Workers' Compensation

Monday, December 30, 2013

Emily Oster’s graph of the year: Why is the U.S. falling behind in life expectancy?

Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

Time has its "Person of the Year." Amazon has its books of the year. Pretty Much Amazing has its mixtapes of the year. Buzzfeed has its insane-stories-from-Florida of the year. And Wonkblog, of course, has its graphs of the year. For 2013, we asked some of the year's most interesting, important and influential thinkers to name their favorite graph of the year — and why they chose it.

Amidst all the focus on health insurance, I think it’s crucial not to lose focus on the fact that -- insurance or not -- the United States is lagging behind in health status. This chart -- from a broader report -- demonstrates not only how low our life expectancy is relative to other developed countries, but also how far we have fallen even in the last 30 years. Why are we not realizing the same gains that countries with comparable incomes are?

Emily Oster is an associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School. Her book is "Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong."See all the graphs of 2013 here, including entries from Jonathan Franzen, Bill McKibben, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

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Global cancer burden rises to 14.1 million new cases in 2012: Marked increase in breast cancers must be addressed

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, today released the latest data on cancer incidence, mortality, and prevalence worldwide.1 The new version of IARC’s online database, GLOBOCAN 2012, provides the most recent estimates for 28 types of cancer in 184 countries worldwide and offers a comprehensive overview of the global cancer burden.

GLOBOCAN 2012 reveals striking patterns of cancer in women and highlights that priority should be given to cancer prevention and control measures for breast and cervical cancers globally.

Global burden rises to 14.1 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer deaths in 2012

According to GLOBOCAN 2012, an estimated 14.1 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths occurred in 2012, compared with 12.7 million and 7.6 million, respectively, in 2008. Prevalence estimates for 2012 show that there were 32.6 million people (over the age of 15 years) alive who had had a cancer diagnosed in the previous five years.

The most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide were those of the lung (1.8 million, 13.0% of the total), breast (1.7 million, 11.9%), and colorectum (1.4 million, 9.7%). The most common causes of cancer death were cancers of the lung (1.6 million, 19.4% of the total), liver (0.8 million, 9.1%), and stomach (0.7 million, 8.8%).

Projections based on the GLOBOCAN 2012 estimates predict a substantive increase to 19.3 million new cancer cases per year by 2025, due to growth and ageing of the global population. More than half of all cancers (56.8%) and cancer deaths (64.9%) in 2012 occurred in less developed regions of the world, and these proportions will increase further by 2025.

Sharp rise in breast cancer worldwide

In 2012, 1.7 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer and there were 6.3 million women alive who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the previous five years. Since the 2008 estimates, breast cancer incidence has increased by more than 20%, while mortality has increased by 14%. Breast cancer is also the most common cause of cancer death among women (522 000 deaths in 2012) and the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women in 140 of 184 countries worldwide. It now represents one in four of all cancers in women.

“Breast cancer is also a leading cause of cancer death in the less developed countries of the world. This is partly because a shift in lifestyles is causing an increase in incidence, and partly

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Sunday, December 29, 2013

Police Salaries and Pensions Push California City to Brink

How much can be expended in public entity benefits to employees remains be challenging question. In California, a municipality is moving even closer to bankruptcy the cost of those issues.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. — Emerging from Los Angeles’s vast eastern sprawl, the freeway glides over a narrow pass and slips gently into the scrubby, palm-flecked Coachella Valley.

Turn south, and you head into Palm Springs with its megaresorts, golf courses and bustling shops. Turn north, and you make your way up an arid stretch of road to a battered city where empty storefronts outnumber shops, the Fire Department has been closed, City Hall is on a four-day week and the dwindling coffers may be empty by spring.

The city, Desert Hot Springs, population 27,000, is slowly edging toward bankruptcy, largely because of police salaries and skyrocketing pension costs, but also because of years of spending and unrealistic revenue estimates. It is mostly the police, though, who have found themselves in the cross hairs recently.

“I would not venture to say they are overpaid,” said Robert Adams, the acting city manager since August. “What I would say is that we can’t pay them.”

