Workers' Compensation

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Wages should be growing faster, but they’re not. Here’s why.

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

When it comes to stagnant wage trends, I yield to no one (except maybe the Economic Policy Institute’s Larry Mishel) in my efforts to elevate the issue and tie it to deep-seeded structural changes that have been zapping worker bargaining power for decades. I’ve tried to be particularly vigilant in ringing this lack-of-real-wage-growth alarm bell in recent months, as the tightening job market has led to threatening chatter about the need for the Federal Reserve to ratchet up rates sooner than later.
So when I tell you I’m a little surprised to see almost no movement in wage growth despite the improving employment situation, I hope you’ll give me a listen. To be clear, that’s “a little surprised.” There’s still considerable slack in the job market, and, like I said, workers’ ability to bargain for a bigger slice of the pie has taken a real beating over the years.
But given the extent to which the job market has tightened up in recent months, I would expect a bit more wage pressure than I’ve seen (“tightening,” “improving,” “less slack” are all econo-mese for stronger labor demand leading to faster job growth and lower unemployment). So let’s look at the evidence for these claims and think about why the wage dog is not barking. While I offer a number of credible hypotheses, the one I favor is pretty straightforward: Raising pay is simply not part of the business model of...

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US officials expected to announce Ebola screening at airports

Employees at airports have a new problem to be worried about: Ebola. Today's post is shared from cidrap.umn.edu/
Federal officials are finalizing details on Ebola screening steps for travelers arriving at US airports, which may be announced in a few days and may resemble the kinds of questions that outbreak countries are asking departing passengers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, said today.

The risk of another travel-linked Ebola case, such as the one in Texas, can never be reduced to zero until West Africa's outbreak is extinguished, he said at a media telebriefing today. But he said the CDC and other government agencies are taking a hard look at additional steps, focusing on ones that won't hamstring the response process underway overseas.
The three main outbreak countries have so far screened about 36,000 people departing on airlines, with three fourths of them bound for destinations outside the United States. The CDC has trained airport screeners in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, which have flagged 77 people with fever and 3 people with other symptoms. As far as the CDC knows, none of the people with fever had Ebola, and most had malaria, a common illness in that part the world, Frieden said.
"I can assure you we will take additional steps, and the details will be worked out and announced in a few days," he added.

Senator suggests screening steps

US Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a statement today saying he spoke with Frieden about tougher screening at US airports and is pleased that the CDC is preparing to...

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Ebola lawsuits would face high hurdles in Texas

Today's post is shared from reuters.com/
Potential suits against the Dallas, Texas hospital that sent home a patient later diagnosed with Ebola face long odds in the face of state medical malpractice laws.
Texas tort-reform measures have made it one of the hardest places in the United States to sue over medical errors, especially those that occurred in the emergency room, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers and legal experts.
“It’s one of the highest legal burdens of any state in the country,” said Joanne Doroshow, executive director of New York Law School’s Center for Justice and Democracy, who studies U.S. tort law.

A general view of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in seen in Dallas, Texas, October 4, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young

Although it appears no lawsuits have been filed in connection with the case, possible legal claims could be brought by Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan or his family, anyone he may have exposed to the disease, or hospital workers put at risk.
Duncan, now in critical condition, first visited Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital’s emergency room late at night on Sept. 25. Duncan told a nurse he had just returned from Liberia, where the disease is raging, but he was sent home with antibiotics. On Sunday, Sept. 28, he was admitted after his symptoms became worse, becoming the first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.
Texas Governor Rick Perry on Monday said that there had been "mistakes" handling the Ebola diagnosis, the latest in a series of officials and health experts questioning the initial response.
The hospital on Friday...

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Canceled Health Plans: Round Two

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

Thousands of consumers who were granted a reprieve to keep insurance plans that don’t meet the federal health law’s standards are now learning those plans will be discontinued at year’s end, and they’ll have to choose a new policy, which may cost more.

