President Obama on Monday called on Congress to revisit the controversial idea of providing a government-run insurance plan as part of the offerings under the Affordable Care Act.

What’s been described as the “public option” was jettisoned from the health law in 2009 by a handful of conservative Democrats in the Senate. Every Democrat’s vote was needed to pass the bill in the face of unanimous Republican opposition.

But in a “special communication” article published Monday on the website of JAMA, the American Medical Association’s top journal, the president says a lack of competition among insurance plan offerings in some regions may warrant a new look.

“Now, based on experience with the ACA, I think Congress should revisit a public plan to compete alongside private insurers in areas of the country where competition is limited,” Obama writes.

The president calls on Congress to take more steps to rein in the cost of prescription drugs and make government assistance more generous for those who still cannot afford health coverage; he also urges the 19 states that have not yet expanded the Medicaid program under the health law to do so.

The public option has been a point of controversy from the start. It was included in the version of the health law passed by the House of Representatives, and had support from most Democrats in the Senate, before it was dropped. Many liberals hoped — and conservatives feared — that having the government provide insurance alongside private companies would be a step toward a fully government-run system.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — under pressure from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ call for a single-payer government system — in February endorsed the idea of including a public option to allow people age 55 and older to purchase Medicare coverage.

On Saturday, as part of a deal with Sanders, Clinton announced she will also “pursue efforts to give Americans in every state in the country the choice of a public-option insurance plan,” which is broader than what Obama is endorsing.

But even if Clinton wins and the Democrats take back control of Congress in November, a public option remains a political long shot.

Obama’s article, titled “United States Health Care Reform: Progress to Date and Next Steps,” is apparently the first by a sitting president to be published by the prestigious medical journal.

Along with these recommendations for further action, Obama’s article includes a justification for the federal health law and statistics on how its implementation has improved insurance coverage for patients and improved health care quality.

Kristie Canegallo, the White House deputy chief of staff for implementation, says the article grew out of a comprehensive review of the law that the president requested from his staff late last year.

The review was to look at “what’s working, what’s not, and what we should do about it,” Canegallo says. Upon receiving the review, she adds, Obama “thought it was important to share some of this publicly.”

Among those parts of the law the administration says are working are the coverage provisions. “The number of uninsured individuals in the United States has declined from 49 million in 2010 to 29 million in 2015,” the president writes.

The article also says that the health law has played a substantial role in slowing the rate of health spending.

“While the Great Recession and other factors played a role in recent trends, the [president’s] Council of Economic Advisers has found evidence that the reforms introduced by the ACA helped both slow health care costs growth and drive improvements in the quality of care,” says the article.

Jason Furman, chairman of the council, says the continuing slow growth in health spending so many years out from the recession makes the argument by some other economists that the turndown in the U.S. economy was mostly responsible for the slowing of health spending “absurd at this point.”

While most of Obama’s journal article is a chart-driven, footnoted recitation of the impact of the health law, he does use his perch to suggest that the current state of politics in Washington threatens progress going forward.

“Any change is difficult, but it is especially difficult in the face of hyperpartisanship,” he writes. “Republicans reversed course and rejected their own ideas once they appeared in the text of a bill that I supported.”

Republicans are continuing their assault on the health law. Just last week, two House committees released a joint investigative report and held two hearings asserting that the administration is illegally providing funds to help lower-income individuals pay for their health coverage.

That claim is also the subject of a lawsuit in federal court.

The White House, however, remains unimpressed by the Republican claim.

“The Department of Justice … has made clear we have a permanent appropriation for this,” Canegallo says.

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article from FiveFilters.org: Most Labour MPs in the UK Are Revolting.

Employers’ efforts to reduce stress get low grades in a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

In particular, among those working adults who say they’ve experienced a great deal of stress at work in the past 12 months, the vast majority (85 percent) rate the efforts of their workplace to reduce stress as fair or poor.

Overall, 43 percent of working adults who told us their job negatively affects their stress levels. Others said their job negatively affects their eating habits (28 percent), sleeping habits (27 percent) and weight (22 percent).

“The takeaway here is that job No. 1 for U.S. employers is to reduce stress in the workplace,” said Robert J. Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard Chan School, who directed the survey. It included interviews with 1,601 workers, by landline and cellphone. The margin of error is 2.9 percentage points.

The poll also found that only about half of working adults have workplaces that offer wellness or health-improvement programs. About 1 in 4 rate their workplace as fair or poor in providing a healthy work environment, and more than 4 in 10 rate their workplace as fair or poor in providing opportunities for physical exercise or healthful food options at work.

About 1 in 5 working adults (22 percent) say something at their job may be harmful to their health, with chemicals and contaminants topping the list at 30 percent of those who have concerns about their workplace. We found 43 percent of construction or outdoor workers and 34 percent in medical jobs have health concerns in the workplace.

One of the obvious reasons for stress in the workplace may be overwork.

As is detailed in the poll report, working adults in our sample lived up to America’s reputation for being workaholics, with almost two-thirds of them saying they often or sometimes work overtime or on the weekends. About 1 in 5 say they work 50 or more hours each week in their main job.

Of course, taking breaks and vacations may help relieve stress. But our survey found that even among those who get paid vacations days, less than half use all or most of the days they earned in the past year. And when they do take vacation, 43 percent of high-pay workers say they often or sometimes work on vacation, with 28 percent of average pay workers and 18 percent of low-pay workers saying the same.

