Deadline for Filing 9-11 Claims Approaches - Cancer Claims Soar

As the October 3, 2013 deadline for filing 9-11 World Trade Center claims for benefits approaches, an increase in the number of claims flowing from cancer continue to soar. Over 1,100 cancer claims have been filed to date.

"More than 1,100 people who worked or lived near the World Trade Center on 9/11 have been diagnosed with cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Click here to read the compete article from CNN.

Click here for more information about filing a claim. 

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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.

After West disaster, News study finds U.S. chemical safety data wrong about 90 percent

Even the best national data on chemical accidents is wrong nine times out of 10.

A Dallas Morning News analysis of more than 750,000 federal records found pervasive inaccuracies and holes in data on chemical accidents, such as the one in West that killed 15 people and injured more than 300.

In fact, no one at any level of government knows how often serious chemical accidents occur each year in the United States. And there is no plan in place for federal agencies to gather more accurate information.

As a result, the kind of data sharing ordered by President Barack Obama in response to West is unlikely to improve the government’s ability to answer even the most basic questions about chemical safety.

“We can track Gross National Product to the second and third decimal, but there is no reliable way of tracking even simple things like how many [chemical] accidents happen,” said Sam Mannan, a nationally recognized expert on chemical safety who recently testified before a congressional hearing on West.

“This is just scandalous.”

After the West explosion in April, The News asked a simple question: How often do serious or potentially serious industrial chemical accidents occur in Texas and nationwide? After scouring the four federal databases with the most comprehensive information available on chemical safety, The News concluded that there was no way to know.

For a recent four-year period, the paper managed to confirm at least...

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Law Will Shift Demographics For Medicaid Toward Healthier Group, Study Finds

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

The health law is expected to change the face of Medicaid – literally. As part of the federal overhaul, some states have opted to expand in January this state-federal health insurance program for low income people to include Americans who earn as much as 138 percent of the federal poverty line (just under $16,000 for an individual in 2013). As a result, the new enrollees will include more white, male and healthy individuals than those eligible before the Affordable Care Act expansion, according to a study in the Annals of Family Medicine. Using statistics from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the authors found that the group of newly eligible individuals is: About 36 years old on average, compared with about 39 years old for the current enrollees. Approximately 59 percent non-Hispanic white, compared with about 50 percent in the existing group. Equally split between males and females, compared with about 67 percent female and 33 percent male in the current Medicaid population. More likely to smoke and drink, but also more likely to have lower rates of obesity and diabetes. The University of Michigan researchers hope the information will help inform health providers and policy makers who are gearing up to plan for the more than 13 million adults potentially eligible for Medicaid after Jan. 1. “It’s really a game changer,” said Dr. Tammy Chang, a lead author of the report. “A lot of providers think of Medicaid...

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Nurse Practitioners Try New Tack To Expand Foothold In Primary Care

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

Nurse practitioners say efforts to expand primary care to millions of Americans under the health law are hampered by insurance industry practices that limit or exclude their participation. Despite laws in 17 states and the District of Columbia allowing them to practice independently, nurses with advanced degrees say some insurers still don’t accept them into their credentialed networks as primary care providers, while others restrict them mainly to rural areas. After years of fighting doctors in state legislative battles to expand their authority, nurse practitioners are taking a new tack: asking the Obama administration to require insurers to include them in the plans offered to consumers in new online marketplaces, which open for enrollment Oct. 1. Millions of newly insured consumers will need access to primary care, but "this will not happen if private insurers continue to exclude or restrict advanced practice registered nurses from their provider networks," said Karen Daley, president of the American Nurses Association (ANA), in a prepared statement. Nurse advocates want to be able to bill insurers directly for services, which would require them to be credentialed in insurers’ networks. But insurers say a mix of state laws governing nurses’ ability to practice independently complicates such efforts. They say they have taken other steps to expand primary care services, often using nurse practitioners in "medical homes," where doctors, nurses and other...

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New Concerns on Robotic Surgeries

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

A technologist with the da Vinci surgical system, which has been criticized in a series of reports. Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated PressA technologist with the da Vinci surgical system, which has  been criticized in a series of reports. In early March 2009, Erin Izumi, a woman in her 30s from Tacoma, Wash., underwent robotically assisted surgery to treat endometriosis. The operation at St. Joseph Medical Center dragged on for nearly 11 hours. Ten days later, Ms. Izumi was rushed to an emergency room, where doctors discovered that her colon and rectum had been torn during the operation. She was hospitalized for five weeks, undergoing a series of procedures to repair the damage, including a temporary colostomy, according to her attorney Chris Otorowski. But even though medical device manufacturers and hospitals are required to report every device-related death and serious injury to a database maintained by the Food and Drug Administration within 30 days of learning about an incident, no report about the case was made in 2009. Hospital officials declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for the manufacturer said it became aware of the incident only when Ms. Izumi filed a lawsuit. It disputed the claim and settled the case in May 2012. That was not the only lapse in reporting problems with robotic surgical equipment, a new study has found. The equipment, called the da Vinci system, is made by Intuitive Surgical Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. It has been on the...

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Looking for Furloughs in the Jobs Data

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

The number of workers on federal government payrolls has fallen only 55,000 since January, which might lead you to conclude that the sequester has not had much impact on federal employment. But the number of federal employees who report working part time because they cannot get full-time hours — a sign they might be on furlough — remains high. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey. The number of these “involuntary part-timers” was 144,000 in August. That is more than twice the number of involuntary part-timers in the federal government in 2012 and in 2011. (The numbers are not seasonally adjusted, so it’s best to use year-over-year comparisons rather than the change from one month to the next.) How furloughs are executed varies by government agency and department; in some cases workers must take one unpaid leave day each week, and in others they might be able to take their furlough days consecutively (in which case affected workers would report they didn’t work at all, not that they worked short hours). As a result, the numbers above might understate how many federal workers were furloughed in August. For comparison, the number of involuntary part-time workers was actually down year-over-year in the private sector, as Jason Furman, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, noted in a blog post:

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Christie Vetoes Bill That Would Have Prevented Some Truck Drivers From Being Treated As Independent Contractors

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from njtoday.net

Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill that would have protected some truck drivers from being inappropriately classified as “independent contractors,” drawing criticism from one of the bill’s sponsors. “Because of the Governor’s veto, unethical companies will continue to skirt the law by gaming the system to avoid paying their fair share of taxes,” said Assembly Deputy Speaker John S. Wisniewski.  “In doing so, they will also continue to deprive their drivers of Social Security, Medicare, Workers’ Compensation and Unemployment benefits.” This “is just the latest example of the Governor siding against hard working New Jerseyans. His veto keeps in place a system that is unfair to workers and unfair to those companies that play by the rules,” Wisniewski said. The bill passed by a 43-30-5 vote in the Assembly and a 21-17 vote in the state Senate, so lawmakers are unlikely to override the governor’s veto. Under the bill, “drayage,” or short-distance truckers, and parcel delivery drivers could not be classified as “independent contractors” unless the employers can show that the workers are truly independent. The businesses would have to demonstrate to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development that the workers are free from their day-to-day control, that the service is outside the usual course or place of business and that the employee is customarily...

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