Though few elected officials in America want to say it, police officers and other public-safety workers keep turning up at the center of the municipal bankruptcies and budget dramas plaguing many American cities — largely because their pensions tend to be significantly more costly than those of other city workers.

Central Falls, R.I., went bankrupt in 2011 because its police and firefighters’ pension fund ran out of money. Vallejo, Calif., went bankrupt...

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Where the 1.3 million people losing unemployment aid this week live

NJ is going to suffer the most by the termination of the unemployment benefit extension. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

Darker shading means a larger share of a state's population will lose emergency jobless benefits on Saturday. Scroll down for an interactive map.

Darker shading means a larger share of a state’s population will lose emergency jobless benefits Saturday. Scroll down for an interactive map. (Committee on Ways and Means Democrats/Labor Department)
A projected 1.3 million people will lose emergency unemployment benefits when they expire Saturday.
Congress offered the extended benefits as unemployment ballooned during the Great Recession and has put off their expiration 11 times since. Renewing the long-term insurance is a top agenda item for the Senate when it convenes Jan. 6, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said. The body is expected to vote quickly on a three-month extension of the benefits.
Recipients still face, at best, a delay in their checks and, at worst, a permanent end to them. When the aid expires Saturday, the unemployed will only be able to collect a maximum 26 weeks of benefits in most parts of the U.S., down from about twice as much in many states.
The recession may technically be over, but for many the recovery has yet to begin. The plight of the long-term unemployed — a group the benefits are aimed at helping and whose ranks have swelled — has also proven particularly difficult to solve. Studies have shown that they are more likely to suffer mental-health setbacks and are less likely to be...

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US flu activity keeps climbing

Today's post was shared by CIDRAP and comes from www.cidrap.umn.edu

Highly magnified, digitally colorized
electromicrograph of 2009 H1N1 influenza virus,
the predominant strain this season.

US influenza activity kept climbing last week, as several states outside the South reported widespread cases, and the 2009 H1N1 virus continued to be the predominant strain, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Ten states reported geographically widespread flu activity, up from just four southern states the week before. The ten are Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wyoming.
Also, six states reported high influenza-like illness (ILI) activity as measured by visits to sentinel clinics, up from four states the previous week, the CDC reported. Nationally, 3.0% of medical visits were due to ILI, compared with the national baseline of 2.0%.
States with high ILI activity were Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Another eight states cited moderate ILI activity, and the rest had low or minimal numbers.
The CDC also reported a big jump in the percentage of respiratory samples that tested positive for flu: 24.1% (of 6,813 specimens), versus 17.8% a week earlier.

An H1N1 season so far

Of the positive specimens, more than 98% were influenza A viruses, and 2009 H1N1—the former pandemic virus, now a seasonal strain—accounted for nearly all of those that were subtyped. Only 1.8% of the positive specimens were influenza B isolates.
Last week the...

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Saturday, December 28, 2013

Experts Speak Out About The Asbestos Industry

Today's blog post is shared from Laurie Kazan-Allen and the http://ibasecretariat.org

Part I - About the Asbestos Industry

Part II - Asbestos Causes Cancer and Why Asbestos Should Be Banned

N.Y. Workers’ Comp Board to Transition Established UEF Claims Management to Triad Group

The New York State Workers’ Compensation Board recently announced it will transition the management of established Uninsured Employers’ Fund (UEF) claims to the Triad Group, LLC effective Jan. 13, 2014.
Triad Group, based in Troy, N.Y., is a professional service organization providing comprehensive claims management.
These claims consist of established claims where liability has been determined, and medical, and/or indemnity payments must be made. Triad will perform all claim-related functions and legal representation. Claimants who have such UEF claims, and all parties of interest, including health care providers and legal representatives, will receive individual written notice of the change in claim administrator.
The Workers’ Compensation Board said the transition of claim management should have no impact on claimants receiving workers’ comp benefits. Claimants who are receiving biweekly indemnity benefits will continue receiving benefits on the same schedule currently in place.
For medical and transportation reimbursement requests after Jan. 13, 2014, Form C-257, Claimant’s Record of Medical and Travel Expenses and Request for Reimbursement, must be sent to Triad for processing with a copy to the Workers’ Compensation Board. For medical services provided on or after Jan. 13, 2014, in established cases only, health care providers should send new medical reports, bills and authorization requests to Triad, and a copy to the...

