New Jersey Work Environmental Council representatives say millions in the state are still at risk from major toxic chemical disasters. At a Statehouse press conference today, the New Jersey Work Environment Council released a new 43-page report, entitled “Failure to Act,” which says thousands of New Jersey jobs and millions of residents are still at risk from toxic chemical disasters. These findings come five years after the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection adopted rules to implement the NJ Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act that were supposed to reduce that risk.
Some recommendations include stopping facility management from declaring safer technology reviews as secret, require facility management to better document their claims that adopting safer chemicals and technologies are not feasible, and to withdraw the DEP “waiver rule” that allows the agency to not enforce the IST provisions of the Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act. Other speakers spoke of the potentially dangerous risks workers, first responders, nurses and... |
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Thursday, October 10, 2013
NJ Work Environment Council Says State at Risk from Chemical Disasters
California Workers' Compensation Reform: Is The System in a Ditch Now?
Last year, the California Legislature -- with the blessing of Gov. Jerry Brown -- enacted its traditional, once-a-decade overhaul of the state's multibillion-dollar-a-year system of compensating workers for job-related injuries and illnesses.
Employers, insurers, medical care providers and other players in the workers' compensation system are still sorting through what the Legislature and Brown wrought. Generally, the overhaul, Senate Bill 863, raised some cash benefits but also tightened up eligibility for, or even eliminated, other benefits. This earned rare joint support from employer groups and labor unions, which had worked on the changes privately. Because the effects of the 2012 overhaul are still unknown, the study from the Workers Compensation Research Institute in Cambridge, Mass., concentrated its section on California on how it compared to other states during the years following the previous overhaul in 2004. It found that disabled California workers were receiving permanent partial disability payments more often than those in other major states and that those payments tended to be longer in duration -- thus confirming one of employers' complaints,... |
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Deaths Linked to Cardiac Stents Rise as Overuse Seen
When Bruce Peterson left the U.S. Postal Service after 24 years delivering mail, he started a travel agency. It was his dream career, his wife Shirlee said.
DeMaio paid $10,000 and agreed to two years’ oversight to settle the complaint over Peterson and other patients in 2011. He said his treatment didn’t contribute to Peterson’s death. “We’ve learned a lot since Bruce died,” Shirlee Peterson said. “Too many stents can kill you.” Peterson’s case is part of the expanding impact of U.S. medicine’s binge on cardiac stents -- implants used to prop open the arteries of 7 million Americans in the last decade at a cost of more than $110 billion. When stents are used to restore blood flow in heart attack patients, few dispute they are beneficial. These and other acute cases account for about half of the 700,000 stent procedures in the U.S. annually. Among the other half -- elective-surgery patients in stable... |
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Supreme Court Rejects Tobacco Companies’ Appeal of Florida Case
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the tobacco industry’s appeal of a Florida ruling that may help thousands of smokers sue cigarette makers over smoking-related illnesses. The nation’s highest court today turned away arguments by Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA, Reynolds American Inc.’s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Vector Group Ltd.’s Liggett unit. They challenged a $2.5 million award to the family of Charlotte Douglas, who died in 2008 of lung cancer at age 62. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to intervene in tobacco litigation in Florida, where more than 4,500 smoker suits are pending. So far, Florida juries have returned verdicts totaling more than $500 million against the industry, the companies said in their appeal. Cigarette makers are seeking to limit the effect of a 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision, which said a jury’s factual findings against the industry in a class-action case could serve as the starting point for individual suits. The Florida high court reaffirmed that ruling in the Douglas case. At the U.S. Supreme Court, the tobacco companies said they were being deprived of their constitutional right to due process of law. “It is impossible to conclude with any certainty in any of these cases that any jury in any proceeding has ever decided all the elements of the plaintiff’s claims in his or her favor,” the companies contended in their appeal. Douglas’s widower, James,... |
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Truck driver alleges firing based on work comp claim
Sandra Terry filed a lawsuit Sept. 17 in Madison County Circuit Court against TMCI, Peoplease Corporation and Thomas J. Manville. In her complaint, Terry alleges she was working as a truck driver for TMCI on Aug. 9, 2008, when she suffered an injury. Because she was injured while working, Terry filed for workers’ compensation benefits including medical treatment and time off work, according to the complaint. On Sept. 20, 2008, TMCI fired Terry, the suit states. Manville authorized her termination, knowing that it happened because of her workers’ compensation claim, the complaint says. In her complaint, Terry seeks general damages of more than $100,000, plus lost wages and benefits, pre-judgment interest, punitive and exemplary damages, costs and other relief the court deems just. D. Jeffrey Ezra of Ezra and Associates in Collinsville will be representing her. Madison County Circuit Court case number: 13-L-1563. |
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Robot Surgery Damaging Patients Rises With Misleading Marketing
Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver announced last year that Warren Kortz, a general surgeon on the medical staff, was the first in the Rocky Mountain region to use a technique known as robotic surgery to remove gall bladders through one incision in the belly button.
