, however, the coverage can be a financial hardship for people who are scrambling to keep up with expenses after losing their jobs.

Many of these people will likely be better off buying a plan on the state health insurance marketplaces, also called exchanges. Plans sold there must cover a comprehensive set of 10 "essential health benefits," and consumers can choose among four plan types with different levels of cost-sharing. Premium tax credits will be available to people with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($11,490 to $45,960 for an individual in 2013), often making exchange coverage significantly more affordable than COBRA.

"COBRA was a transitional type of coverage while you're between jobs, but now we have a subsidized form of coverage available, exchange plans with subsidies," says Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
It's...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles


Found on
Tembow


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Plaintiffs in Calif. lead paint case say companies’ witnesses were ‘not persuasive’

The lead paint industry has not yet come to the table to settle the public health nightmare of lead pigment in paint. Soon California may change the economics of the problem. Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com


SAN JOSE, Calif. (Legal Newsline) — The plaintiffs in a six-week trial over lead paint — 10 cities and counties in California — argue that the one-time paint and pigment manufacturers they’re suing have not presented a “persuasive” case.
The cities and counties — Santa Clara County, San Francisco City, Alameda County, Los Angeles County, Monterey County, Oakland City, San Diego City, San Mateo County, Solano County and Ventura County — filed their 52-page statement of decision with the Santa Clara County Superior Court Friday.
Friday was the deadline for all parties in the lead paint trial, which wrapped up last month, to submit their proposed statements of decision, as requested by Judge James Kleinberg. Kleinberg is presiding over The People of California v. Atlantic Richfield Company et al.
Kleinberg
Kleinberg
In their statement of decision, the plaintiffs argue that their witnesses were “credible,” and that the defendants’ witnesses — which refuted evidence offered by the cities and counties — were “not persuasive.”
“Defendants contend that ‘intact’ lead paint does not present a hazard. The Court finds that the evidence demonstrates otherwise,” the plaintiffs wrote in their statement and proposed order. “Lead paint on high friction surfaces presents an immediate hazard, even if it is presently intact, because normal use causes the paint to degrade, exposing young...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on
Tembow
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Workers compensation rates to decline in Oregon in 2014

Oregon has been notorious in limiting benefits for injured workers. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.oregonlive.com


Oregon employers next year, on average, will pay $1.63 per $100 of payroll for workers' compensation insurance. That figure covers the pure premium, the premium assessment, the Workers' Benefit Fund assessment and insurer profit and expenses. Figures above have been adjusted to reflect the 2012 mix of employment and payroll. Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services
Following two years of increases, state officials say workers' compensation insurance rates should decline for most employers in 2014.

The Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services said last week that the "pure premium" - the portion set by the state - will drop on average by 7.6 percent.
That does not include insurer expenses and profit. It also does not include smaller taxes that cover the state's administrative costs, reserves for self-insured employers and employer groups and a fund for injured worker benefits and return-to-work programs.

Including those costs, premiums will average $1.63 per $100 of payroll in 2014, down from $1.75 in 2013, a 6.9 percent decrease, state officials said.

Actual rates will vary by industry, the insurer and by individual employer claim experience and payroll size.

But the construction and manufacturing sectors, both historically hazardous industries, should see drops of 11 percent and 8.5 percent respectively, said John Shilts, the state's workers' compensation division administrator.

"The performance of construction and manufacturingin...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on
Tembow
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Doing Business in Bangladesh

International fashion safety continues mirror the genesis of the workers" compensation moment in the US. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.nytimes.com


The owner of a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was at New York University last week to meet with clothing industry executives, labor activists and American and European government officials to talk about the Bangladeshi garment industry, the world’s second-biggest exporter of clothes after China.

The workplace disasters in this business have grabbed the world’s attention, and for the past year, Western retailers that outsource their clothing production to Bangladesh have tried to come up with reforms. But there are big obstacles to improving safety in an industry driven by low profits and constant upheaval.