Cancellations are in the mail to customers from Texas to Alaska in markets where insurers say the policies no longer make business sense. In some states, such as Maryland and Virginia, rules call for the plans’ discontinuations, but in many, federal rules allow the policies to continue into 2017.
Insurers sending the notices to some customers include Anthem, one of the largest insurers in the country, Baltimore-based CareFirst, Health Care Services Corporation in Chicago, Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., Humana in Louisville, Ky., and Golden Rule, an Indianapolis subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.
One reason behind the switch is that insurers determined they can make more money selling plans that comply with the Affordable Care Act, often at higher premiums that may be subsidized by the government.
“They’re getting a lot more revenue, often for the same person,” said consultant Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive.
Last year, similar cancellation letters sent to more than 2 million customers created a political firestorm for President Barack Obama, who had repeatedly...

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Work Comp and Baseball

Today's post was shared by WorkCompCentral and comes from daviddepaolo.blogspot.com

I was watching the Oakland As versus the Kansas City Royals game on television the other night. Kansas City tied up the game and I went to bed so I could write this blog in the morning and good thing - the game remained tied until the 12th inning where the Royals scored the winning hit at the bottom of the inning, far past my bedtime.
The player securing the win for the Royals, Salvador Perez, had six at bats but didn't hit anything until his last when he knocked in a single. In fact, his prior at bat he whiffed so bad even I could tell the pitch was WAY outside the zone.
My buddy, a baseball aficionado, explained to me the next day, "Baseball is a game based on failure. A great hitter hits .300. He fails seven out of every ten attempts."
The odds are so great against the batter in baseball that hitting a pitch less than a third of the time is considered "great."
Sometimes it seems that workers' compensation is like a batter in baseball - the odds of a positive outcome seem so enormous that when one occurs it's "great."
Workers' compensation, like baseball, requires a big team. There's the sale, i.e. brokers. There's policy underwriting and administration - people that consider the risks and price coverage accordingly. There's the employer, which precipitates work comp in the first place. Doctors are needed to treat; attorneys bring and manage disputes. Claims administrators are necessary to keep the claim moving. There are a whole host of other...

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For most chronic pain, neurologists declare opioids a bad choice

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.latimes.com

Patients taking opioid painkillers for chronic pain not associated with cancer -- conditions such as headaches, fibromyalgia and low-back pain -- are more likely to risk overdose, addiction and a range of debilitating side effects than they are to improve their ability to function, a leading physicians group declared Wednesday.

The long-term use of opioids may not, in the net, be beneficial even in patients with more severe pain conditions, including sickle-cell disease, destructive rheumatoid arthritis and severe neuropathic pain, the American Academy of Neurologists opined in a new position statement released Wednesday.

But even for patients who do appear to benefit from opioid narcotics, the neurology group warned, physicians who prescribe these drugs should be diligent in tracking a patient's dose increases, screening for a history of depression or substance abuse, looking for signs of misuse and insisting as a condition of continued use that opioids are improving a patient's function.

In disseminating a new position paper on opioid painkillers for chronic non-cancer pain, the American Academy of Neurology is hardly the first physicians group to sound the alarm on these medications and call for greater restraint in prescribing them.

But it appears to be the first to lay out a comprehensive set of research-based guidelines that...

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Foster Farms outbreak sparks legal petition to outlaw dangerous pathogens

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

Although hundreds of Americans were hospitalized over the past two years with salmonella poisoning linked to Foster Farms chickens, the U.S. Agriculture Department said it had no power to order a recall on the contaminated poultry.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest took steps Wednesday to change that. The Washington-based group filed a petition with the USDA, outlining legal arguments for a ban on four of the most dangerous strains of salmonella.

The strains are all resistant to multiple classes of the most commonly used antibiotics, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

In its petition, the consumer group included its own analysis that showed 2,358 illnesses, 424 hospitalization and eight deaths have been linked to antibiotic-resistant salmonella strains found in meat and chicken. Most of the cases are from the mid 1990s to present.

In its announcement, the group said findings of their analysis “obligates USDA to keep those strains out of the food supply.”

Salmonella Heidelberg — which the CDC linked to the Foster Farms outbreak — is one of the strains that CSPI is seeking to ban.

The Foster Farms outbreak lasted for more than 15 months, and CDC did not declare it to be over until late July. The agency also said the outbreak sickened at least 638 people, with nearly 40 percent requiring hospitalization. The company has made a number of changes in its plants over the past year and says that, over the past several months, the rate...

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Copyright

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Wages should be growing faster, but they’re not. Here’s why.