The operation, performed while the doctor sits at a video- game-like console, was “taking advantage of another breakthrough in robotic surgery” and is “easier on the patient,” the hospital said in a press release. “It’s Star Wars stuff,” Kortz was quoted as saying in another article put out by the hospital touting another operation, robot-assisted parathyroid surgery, in 2010. “My prediction is it will eventually replace everything else.” What the hospital and Kortz didn’t reveal was the risk. Even as Kortz promoted robotic surgery, 10 patients he treated suffered injuries or complications between 2008 and 2011, according to an April complaint by the Colorado Medical Board. Five had arteries punctured or torn. Objects were temporarily left inside two, and others had nerve damage. One died and another needed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The complaint charges Kortz with 14 counts of unprofessional conduct, including sometimes not advising patients on alternatives to the robot. Robotic surgeries are on the rise, fueled by aggressive marketing by doctors, hospitals and Intuitive Surgical Inc., which manufactures the $1.5 million robot. Advertising on... |
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ABA president, others express concern over shutdown’s effects on judiciary
American Bar Association President James Silkenat is calling on members of Congress to send a budget to the President.
Silkenat, a partner in the New York office of Sullivan & Worcester, took office in August. In a statement last week, Silkenat called the government shutdown, which began Oct. 1, a “historic failure that imperils justice.” “The political brinksmanship that brought our government to a standstill reflects the same intransigence and unwillingness to compromise that imposed sequestration on our national government and hardships on many who contract with, work for or receive certain nonentitlement benefits from the federal government,” he said. “Federal courts already face staff reductions and programmatic cuts that threaten public safety. The failure to reach accord on a continuing resolution to fund the government has also scuttled both chambers attempts to add extra funding to pay for indigent defense representation.” He added, “Congress has practically abdicated its constitutional responsibility to provide a budget for the government. It is time to end the scorched earth tactics and send a budget to the President.” Silkenat, who argues that citizens’ access to justice will increasingly be in jeopardy, testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday about the effects of the shutdown on the judiciary. He, along with other lawyers and former judges, told members of the... |
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Costliest 1 Percent Of Patients Account For 21 Percent Of U.S. Health Spending
A 58-year-old Maryland woman breaks her ankle, develops a blood clot and, unable to find a doctor to monitor her blood-thinning drug, winds up in an emergency room 30 times in six months. A 55-year-old Mississippi man with severe hypertension and kidney disease is repeatedly hospitalized for worsening heart and kidney failure; doctors don't know that his utilities have been disconnected, leaving him without air conditioning or a refrigerator in the sweltering summer heat. A 42-year-old morbidly obese woman with severe cardiovascular problems and bipolar disorder spends more than 300 days in a Michigan hospital and nursing home because she can't afford a special bed or arrange services that would enable her to live at home.
Sometimes known as super-utilizers, high-frequency patients or frequent fliers, these patients typically suffer from heart failure, diabetes and kidney disease, along with a significant psychiatric problem. Some are... |
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Risk to Food Safety Seen in Furloughs
Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com
WASHINGTON — The government shutdown is endangering what America eats, food safety experts said this week, as all inspections of domestic food except meat and poultry have halted and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recalled furloughed workers to handle a salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds of people in 18 states. Offices are dark across the federal agencies charged with making sure that the fruit, vegetables, dairy products and a vast array of other domestically produced food are safe to consume. Inspectors, administrative staff, lab technicians, communications specialists and other support staff members have been sent home while lawmakers wrangle over government spending. “This is a self-inflicted wound that is putting people’s health at risk,” said Representative Rosa L. DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, a longtime food safety advocate. Because the shutdown comes on top of earlier budget cuts to the agencies, she said, “you’re creating the potential for a real public health crisis.” At the same time, several crucial agriculture reports used by traders and farmers have been canceled because of the shutdown, seriously hampering decision making about planting and disrupting commodities markets. The highest-profile report canceled because of the shutdown is World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates, which supplies statistics on the worldwide production of crops from cotton to corn. It also provides data on... |
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Government Shutdown: Day 10 - Safety Gets a Furlough
of safety enforcement in the workplace. OSHA has closed down its workplace inspection program and now the implementation of new safety programs OSHA planned to initiate will be delayed.