I met with the businessman and another factory owner; both would speak only on the condition that they not be identified because they feared offending their customers. A central problem, the first owner told me, is the rapid turnaround big retailers like Walmart demand when they put in orders for tens of thousands of T-shirts or shorts. Since his factory isn’t able to make all the garments in time, he has to send some of the work to smaller producers. “I can’t do it officially,” he said, “but unofficially, I can.”
Unauthorized subcontracting to smaller, uninspected factories is not supposed to happen, but it remains an entrenched practice. It is a primary reason safety guidelines that apply to bigger contractors have not prevented the hundreds of worker deaths in fires and building collapses in facilities like Rana...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on
Tembow
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Monday, September 16, 2013

Tips and Poverty

In the calcuation of wages and rates of benefits, most state workers' compensation programs incoporate tips. Elimination of tips, would eliminated added coverage benefits paid under workers' compensation programs.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com


When The Times’s restaurant critic, Pete Wells, recently called tipping “irrational, outdated, ineffective, confusing, prone to abuse and sometimes discriminatory,” he was referring mainly to mid- to high-priced restaurants that are considering an end to the practice in favor of surcharges or service-included pricing.

In the diners and other more “value oriented” restaurants that employ most of the nation’s burgeoning ranks of waitresses (the vast majority of servers are female), tips are all that and more. They are part of a parallel economic universe in which employers are allowed to pay sub-minimum wages, with predictably devastating results. According to census data, servers are far more likely than other workers to live in poverty.

It is a national disgrace when hard work, in any industry, leaves workers in poverty. But falling living standards and economic hardship among tipped workers signal prolonged stagnation throughout the economy. That’s because employment growth in restaurants and bars has outpaced growth in nearly all other sectors in recent years, including health care, manufacturing, retail and financial services. 

If wages in food-service and other service jobs are not lifted, it is hard to see where adequate consumer demand will come from to generate and sustain a real recovery.

It is not tipping that most needs to end, however. What needs to change is the federal law that sets the minimum wage for tipped workers...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles

….

Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). 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.

Found on
Tembow
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

What to Do About Futile Critical Care

The last year of an injured worker's life is probably the most expensive for medical costs. Usually such expenses account for 50% of lifetime care costs. Associated with a work-related claim  researchers are struggling how to limit unnecessary costs and maintain ethical and moral responsibilities. Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com

By Neil S. Wenger, MD


Thanks to extraordinary advances in medicine, critical care providers can save lives even when the cards are stacked against their patients. However, there are times when no amount of care, however cutting-edge it is, will save a patient. In these instances, when physicians recognize that patients will not be rescued, further critical care is said to be “futile.” In a new study, my RAND and UCLA colleagues and I find that critical care therapies that physicians regard as “futile” are not uncommon in intensive care units, raising some uncomfortable questions.


Of course, we’re fortunate to have such fantastic technology at our disposal — but we must address how to use it appropriately when the patient may not benefit from high-intensity measures. When aggressive critical care is unsuccessful at achieving an acceptable level of health for the patient, treatment should focus on palliative care.

In our study, my colleagues and I quantified the prevalence and cost of “futile” critical care in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. This can be seen as the first step toward reevaluating the status quo and better optimizing care for critical care patients.

After convening a group of critical care clinicians to determine a consensus definition of “futile treatment,” our research team analyzed nearly 7,000 daily assessments of more than 1,000 patients.
We found that 11 percent received futile...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles

….

Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). 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.

Found on
Tembow


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

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...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles


Found on
Tembow


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

State files charges against city business

Employer fraud results in criminal charges.Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from citizensvoice.com


The state Department of Labor & Industry on Friday filed criminal charges against a Wilkes-Barre business, alleging it failed to maintain worker's compensation insurance.
Kus Tire Inc. at 10 Carey Ave. is charged with 100 felony counts of failing to procure worker's compensation insurance, court records say.

A message left seeking comment at Kus Tire was not immediately returned.

According to a criminal complaint, the business, headed by Bernard Kusakavitch, failed to have the insurance for 100 days - from Sept. 10, 2008, through Sept. 17, 2008, and again from Oct. 1, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2011.

As a self-insured employer, the business was not exempt from possessing the coverage, the charges say.

The complaint said an employee, Walter Booth Jr., was injured Sept. 12, 2008, and subsequently petitioned for benefits from the Uninsured Employers Guaranty Fund, which provides benefits to injured employees of uninsured employers.

According to the complaint, Workers' Compensation Judge Joseph B. Sebastianelli awarded Booth benefits on May 31, 2011.

Investigators filed a summons against the business Friday. The matter is scheduled for a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Rick Cronauer at 9 a.m. Oct. 31.
jhalpin@citizensvoice.com

comments powered by Disqus
[Click here to see the original post]

Related articles


Found on
Tembow


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Legislators consider workers’ comp changes

Wisconsin Republicans look toward limiting workers' compensation benefits.Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from lacrossetribune.com


Wisconsin surgeons performing the same arthroscopic knee surgery on two groups of patients in recent years collected on average $1,573 from one group and $3,728 from the other.

