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

Friday, October 10, 2014

Minimum Wage and Overtime Protections Are Delayed for Home-Care Workers

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

With numerous states pushing for a delay, the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it would put off enforcement of its plan to extend minimum-wage and overtime protections to the nation’s nearly two million home-care workers.
A year ago, the Labor Department announced that the wage protections would take effect nationwide Jan. 1, 2015, but the department said Tuesday that it would not enforce the rule for six months — from Jan. 1 to June 30. For the second six months of the year, the department said, it would “exercise its discretion” in whether to bring enforcement actions against any employers that decline to pay minimum wage or overtime.
Under the new rule, home-care workers would have to receive the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and time and a half when they work more than 40 hours a week. Numerous states, already facing budget strains, complained to the Obama administration about the cost.
Fifteen states have state minimum wage and overtime protections for home-care workers; six others and the District of Columbia require that they receive at least the minimum wage.
In announcing the rule in September 2013, Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said, “Almost two million home-care workers are doing critical work, providing services to people with disabilities and senior citizens,” yet they are “lumped into the same category as babysitters.”
The new rule ends a 40-year-old exemption from federal wage laws that treated...
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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). 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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Thursday, October 9, 2014

Turning 65? 9 Tips For Signing Up For Medicare

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

This KHN story also ran in . It can be republished for free. (details)
“Welcome to America's hottest talk line. Ladies, to talk to interesting and exciting guys free, press 1 now. Guys, hot ladies are waiting to talk to you . . . ."
Wait! I thought I was calling Social Security to ask a question about enrolling in Medicare.



It's the first hour of my mission to sign up for Medicare and already I'm making mistakes. In this case, it's minor (and amusing), misdialing the toll-free number by one digit. But it serves as a warning: There are many missteps I can make, some of them serious, if I'm not careful.
Even for me, a consumer reporter who has written about health-insurance issues, enrolling in Medicare is a daunting task. The terminology is confusing and the options are seemingly infinite, based on the amount of promotional material that's begun arriving in my mailbox. The letters from various insurance carriers began appearing exactly six months before my 65th birthday and after three months they weighed 1.5 pounds. More packets arrive daily. Medicare experts tell me I can thank the data brokers for the onslaught: Names and birth dates are for sale to anyone.
Enrolling is a task I'd like to put off, but I can't. I no longer have job-based insurance, and my current health insurer has notified me that my policy will soon expire, on the first of the month in which I turn 65.
I know that the decisions I make may differ from those made by friends, relatives and even my...
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Government Investigates 938,000 Ford Sedans for Steering Problem

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



After the Ford Motor Company recalled about 1.1 million vehicles this year for power steering failures, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the same problem on another 938,000 cars.
The safety agency is investigating whether a recall is necessary on Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ sedans from the 2010-12 model years and Mercury Milan sedans from the 2010 and 2011 model years, according to a report posted Monday on the agency’s website.
N.H.T.S.A. says it has received 508 complaints from owners, including four reports of accidents that occurred when the power steering assist suddenly failed, requiring “increased steering efforts that contributed to a loss of control and crash.” No injuries were noted. The complaints go back to 2010 and include many reports of close calls.
“As the vehicle was attempted to be turned right into driveway the power steering completely failed and the driver nearly hit another vehicle,” one owner wrote the safety agency in August 2013. “Every bit of the 120-pound female driver’s strength was needed to manually steer the vehicle into the parking lot.”
The owner also said that the repair cost $1,600.
Last year, Ford recalled nearly 1.2 million vehicles in the United States. So far this year, Ford has recalled about 3.9 million vehicles. That includes two recalls in May for sudden power steering assist failures. The largest action, which covered about 915,000 Ford Escape and...
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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). 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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Medicare Revises Nursing Home Rating System

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



The federal government on Monday announced substantial changes to the government’s five-star rating program for nursing homes, a widely used consumer tool that has been criticized for its reliance on self-reported, unverified data.
The five-star rating system has become the gold standard for evaluating the nation’s more than 15,000 nursing homes since it was put in place five years ago, even though two of the major criteria used to rate the facilities — staffing levels and quality statistics — are reported by the nursing homes themselves and generally are not audited by the federal government.
On Monday, officials said they would make several changes, starting in January, aimed at addressing some of these concerns.
Nursing homes will have to begin reporting their staffing levels quarterly using an electronic system that can be verified with payroll data. And officials will initiate a nationwide auditing program aimed at checking whether the so-called quality measures rating — which is based on information collected about every patient — is accurate.
Beginning in January, nursing homes’ ratings will also be based partly on the percentage of its residents being given antipsychotic drugs.
In August, The New York Times reported that the rating system relied so heavily on unverified and incomplete information that even homes with a documented history of quality problems were earning top ratings. The number of homes with above-average ratings...
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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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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). 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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