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Senators Press Medicare for Answers on Drug Program

A Senate committee chairman said he is concerned about the “serious vulnerabilities” detailed in a ProPublica report about scams that target Medicare’s popular prescription drug program.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement that he plans to ask Medicare officials and the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “to look into the specifics of these cases, as well as determine the extent of any program-wide vulnerabilities that may have allowed them to occur.” The committee monitors fraud in government programs.

ProPublica reporters, using Medicare’s own data, identified scores of doctors whose prescription patterns within the program bore the hallmarks of fraud. The cost of their prescribing spiked dramatically from one year to the next — in some cases by millions of dollars — as they chose brand-name drugs that scammers can easily resell.

The cost of medications prescribed by one Miami doctor jumped from $282,000 to $4 million in one year, but her lawyer said Medicare never questioned it. A Los Angeles psychiatrist said Medicare didn’t shut off his provider identification number, used to fill prescriptions, even though he claimed someone had forged his name on more than $7 million worth of them.

All told, just the schemes identified by ProPublica totaled tens of millions of dollars.

While credit card...

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Nebraska Appeal Dismissed - Failure to Exhaust Remedies

The failure to exhaust administrative remedies terminated an appeal to Nebraska Spring court. Today's post is shared from starherald.com

The Nebraska Supreme Court dismissed an appeal Friday in a case involving a co-op employee who suffered a traumatic brain injury when he fell off a truck's flatbed.

The high court ruled that the Aurora Cooperative had filed its appeal too early, and sent the case back to a workers' compensation court for more deliberations.

John Jacobitz, of Milligan, was injured in August 2010 while cleaning up after a customer appreciation supper. Jacobitz and two other managers dropped off a grill in a company shed, and Jacobitz hopped onto the back of the flatbed truck for a ride back to the community center where the event was held, according to court records. He fell off in Ong after riding about half a block.

The dispute at trial focused on whether Jacobitz was acting within the scope of his job duties when the accident occurred. Jacobitz and the co-op disputed whether he was asked to help host the event, or whether he was told he could come if he wished. They also disputed whether the co-op or one of its vendors had sponsored the event.

A Nebraska workers' compensation judge ruled in Jacobitz's favor on Jan. 28, saying that he believed he had to attend the event for his job or that it was within his best interests to attend. The judge had not yet decided how much to award in benefits, but the co-op appealed the case.

"We conclude that the co-op has not appealed from a final order because the trial court has determined only...

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Related articles

Court Holds OSHA HazCom Standard Not A Bar To State Failure to Warn Claims

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has held that The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) HazCom Standard does not preempt state law, therefore allowing state lawsuits to go forward based on “failure to warn” claims.

The Court dismissed the Petition filed by the American Tort Reform Association for a definitive determination concerning Federal preemption of state court based actions. The case overrules an unpublished NJ Appellate Court decision dismissing a state based claim for “failure to warn.” Bass v. AirProducts & Chemicals Inc., et al., Docket No. A-4542-03T3, 2006 WL 1419375, May 25, 2006 (N.J. Superior A.D.), NJ Supreme Court denied certification, 907 A.2d 1014, Sept. 8, 2006.

The Court reasoned that the petition for review was, “….much to do about nothing.” The Court held, that while OSHA had no authority to issue an authoritative statement, OSHA could issue an interpretative statement that is not subject to notice and comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) 5 U.S.C. § 553(b).

The HazCom Standard establishes labeling requirements for chemicals used in the workplace. 29 C.F.R. § 1910.1200(a)(2).

American Tort Reform Association v. OSHA, et al., Docket No. 12-1229 (2013 D.C. Cir.) Decided: December 27, 2013.