The difference? The lower amount came from those with a group health insurance policy, while the higher amount came from those injured on the job and covered under the state’s workers’ compensation system.

The price discrepancy, reported in a recent study of medical payments in Wisconsin, is fueling discussion about the cost to businesses of workers’ comp insurance. In an unusual move, several Republican lawmakers are considering changes to the system.

Wisconsin’s workers’ compensation system is considered one of the best in the country. Injured workers can access quality health care and return to work quickly, keeping costs low.

The average duration of workers’ comp benefits is 60 days, the shortest of all the states and half the national average, according to recently published data from the National Council on Compensation Insurance.

Typically the state’s Workers’ Compensation Advisory Council, with representation from management and labor, sets workers’ comp policy by bargaining changes and recommending bills to the Legislature. Lawmakers often adopt the proposals without changes in order to insulate the system from political swings in leadership
But Republican legislators led by Rep. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown, are reviewing of the issue as part of...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles


Found on
Tembow
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Bill limiting workers' comp claims by athletes is sent to governor


Today's post was shared by Workers Comp Brief and comes from www.latimes.com

Months of heavy lobbying by the National Football League and other professional sports team owners paid off when lawmakers gave final passage to a bill to limit most workers' compensation claims by out-of-state professional athletes.

The bill, AB 1309 by Assemblyman Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno), cleared the Assembly on a 66-3 vote and was sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. The governor is expected to sign the bill into law, Perea's office said.

Last week, the measure received an overwhelming endorsement in the state Senate with a 34-2 vote.

Perea's proposal, which was opposed by the NFL Players' Assn. and the AFL-CIO, would close a provision in California law that allowed players from out of state to file workers' compensation claims for so-called cumulative trauma, including head injuries that manifested themselves years after their careers had ended.

Many of those players may have participated in just a handful of games in California over the course of their careers.

During the bill's eight-month transit through the Legislature, team owners argued that California had become a de facto forum for claims filed against football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer franchises and their insurance companies.

Players unions countered that the employers don't want to be responsible for their former workers' head injuries and other ailments.

Former athletes have filed more than 4,400 claims involving head and brain injuries since 2006, according to the state workers'...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles


Found on
Tembow


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Minimum wage in California to be $10 an hour

As wages rise so do rates of payment under workers compensation laws. Likewise, workers' compensationinsurance premiums increase also.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nbcnews.com

Minimum wage workers in California would earn $10 an hour by 2016 under a bill passed by the legislature on Thursday, making the state likely to become the first in the nation to commit to such a high rate.

The bill, which Governor Jerry Brown said he will sign, would increase the minimum wage for hourly workers in the most populous U.S. state from the current rate of $8 an hour to $9 in July 2014, and to $10 by January 2016.

"The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs," Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement. "This legislation is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy."
Brown, protective of the state's tenuous economic recovery, had initially opposed the bill but agreed to support it on Wednesday after leaders of both houses of the Democratic-led state legislature agreed to postpone the effective date of the raise until 2016.

The measure won support from Democrats, passing the Senate on a vote of 26-11 and the Assembly on a vote of 51-25. But it was opposed by many Republicans who said it would hurt small businesses and ultimately cost some low-wage workers their jobs.

"The impact of this is not on huge employers," said Republican Senator Jim Nielsen, who represents much of the far northern part of the state near the Oregon border. "It is on the smaller employer, the mom and pop operation."

To get the bill passed, leaders in the more conservative state Assembly had to win...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles


Found on
Tembow


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Worrisome or not? Lung nodules identified on initial LDCT lung cancer screening

Today's post was shared by NEJM and comes from blogs.nejm.org


Long the domain of astrologers and tarot card readers, prediction has recently become downright fashionable. While quant-minded individuals like Billy Beane and Nate Silver have achieved fame and fortune using probabilistic forecasting, dozens of smartphone apps deliver the predictive insight of clinical risk scores to doctors’ fingertips. Why all the enthusiasm? Accurate predictions allow us to prepare for the future.

Testing their predictive mettle in this week’s NEJM, Dr. Annette McWilliams (British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, Canada) and colleagues ask a deceptively simple research question: If a low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) lung cancer screening test detects a lung nodule, can we use the information at hand to accurately predict if it is malignant?

