Doctors’ Recommended Treatment for Injured Workers is Denied 84% of the Time

Today's post is shared from Brett Gowen of the California Bar, Fraulob, Brown, Gowen & Snapp, a Professional Law Corporation

Brett Gowen Part Four in CAAA’s “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” Infographic on the contrast between the Workers’ Compensation vs. Group Health. Read the full article from CAAA below and let us know what you think in the comments section.use of IMR decision in From C.A.A.A: Sacramento, CA – The California Applicants’ Attorneys Association (CAAA), whose members represent Californians injured on the job, today continued its “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” series comparing quality health care measures in California workers’ compensation insurance to group health insurance. The fourth release compares the frequency of Independent Medical Review (IMR) decisions regarding denied medical treatment. The 800,000 workers’ compensation insurance patients appealed IMR treatment denials 60,776 times during a twelve-month period, while the vastly greater number of group health patients (16,000,000) filed just 1,558 appeals. This is one IMR decision for every 10,000 patients in group health vs. one for every 131 workers’ compensation patients. The IMR landslide of IMR appeals reflects a fundamental flaw in workers’ compensation: insurers send 3,500,000 doctors’ recommendations for care to their own Utilization Review (UR) companies each year. “Why do Californians hurt at work have to file 39 times as many IMR appeals of denied care as group health patients?” asked CAAA President Bernardo...

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Brett Gowen was born and raised in the Central Valley of California. He attended UC Davis for his undergraduate degree in Political Science with a minor in Economics. Brett graduated with distinction from University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. He practices Social Security law, Workers’ Compensation, and Elder Law, including estate planning with wills, trusts, deeds, powers of attorney, and conservatorships.

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Cuomo and Christie Order Strict Ebola Quarantines

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

The governors of New York and New Jersey on Friday ordered quarantines for all people entering the country through two area airports if they had direct contact with Ebola patients in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The announcement signaled an immediate shift in mood, since public officials had gone to great lengths to ease public anxiety after a New York City doctor received a diagnosis of Ebola on Thursday. A few hours later, New Jersey health officials said a nurse who had recently worked with Ebola patients in Africa and landed in Newark on Friday had developed a fever and was being placed in isolation at a hospital. The nurse, who was not identified, had been quarantined earlier in the day under the new policy, even before she had symptoms. Officials did not know Friday night whether or not she had the virus. The new measures go beyond what federal guidelines require and what infectious disease experts recommend. They were also taken without consulting the city’s health department, according to a senior city official. But both governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, portrayed them as a necessary step. “A voluntary Ebola quarantine is not enough,” Mr. Cuomo said. “This is too serious a public health situation.” In New York City, disease investigators continued their search for anyone who had come into contact with the city’s first Ebola patient, Dr. Craig Spencer, since Tuesday morning. Three people who...

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Saturday Night Live interns settle NBCUniversal wage lawsuit

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from news.yahoo.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Thousands of former interns at NBCUniversal, including on the late-night TV show "Saturday Night Live," have reached a $6.4 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit claiming they should have been paid for their work. The settlement resolves claims that NBCUniversal, a unit of Comcast Corp, violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and state laws in New York, California and Connecticut by classifying the plaintiffs improperly as "non-employee interns," exempt from applicable wage and hour requirements. Court approval is required for the settlement, which was filed Wednesday night in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The average payout would be about $505, court papers show. "It was probably a good idea for NBCUniversal to settle," said Marcia McCormick, an employment law professor at Saint Louis University School of Law. "NBCUniversal ran the risk that its decision not to pay interns might be viewed by a court as willful, which could result in much higher damages." NBCUniversal denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. A spokeswoman, Lauren Skowronski, declined to comment. Justin Swartz, a partner at Outten & Golden representing the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The July 2013 lawsuit is one of dozens filed in the United States challenging private companies' longstanding practices of paying interns nothing, or less than minimum wage. Many were filed after U.S. District...