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Social Security - Administrative Law Judge Rulings

ALJ Disposition Data
FY 2014 (For Reporting Purposes: 09/28/2013 Through 11/29/2013)
A listing of hearings completion data by name of individual administrative law judges (ALJ) for all ALJs in ODAR. The data includes hearing office name, total dispositions, decisions, allowances, denials and fully favorable or partially favorable decisions.
Click here to down oad the data in PDF format.

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Friday, December 27, 2013

McDonalds Kills Site That Advised Employees to Eat Healthy Meals

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

McDonald's had a thoughtful piece of advice for its own employees: If you want to be healthy, avoid fast food.
That's what the fast-food outlet posted on its employee resource website McResource Line. The company pulled the site on Wednesday, saying the advice, which a third-party vendor provided, was taken out of context.
"Fast foods are quick, reasonably priced and readily available alternatives to home cooking. While convenient and economical for a busy lifestyle, fast foods are typically high in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt and may put people at risk for becoming overweight," read one posting on the site's diet section, according to CNBC.
Another page displayed a large soda, french fries and a hamburger — a meal labeled as an "unhealthy choice." Next to it, the "healthier choice" of a cup of water, a salad and a sandwich.
These postings disappeared Wednesday when McDonald's took down the entire website, saying its content was unfairly misrepresented.
"A combination of factors has led us to re-evaluate and we've directed the vendor to take down the website," McDonald's wrote in a statement posted on its main website. "Between links to irrelevant or outdated information, along with outside groups taking elements out of context, this created unwarranted scrutiny and inappropriate commentary. None of this helps our McDonald's team members."
This is not the first...

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Charts: The Worst Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Since the Depression

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Officially, the Great Recession of 2007 ended in June 2009. Yet the economic downturn remains in full effect for millions of Americans, particularly the nearly 40 percent of the unemployed who have been looking for work for six months or more.
In less than a week, emergency federal unemployment benefits for 1.3 million of these jobless Americans are set to run out. Proponents of ending the benefits argue that the economy is expanding and that the benefits prevent people from finding work. "You get out of a recession by encouraging employment not encouraging unemployment," according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who opposes extending benefits. However, the data shows that while corporate America has bounced back, it is not restoring all the jobs it shed when the economy tanked five years ago.
Currently, nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. The unemployment rate stands at 7 percent. Both of those stats are improvements from a little more than four years ago, when the post-recession jobless rate peaked at 10 percent and more than 15 million people were out of work.

However, there currently are more than 4 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer. Not since the Great Depression has the United States experienced such massive and persistent long-term unemployment.

Overall, the long-term unemployed (those with out a job for six months or longer) make up nearly 40 percent of all the jobless.

Long-term unemployment has not affected...

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10 Reasons That Long-Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Unemployment is bad. Obviously long-term unemployment is worse. But it's not just a little worse, it's horrifically worse. As a companion to our eight charts that describe the problem, here are the top ten reasons why long-term unemployment is such a national catastrophe:

It's way higher than it's ever been before. When the headline unemployment rate peaked in 2010, it was actually a bit lower than the peak during the 1980 recession and only a point higher than the 1973 recession. As bad as it was, it was something we'd faced before. But the long-term unemployment rate is a whole different story. It peaked at a rate nearly double the worst we'd ever seen in the past, and it's been coming down only slowly ever since.
It's widespread. There's a common belief that long-term unemployment mostly affects older workers and only in certain industries. In fact, with the exception of the construction industry, which was hurt especially badly during the 2007-08 recession, "the long-term unemployed are fairly evenly distributed across the age and industry spectrum."
It's brutal. Obviously long-term unemployment produces a sharp loss of income, with all the stress that entails. But it does more. It produces deep distress, worse mental and physical health, higher mortality rates, hampers children’s educational progress, and lowers their future earnings. Megan McArdle summarizes the research

findings this way: "Short of death or a debilitating terminal disease,...