Using clinical and LDCT data from 1871 current or former smokers in the PanCan study, the investigators developed a model to predict when a newly discovered nodule was cancerous. Model variables included age, family history of lung cancer, and the presence of emphysema as well as nodule size, type, and location. Next, the investigators tested this prediction model in a cohort of 1090 current and former smokers enrolled in several British Columbia Cancer Agency chemoprevention trials. They found their model successfully discriminated between higher-risk and lower-risk nodules even within this validation cohort (AUC = 0.97, 95%CI 0.95-0.99), suggesting that the model can also be generalized to other...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Related articles


Found on
Tembow


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Saturday, September 14, 2013

California minimum wage bill close to final passage

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

A bill that would boost California's minimum wage by 25% to $10 an hour won a key vote Thursday and is just one step away from the governor's desk.


What Gov. Jerry Brown will do with it is no mystery. The governor on Wednesday pledged to sign the measure, AB 10 by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville). Brown's support was bolstered by endorsements from the Democratic majority leaders of both the state Senate and the state Assembly.

"The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs," Brown said.

"This is an unprecedented wage hike," said Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Assn. He predicted that many of the state's 87,000 eateries would deal with increased labor costs by cutting back employees' hours and by reducing hiring.

But, Louis Benitez, 51, a waiter at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles welcomed the possibility of a wage increase. "It would be a big help to get a little bit more money per hour," said Benitez, who earns tips as well as the minimum hourly wage.

The bill passed the state Senate on a vote of 26 to 11. It's expected to win final approval from the Assembly on Thursday, before lawmakers recess for the year on Friday.

If it becomes law, it would raise the current $8 minimum wage to $9 an hour next July 1 and to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016.

A minimum wage hike would be the first in California since Jan. 1, 2008.

The state currently has the eighth highest minimum wage in the country. Washington...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on
Tembow

Related articles

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

How Wal-Mart keeps wages low

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


“I think they don’t want me to actually let people know what’s really going on at Wal-Mart as an associate,” Lopez told me in an interview for the Nation following her June 21 firing. “So they’d rather get rid of me.”

Firings like Lopez’s may not come as a shock — Wal-Mart once shut down a store in Canada after workers there won collective bargaining rights, and it eliminated its entire U.S. meat-cutting department after a handful of meat-cutters at one store voted to unionize. But the alleged retaliation defies an eight-decade-old promise from the federal government to most U.S. workers:

Banding together to improve your workplace, whether you win or lose, shouldn’t cost you your job. That 1935 law — the National Labor Relations Act – is still on the books. But its ban on retaliation today reads more like a cruel joke than an ironclad commitment. A 2009 study released by the progressive Economic Policy Institute found that pro-union workers are fired — allegedly illegally — in at least a third of unionization election campaigns supervised by the government.

As expected, Wal-Mart denies illegally retaliating against anyone. The company claims that some of the discipline was unrelated to the protests — Lopez ostensibly lost her job for violating a food safety policy by bringing the employee handbook into the deli area where she works. And Wal-Mart says other workers were punished not for...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on
Tembow

Related articles

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Ideas of Federal Panel on Long-Term Care Don’t Cover Costs

Today's post was shared by The New Old Age and comes from newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com

The federal Commission on Long-Term Care on Friday issued more than two dozen recommendations meant to bolster services for older Americans and people with disabilities, but stopped short of endorsing a new public or private program to help families pay for home health care, custodial care, assisted living or nursing home services.

“We’re disappointed,” said James Firman, president of the National Council on Aging. “They kind of ducked the most important issue.”

The commission was established by Congress last January after the demise of the Class Act, a voluntary long-term care insurance program originally part of the Affordable Care Act. It was given limited resources, an ambitious agenda and a very tight timetable: the first meeting was held in June, three months before the deadline for issuing a report.

Many experts judged it a “semi-serious, halfhearted effort on behalf of the Congress,” Mr. Firman said.

Yet how to pay for the rising costs of long-term care is a pressing problem. Public programs and families spent $317 billion on long-term care services — nursing homes, home health aides and so forth — in 2011, according to the Congressional Research Service. AARP estimates the yearly value of unpaid care provided by 42 million caregivers at $450 billion.

More than 12 million Americans rely on long-term care services, and the number is expected to expand sharply as baby boomers age. Only impoverished older Americans and...

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Found on
Tembow
Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)