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The Working Nation

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

During the Cold War era, Western economies delivered broad and growing prosperity for the middle class. This nurtured a general faith in political institutions and culminated in the democratic triumphalism of the 1990s. In a new essay called “The New Challenge to Market Democracies,” William Galston of the Brookings Institution argues that this era is over. In Europe, growth has stagnated and unemployment is at catastrophic levels, especially for the young. Japan is afflicted with economic stagnation and demographic decline. In the United States, the middle class is hollowing out. The median annual earnings of workers with bachelor’s degrees have not increased in three decades. A tree known by its fruit, democratic capitalism, Galston observes, has not produced the expected crop. This has led to a loss of confidence in the regime. Galston’s essay is about how economic problems degrade the national spirit and lead to a loss of faith in the whole enterprise. I think the malaise can be pinned down more precisely. In our meritocratic culture, satisfying and stretching work has become a psychological necessity. More than ever before, we are defined by what we do. If you are of prime age and you are not in the labor force, or engaged in some deeply stretching activity like parenting, then you will begin to feel drained inside. If you are in a dysfunctional workplace with bad personal relationships and no clear purpose, a core piece of you will begin to...

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'We Suck' on Minimum Wage, U.S. Labor Chief Says; Christie Has 'Head in the Sand'

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

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has “got his head in the sand” when it comes to the plight of minimum-wage earners in his state, U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez said.

“I’ve met with minimum-wage workers in New Jersey,” Perez said today at a Bloomberg News event in Washington. “I’ve met with folks who -- the only raise they got, they’re baggage handlers at Newark Airport, and the only raise they got was when the voters increased the minimum wage.”

President Barack Obama and his administration have been pushing Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25. Most Republicans in Congress and many Republican governors, including Christie, oppose the increase. The Democratic-led Senate has tried and failed repeatedly to advance the issue, and House Speaker John Boehner has said his Republican-led chamber won’t consider it.

“All the Democrats and the president want to talk about is minimum wage,” Christie, 52, told reporters today at a diner in Bordentown, New Jersey, where he was campaigning for congressional candidate Tom MacArthur, a Republican from Toms River. “The reason they want to do that is because they have not had the kind of growth in this country that we should be having in terms of wages and better jobs.”

New Jersey voters last November approved a constitutional amendment that will increase the...
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Chris Christie berated by U.S. Labor Secretary over minimum wage comments

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

In this Sept. 14, 2014 file photo, protesters participate in a rally outside a McDonaldis on Chicago's south side as labor organizers escalate their campaign raise the minimum wage for employees to $15 an hour. As Democrats across the country make an election-year push to raise the minimum wage, they are also looking to motivate younger people, minorities and others in their base to go to the polls on Nov. 4th. The party has put questions on the ballot in five states asking voters whether the minimum wage should be increased. TRENTON — Speaking at a Bloomberg News event in Washington D.C. today, U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez said Gov. Chris Christie has “got his head in the sand” when it comes to the nation's lowest-paid workers. Earlier this week, Christie made headlines by saying he was "tired" of hearing about the minimum wage as a mid-term election issue. According to a Bloomberg News report, Perez noted that when it comes to a national minimum wage, the U.S. is a dismal third-from-dead-last among the 34 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes the U.S., the United Kingdom, most Western European nations, Scandinavia, Mexico and Australia. "I mean, we suck,” Perez said. Minimum wage in New Jersey is now $8.25, a base rate that was hiked just this year, after voters passed a legislatively-referred...

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Daylight Saving Time Is Bad For Worker Health

Photo Credit:  ©2014 Jon L Gelman, All rights reserved Every year,  the time change swing mandated by Congress alters the clock we follow. Our bodies will suffer and accidents will happen and fatalities in the workplace will increase. The cycle is about to begin yet again as  Daylight Savings Time is about to end. Today's post by Mike Nudelman is shared from businessinsider.com Daylight saving time (DST) is about to end, and an interesting thing that you might not realize is how such a small shift in our time can have a large impact on our body clock and our health. These negative impacts of daylight saving time even cost us real money in lost productivity. DST starts at 2:00 a.m. (the clock gets turned forward to 3:00 a.m.) on the second Sunday in March and ends at 2:00 a.m. (the clock gets turned back to 1:00 a.m.) on the first Sunday of November. It was enacted during World War I to decrease energy use. Benjamin Franklin first advocated for the practice in 1784 because he noticed that people used candles at night and slept past dawn in the mornings. By shifting time by an hour during the summer, they would burn fewer candles and not sleep through the morning sunlight. The debate still rages as to if this time-switch does save energy, but along the way we've seen signs that it has negative effects on our health and the economy. Surprising health impacts Transitions associated with the start and end of DST disturb sleep patterns, and make people restless at night, which results in sleepiness the next day, even during a "Fall back" period, since when we Fall Back, we might have trouble adjusting to going to sleep "later" after the time change. This sleepiness leads to a loss of productivity and an increase in "cyberloafing" in which... [Click here to see the rest of this post]

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