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That ringing isn’t Christmas bells: Tinnitus symptoms, prevention

Today's post was shared by NIOSH Transportation and comes from www.overdriveonline.com

Tinnitus is the medical term for “hearing” noises in your ears when there is no outside source of the sounds. The noises you hear can be soft or loud. They may sound like ringing, blowing, roaring, buzzing, hissing, humming, whistling or sizzling. They can be persistent and never-ending or intermittent.

Hearing loss is common in the trucking industry, especially for the drivers who have been on the road for more than ten years. While the newer trucks are a lot quieter — in-cab noise levels are about half what they were just fifteen years ago — protecting your hearing is one of the most effective ways to prevent tinnitus. Avoiding loud noises and wearing hearing protection when appropriate is recommended by the Mayo Clinic website.
However, with 265 known medications on the market that report tinnitus as a possible side effect, there are literally hundreds of reasons why someone may experience symptoms. Behind medication side effects, a common cause of tinnitus is inner ear cell damage. Tiny, delicate hairs in your inner ear move in relation to the pressure of sound waves. This triggers ear cells to release an electrical signal through a nerve from your ear (auditory nerve) to your brain. Your brain interprets these signals as sound. If the hairs inside your inner ear are bent or broken, they can “leak” random electrical impulses to your brain, causing tinnitus.
The three most common causes of inner ear cell damage are: age-related...

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Arthroscopic Partial Meniscectomy versus Sham Surgery for a Degenerative Meniscal Tear

Today's post was shared by NEJM and comes from www.nejm.org

Background

Arthroscopic partial meniscectomy is one of the most common orthopedic procedures, yet rigorous evidence of its efficacy is lacking.

Methods

We conducted a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial in 146 patients 35 to 65 years of age who had knee symptoms consistent with a degenerative medial meniscus tear and no knee osteoarthritis. Patients were randomly assigned to arthroscopic partial meniscectomy or sham surgery. The primary outcomes were changes in the Lysholm and Western Ontario Meniscal Evaluation Tool (WOMET) scores (each ranging from 0 to 100, with lower scores indicating more severe symptoms) and in knee pain after exercise (rated on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 denoting no pain) at 12 months after the procedure.

Results

In the intention-to-treat analysis, there were no significant between-group differences in the change from baseline to 12 months in any primary outcome. The mean changes (improvements) in the primary outcome measures were as follows: Lysholm score, 21.7 points in the partial-meniscectomy group as compared with 23.3 points in the sham-surgery group (between-group difference, −1.6 points; 95% confidence interval [CI], −7.2 to 4.0); WOMET score, 24.6 and 27.1 points, respectively (between-group difference, −2.5 points; 95% CI, −9.2 to 4.1); and score for knee pain after exercise, 3.1 and 3.3 points, respectively (between-group difference, −0.1; 95% CI, −0.9 to 0.7). There were no...

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Copyright

Monday, December 30, 2013

Emily Oster’s graph of the year: Why is the U.S. falling behind in life expectancy?

Global cancer burden rises to 14.1 million new cases in 2012: Marked increase in breast cancers must be addressed

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Police Salaries and Pensions Push California City to Brink

Where the 1.3 million people losing unemployment aid this week live

US flu activity keeps climbing

An H1N1 season so far

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Experts Speak Out About The Asbestos Industry

N.Y. Workers’ Comp Board to Transition Established UEF Claims Management to Triad Group

Senators Press Medicare for Answers on Drug Program

Nebraska Appeal Dismissed - Failure to Exhaust Remedies

Court Holds OSHA HazCom Standard Not A Bar To State Failure to Warn Claims

Social Security - Administrative Law Judge Rulings

Friday, December 27, 2013

McDonalds Kills Site That Advised Employees to Eat Healthy Meals

Charts: The Worst Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Since the Depression

10 Reasons That Long-Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe

That ringing isn’t Christmas bells: Tinnitus symptoms, prevention

Arthroscopic Partial Meniscectomy versus Sham Surgery for a Degenerative Meniscal Tear

Background

Methods

Results

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