Lobbyists: Postal Service will try to hike stamp price

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from thehill.com

The troubled United States Postal Service is likely to vote to raise its prices at a Thursday meeting of its Board of Governors, according to top Washington lobbyists opposed to the hike. Greeting Card Association lobbyist Rafe Morrissey told reporters Wednesday that he expects the USPS to try to increase price of the 46 cent first-class stamp by 3 cents. That would consist of a 2 cent increase on top of a 1 cent inflation adjustment already expected in January. The magazine industry is anticipating as much as a double-digit increase for periodicals, another lobbyist source said. Currently, magazine postal rates average 27 cents per magazine. The Board vote would start a process of seeking emergency price-raising powers from the Postal Regulatory Commission. Congress under current law does not have a role in the process, but both the House and Senate are weighing overhauls of the USPS. “The Board seems to me moving down the path of filing an exigent case,” Morrissey said. “We don’t think that is part of a common-sense or sustainable solution.” He argued that the rate increase along with proposed reductions in service such as the end of Saturday delivery would only contribute to a agency's death spiral. The Greeting Card Association wants Congress to adjust the formula by which the USPS prefunds the future health benefits for its retirees and for it to consider delivering mail to curbside cluster boxes rather than individual...

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Procter & Gamble Eliminating Phthalates, Triclosan from Products Worldwide

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.safecosmetics.org

Procter & Gamble Eliminating Phthalates, Triclosan from Products WorldwideSafe cosmetics activists pressure other companies to stop using toxic chemicals in personal care products, fragrances Due to public pressure and growing concerns about the safety of chemicals found in common cosmetics, household cleaners and fragranced products, Procter & Gamble (P&G) will achieve total elimination of the toxic chemicals triclosan and diethyl phthalate (DEP) from all its products by 2014, according to an announcement on the company's website. P&G is the worlds largest manufacturer of consumer products, home to iconic brands including Cover Girl, Tide, Crest and Ivory. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics congratulates P&G for taking bold and globally-significant action to protect the health of its 4.8 billion consumers by eliminating two dangerous toxic chemicalstriclosan and DEPfrom all its products, said Janet Nudelman, program director at the Breast Cancer Fund and co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has been urging companies to eliminate phthalates from personal care products since 2002. Because of this pressure, many cosmetics companies have stopped using two dangerous phthalates, DBP and DEHP, but the industry has continued to widely use DEP in fragrance. P&G is taking an important step in the right direction, said Nudelman. Major multinational cosmetic companies have no...

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Judge Says Search Warrants for E-mails Must Be ‘Limited’

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Can law enforcement obtain a search warrant to dig through a vast trove of e-mails, instant messages and chat logs because they have reasonable suspicion that the owners of those accounts robbed computer equipment from a private company? No, according to a ruling by a federal judge in Kansas earlier this week. The case is significant in that it limits what constitutes unreasonable search and seizure, as protected by the Fourth Amendment, in the age of big data. The magistrate judge, David J. Waxse, denied the government’s search warrant requests on the grounds that it has to be particular and “reasonable in nature of breadth.” Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University and an expert on surveillance law, interpreted it this way on Twitter: “You can’t look through the kitchen sink to get the evidence, as you do with physical searches.” Prosecutors sought search warrants to extract information from Verizon, an Internet service provider, GoDaddy, a Web site hosting company, along with Web communications companies Google, Skype and Yahoo on account holders suspected of having stolen $5,000 in computer equipment from Sprint. The government believed that the suspects used e-mail and instant-message accounts to “facilitate the purchase, receipt and transportation of the equipment” from Kansas to New Jersey. The government sought “contents of all emails, instant messages and chat logs/sessions — and other...

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Ex-NFL Player Loses Workers' Comp Appeal Against Steelers

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.law360.com

A former defensive end with the Pittsburgh Steelers football team lost his bid for workers’ compensation Thursday after the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court found that a 2004 injury that ended his season did not result in a loss of earnings despite his never playing professionally again. A three-judge panel agreed that testimony from a pair of orthopedic surgeons who treated Ainsley Battles after a season-ending hamstring tear in 2004 proved that the player sufficiently recovered from the injury to continue pursuing his football career prior to his ultimate retirement in 2006. “Both doctors agreed that claimant’s injury would not prevent him from playing professional football, and neither doctor suggested that claimant’s injury caused a loss in earning power after he completed his rehabilitation,” the court ruled in a decision penned by Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt. Battles had asked the Commonwealth Court to overturn a decision by the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board which found that the Steelers had no duty to pay the player for disability following the injury. Battles, who previously played for the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Buffalo Bills before signing a one-year contract with the Steelers, tore his hamstring in his first game with the team in September 2004. According to court records, Battles was cleared to...