Why do Americans work so much? A majority (56 percent) of people working 50-plus hours a week in their main job say they do so because “it’s important for their career to work longer hours.” Half (50 percent) say they do so because they “enjoy it,” and 37 percent say they “need the money.”

These responses may be reflected somewhat in the chart below, where higher-paid workers more frequently say they work 50-plus hours, versus lower-pay workers.

It’s a similar story when it comes to sick leave. A majority of workers who get paid sick days and who did not use them all (73 percent) say they weren’t sick enough to use all of their days. More than one-third (37 percent) say a major reason why they didn’t take all their sick days is that they want to save them for another time, while 28 percent say there wouldn’t be enough people to cover their work.

Twenty percent of those who didn’t use all their sick pay say their workload made it too hard to take sick days, while another 20 percent say working more (and not taking sick leave) would help them get ahead at work.

Overall, just 16 percent of workers have used all of their paid sick days in the past year, while 6 percent used most, 45 percent used only some and 32 percent used none.

And then there are those who get no sick leave at all. While two-thirds of full- or part-time employed workers overall say their workplace offers them paid sick days, just 38 percent of workers in low-pay jobs say they get paid sick leave. Those ranking lowest in paid sick leave were those in construction/outdoor jobs (42 percent) and restaurant jobs (22 percent).

Does reluctance to use paid leave lead workers to go to work sick? A majority of working adults in our survey say they do just that. Of interest: Half of restaurant workers and more than half of workers in medical jobs say they still go to work always or most of the time when they have a cold or the flu.

But the connection between paid leave and going to work is fuzzy. Laura Brown, who studies the issue at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tells NPR’s Rae Ellen Bichell that their studies don’t show a strong link between the two.

“Forty percent of workers did say to us that they’d worked while sick in the past because they wouldn’t get paid if they didn’t work,” she says. “But when we look at the data statistically, that doesn’t really seem to be a large driving factor in whether or not people actually work when they’re sick.”

Leaving their coworkers short-staffed was a more likely reason for going to work while sick, she says.

In one of the first stories in our series, “The Workplace and Your Health,” we will look at the issue of juggling medical care with work in more depth, and how the lack of paid leave can lead to more medical problems. In another story, we’ll hear more about the stress that people with disabilities experience at work. Over 6 in 10 (62 percent), say their job has a bad impact on their stress level, compared with 41 percent of workers without disabilities.

Our poll found many working adults have concerns about safety at work. As the chart below shows, those in low paying jobs were more likely than those in high-paying jobs to say they often or sometimes face potentially dangerous situations.

And it’s unclear from the survey why so many restaurant and retail outlet workers say they often or sometimes face potentially dangerous situations on the job. But we did find that, overall, 19 percent of working adults have seen or heard of violence against employees in their workplace.

And while shift workers (54 percent) are more likely than day workers (38 percent) to say they face danger, a significant proportion of shift workers say they do so because it is better for their lifestyle (39 percent) and/or it makes it easier to care for the family (38 percent). Half say better pay associated with shift work is the reason they do it.

But it may be that the workplace is getting safer overall. Among those who ever face potentially dangerous situations at work, almost three-quarters (73 percent) believe their workplace is actively working to reduce these dangerous conditions.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
Recommended article from FiveFilters.org: Most Labour MPs in the UK Are Revolting.

Theranos was poised to revolutionize the blood testing industry by using only a few drops of blood in inexpensive tests. But now, federal regulators say they will bar the company’s dynamic founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes from owning or operating a lab for at least two years.

“Last year the government began to scrutinize the company after experts found that the results of the blood tests were inaccurate,” as NPR’s Laura Sydell told our Newscast unit.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal regulator, said in a letter made public Friday that it is also revoking certification for the company’s Newark, California laboratory and cancelling the lab’s approval to receive Medicare payments. The sanctions will not take full effect until September and the company can appeal.

The company will also be fined $10,000 for every day it is out of compliance with the regulator’s recommendations on how to run the labs, starting on July 12.

Theranos repeatedly failed to prove it had corrected issues previously identified by the regulator, according to the CMS letter, including a finding of “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” According to The New York Times, “that apparently referred to erroneous results in a test of blood clotting used for patients who take the blood thinner warfarin.”

Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan, told Laura that while the company can appeal, the likelihood for success is miniscule. “If the technology doesn’t work, there’s nothing. There’s just smoke and mirrors. A lot of hype and nothing,” he said. As for Holmes: “She’s radioactive at this point,” Gordon says. “I mean, she can’t stay at the company.”

Theranos said in a statement that it accepts “full responsibility” and vowed to “work non-stop to resolve the issues identified.” It added that Holmes will continue to lead the company and denied that any patients were harmed by their tests.

Holmes dropped out of Stanford at 19 to found the company, which sought to disrupt the tech industry with cheaper, simpler tests. As Laura reported, “Theranos was valued at 9 billion dollars; it had a contract with Walgreens.” Holmes herself was viewed as a wunderkind and drew comparisons to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laura said:

“Holmes had a beautiful vision, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and a board of big names like Henry Kissinger and George P. Schulz. The media had a love fest. Time magazine called Holmes one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was profiled in Fortune andThe New Yorker.”

But as Laura reported, the Theranos story is now viewed as a cautionary tale, “and questions are being raised about whether applying hardware and software business culture to biotechnology is dangerous.”

Let’s block ads! (Why?)