Watch:
Shutdown of OSHA threatens worker safety
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Fashion Safety: The Tragedy Continues
Nine people have died following a fire in a Bangladesh factory renewing concerns about the safety of the country’s garment industry that supplies many of the world’s biggest retailers.
The fire broke out at the Aswad factory in Gazipur outside of Dhaka yesterday. The factory has supplied goods to Canadian retailers Loblaw, which owns Joe Fresh, according to shipping data provider ImportGenius.com. The Wall Street Journal reported Aswad had also produced clothes for Wal-Mart.
The deaths come after the devastating collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka in April which killed more than 1,100 people.
The disaster led to an industry-wide move to improve safety in the country. Retailers includingPrimark, H&M, River Island and Arcadia have signed up to the Bangladesh factory safety Accord led by union IndustriALL.
By signing the Accord, retailers agreed to a legally binding pledge to contribute up to $500,000 (£325,000) a year towards rigorous independent factory inspections and the installation of fire safety measures.
Yesterday Primark, which was one of many western retailers which used a factory situated within Rana Plaza, committed to paying six months wages as compensation.
A Primark spokesman said: “Primark takes its responsibilities extremely seriously. To help alleviate short-term hardship, the company is committed to paying six months wages to more than 3,500 Rana Plaza workers, or their families, irrespective of whether they made...
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Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Government Shutdown: Day 9 - Government shutdown hitting veterans, military families hard
The government shutdown, now in its ninth day, has impacted government services and the Americans who rely on them to varying degrees. This week, members of Congress are wincing at the toll their dysfunction is taking on services for veterans and military families.
If the shutdown doesn't end soon, the Veterans Affairs (VA) Department won't be able to ensure that checks go out on Nov. 1 for 5.18 million beneficiaries, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki told House Veterans' Affairs Committee. That amounts to $6.25 billion in payments that VA beneficiaries are expecting. Already the VA has furloughed more than 7,800 employees, Shinseki, half of whom are veterans. While the VA has in the last six months made progress on reducing its disability claims backlog, the shutdown has reversed that progress, with the number of backlogged claims increasing by 2,000 since Oct. 1. "We've lost ground we fought hard to take," said Shinseki, who at multiple points in his testimony to Congress used military analogies to explain the challenges his department is facing. The Republican-led House last week passed a bill to exempt the VA from the shutdown, but the Democratic-led Senate has rejected the House's piecemeal approach to restoring federal funding. Additionally, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., noted in Wednesday's hearing that the House back in June approved a VA funding bill. Shinseki, however, noted that restoring funding for just the VA won't necessarily help clear... |
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Government Shutdown
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The Government Shutdown is a Kick-In-Gut to Workers' Compensation
Federal Shutdown: Is Workers' Compensation Ready for Tropical Storm Karen?
Government Shutdown: Day 8 - Injured Workers Are Being Held for Ransom
The Federal programs that adjudicate injured workers claims are closed. The State programs are beginning to feel the impact of the that lack of information flow from the collateral medical lien resolution process so resolution of claims are now stalled.
New Federal programs enacted under The SMART Act, to expedite the lien resolution programs have been halted in the public comment phases, and may face further delay in implementation and regulatory amendment.
The funding process for NIH grants to prevent and treat occupational disease and illnesses, as well as data collection and reporting, have been slowed if not stopped in their tracks.
While polls released today blame the GOP for the problem, no resolution is in sight. In fact the Federal debt ceiling argument may just put the US over the fiscal cliff, train-wrecking the economy, and fragile trending improvements in the US economy, including the job market and workers' compensation premium flow so essential to maintain financial liquidity.
It is a tragedy that American workers, and the century old workers' compensation system, are being held hostage in this political battle. Immediate action is necessary before the system implodes and can't be put back together again.
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