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Business Groups Call For More Changes To Workers' Compensation Laws

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from northernpublicradio.org

Despite a drop in the rate of workers' compensation insurance, Illinois businesses say the system is still too burdensome. In 2011, Illinois changed its workers' compensation laws.  The state Department of Insurance, the governor and others say  the changes worked: the workers' comp insurance rate is down 4.5 percent. Kim Maisch is a lobbyist representing the state association for small, independent businesses. "We need to go a lot faster towards greater reform, and we certainly need to make sure the politicians know the job is not done," Maisch said. Maisch says there should be more protections for businesses -- like making workers prove an injury really happened on the job rather than during off hours. Rep. Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) says Illinois' rates are still too high. "We still are not competitive with the states around us with regard to reforming our workers' compensation system," Kay said. Kay says most of the savings comes from paying doctors less for treating injured workers, and he doesn't consider that "reform." He says Illinois needs to make employees prove an injury happened on the job before forcing a company to pay a settlement. But his proposed changes didn't gain any traction in the General Assembly. Unions have fought that change, saying a higher burden of proof is unfair to workers. Illinois Public Radio's Amanda Vinicky contributed to this report.

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9th Circuit Vacates MSP Injunction Against CMS for Medicare Reimbursement

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated a Federal District Court Order enjoying CMS from seeking reimbursement for Medicare Conditional Payments under the Medicare Secondary Payer Act (MSP).

The Court held that it lacked jurisdiction:

"... we conclude that the
beneficiaries' claim was not adequately presented to the
agency at the administrative level and therefore the district
court lacked subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 42 U.S.C.§ 405(g) .

***

" Federal question jurisdiction does not extend to most
claims arising under the Medicare Act. The Medicare Act
incorporates 42 U.S .C. § 405(h) , which provides:
No findings of fact or decision of the
[Secretary] ... shall be reviewed by
any person, tribunal, or governmental
agency except as herein provided.
No action against the United States,
the [Secretary] ..., or any officer or
employee thereof shall be brought
under section 1331  ... of title 28  torecover on any claim arising under this
subchapter.
42 U.S.C. § 405(h) ; 42 U.S.C. § 1395ii .

****

 "We decline to adopt the extraordinarily broad reading of
Eldridge  that the beneficiaries invite. We conclude that the
named plaintiffs' reimbursement disputes did not provide an
opportunity for the Secretary to consider the claim that her
interpretation of the secondary payer provisions exceeded
her authority. Their requests for redetermination of their
respective amounts of reimbursement did not constitute
presentment of their policy challenge.

***

" We conclude that the beneficiaries' claim was
not presented to the agency. Because presentment is a
jurisdictional requirement under § 405(g) , the district court
lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the beneficiaries'
claim. 

Haro v Sebelius, ___F.3d____, No. 11-16606, 2013 WL 4734032, Decided Sept.4, 2013.

Read prior posting about this case:

Federal Court Enjoins CMS From MSP Recovery Procedures

May 18, 2011

Haro v. Sebelius, 2010 WL 1452942 (A. Ariz.) CV 09-134 TUC DCB, Decided April 12, 2010.The plaintiffs were permitted discovery beyond the administrative record. The class action is challenging the recovery procedures of ...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Workers' Compensation: Halted: Medicare Secondary Payer ...

May 25, 2011

The MSPRC is still working cases, and the RAR and Demand letters will be mailed out once appropriate revisions have been made." This follows a recent US District Court ruling enjoining CMS's collection procedures. Haro v.

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

….

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.

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Train Industry Allies in U.S. Senate Move to Delay Deadline for Crash-Prevention Technology

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.fairwarning.org

Prodded by railroads, four lawmakers introduce bill to postpone deadline for installing high-tech safety systems. The systems, known as Positive Train Control or PTC, aim to override human error and avert deadly collisions like the Chatsworth, Calif., commuter train crash that killed 25 people in 2008. Railroads are mandated to have PTC by the end of 2015 on trains carrying passengers or extremely hazardous materials such as chlorine. But, as FairWarning reported last year, the industry has pushed hard to relax the requirement and win more time to add the costly technology.  Four senators who have received political contributions from the industry recently introduced a bill to extend the deadline another five to seven years, until at least 2020. The National Transportation Safety Board has called for the safety measures for more than two decades. Over the last decade, the agency has investigated 27 train crashes that killed 63 people that it says PTC could have prevented. The Associated Press Federal poultry inspection proposal based on bad data, investigators say. The U.S. Department of Agriculture relied on incomplete and outdated data for its plan to extend a poultry inspection program to plants across the country, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. The new procedures, piloted at 29 sites since 1998, let plants dramatically speed up processing lines and replace many government inspectors with poultry company employees, which...

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….

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.

Related articles

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