News
Rural hospitals could face ‘disaster’ under Affordable Care Act repeal
by John Finnerty
12.10.16 The Wolf administration warns that health coverage for nearly 700,000 Pennsylvanians is in jeopardy if President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans make good on promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That's sounding alarm bells because of the impact on those people who got coverage when the state expanded Medicaid last year, as well as rural hospitals. "It would be a disaster," if the government stopped paying for the Medicaid expansion, said state Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, R-Bucks. Hospit… Continue Reading
Repeal Obamacare? Bleak outlook for Florida
by Beth Kassab
12.10.16 Florida played a large role in pushing President-elect Donald Trump to victory. If the reality show host-turned-leader of the free world makes good on his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it's also the Sunshine State that stands to lose the most. More people from Florida than from any other state signed up for the federal health coverage last year. The people hired to walk others through the sign-up process - they're called "navigators," which is appropriate considering how complica… Continue Reading
Andrew Puzder Is the Wrong Choice for Labor Secretary
by The Editorial Board
12.08.16 Working in fast-food is no picnic. The industry is infamous for grindingly low pay and labor law violations. Yet Andrew Puzder, the chief executive of the company that operates Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, has been chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as labor secretary. Here is the record at those restaurants. When the Obama Labor Department looked at thousands of complaints involving fast-food workers, it found labor law violations in 60 percent of the investigations at Carl's Jr. and Hardee's,… Continue Reading
Rep. Scott to Remain Top Democrat on Key Panel
by Andrew Kreighbaum
12.08.16 House Democrats announced this week that Representative Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, will stay on as ranking member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. "I am honored to have the confidence and support of my colleagues to continue to serve as ranking member in the 115th Congress," Scott said in a statement. "I look forward to fighting for students, working families and retirees across the country and defending them against attacks on their access to a quality education, livi… Continue Reading
Donald Trump insulted a union leader on Twitter. Then the phone started to ring.
by Danielle Paquette
12.07.16 Chuck Jones uses a flip phone, so he didn't see the tweet. His friend of 36 years called him Wednesday night and said: The president-elect is smearing you on Twitter. Jones, a union leader in Indianapolis, represents the Carrier workers whose jobs Donald Trump has pledged to save. He said the sudden attention from the country's next leader didn't feel real. "My first thought was, 'Well, that's not very nice,' " he told The Washington Post on Wednesday night. "Then, 'Well, I might not sleep muc… Continue Reading
White flight is creating a separate and unequal system of higher education
by Anthony P. Carnevale
12.07.16 In the post-World War II era, whites fled the center city to the leafy-green suburbs and better neighborhood schools. Today, a similar trend has taken root in American higher education, only this time whites are fleeing the underfunded and overcrowded two-year and four-year open-access colleges for the nation's top 500 universities. Since the 1990s, the number of black and Latino high school graduates who enroll in college has more than doubled. But three-quarters of that increase has been at o… Continue Reading
GOP Obamacare Strategy Could Unravel Markets Quickly, Report Warns
by Jonathan Cohn
12.07.16 Republicans who think their "repeal and delay" strategy for Obamacare won't cause serious and immediate insurance disruptions should read a new report that came out early Wednesday morning. The report, from the nonpartisan Urban Institute, predicts that state insurance markets will start to unravel almost immediately and that, as early as next year, the ranks of the uninsured will begin swelling. And if Republicans can't come up with a replacement, the report says, the number of people without … Continue Reading
Obamacare repeal would hit California’s Republican districts hardest
by Dan Walters
12.06.16 How is this for a cosmic coincidence? Last week, Bakersfield Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, declared anew that once Donald Trump becomes president, Congress will repeal the Affordable Health Act, popularly known as Obamacare. "Once it's repealed you will have hopefully fewer people playing politics and everybody coming to the table to find the best policy," McCarthy told reporters. "I just want to make sure we get it right." As McCarthy was speaking in Washington, 2,377 mil… Continue Reading
Hospitals warn Trump, Congress of massive losses with Affordable Care Act repeal
by Amy Goldstein
12.06.16 The nation's hospital industry warned President-elect Donald Trump and congressional leaders on Tuesday that repealing the Affordable Care Act could cost hospitals $165 billion by the middle of the next decade and trigger "an unprecedented public health crisis." The two main trade groups for U.S. hospitals dispatched a letter to the incoming president and Capitol Hill's top four leaders, saying that the government should help hospitals avoid massive financial losses if the law is rescinded in a… Continue Reading
Life in Obamacare’s Dead Zone
by Inara Verzemnieks
12.06.16 In the Riverview Gardens apartment complex, roused by the sounds of her neighbors waking, Janet Foy stepped over the anatomy-and-physiology textbook she fell asleep reading and vowed to herself that today would be the day she finally came back to life. That today she could start reclaiming some of the confidence she once felt when she stood onstage at church and sang about forgiveness and redemption and You who make all things new. At 56, Foy was broke, jobless and living with her older sister i… Continue Reading
Millions Of People Are Having An Easier Time Paying Medical Bills
by Alison Kodjak
11.30.16 The number of people who have trouble paying their medical bills has plummeted in the last five years as more people have gained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and gotten jobs as the economy has improved. A report from the National Center for Health Statistics released Wednesday shows that the number of people whose families are struggling to pay medical bills fell by 22 percent, or 13 million people, in the last five years. And that's good news, according to consumer and hea… Continue Reading
Repealing Obamacare With No Replacement Will Cause Chaos, Obama’s Health Chief Warns
by Jeffrey Young
11.21.16 WASHINGTON - The GOP's favored strategy of taking quick action to repeal the Affordable Care Act and delaying enacting a new health care reform platform would wreak havoc on the health insurance market and the people it serves, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell warned Monday. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Burwell predicted health insurers would abandon the Obamacare exchanges in 2018 if they don't know what, if anything, is going to follow them. The result, she ar… Continue Reading
Jeff Sessions’ Other Civil Rights Problem
by Thomas J. Sugrue
11.21.16 In 1986, the Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee torpedoed Ronald Reagan's nomination of Jeff Sessions to the federal bench. As sworn testimony there revealed, Mr. Sessions, then the United States attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, had referred to the N.A.A.C.P. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) as "un-American" and "Communist inspired." He had joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was "O.K." until he discov… Continue Reading
Latina Hotel Workers Harness Force of Labor and of Politics in Las Vegas
by Dan Barry
11.06.16 LAS VEGAS - She begins her day in black, the natural black before dawn and the requisite black of her uniform: the T-shirt, the pants, the socks, the shoes with slip-resistant treads, all black. The outfit announces deference. She crams fresh vegetables into a blender and holds a plate over its mouth as the machine whips up her green liquid breakfast. Its whine sounds the alarm for her four school-age grandchildren who, one by one, emerge sleepwalking from corners of their crammed rented house.… Continue Reading
These workers are the most likely to be hurt on the job
by Aimee Picchi
11.01.16 Getting old or sick isn't for weaklings, but it turns out it's also not easy on those who care for the elderly or infirm. Employees in state-run nursing homes and hospitals suffer from the highest rate of on-the-job injury, surpassing that of even construction or policing, according to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 12 out of 100 workers in state-run nursing homes or hospitals suffered nonfatal workplace injuries last year, compared with 8 out of 100 workers in state c… Continue Reading
For some low-income workers, retirement is only a dream
by Maria Ines Zamudio
10.24.16 CHICAGO - It was a striking image. A photo of an 89-year-old man hunched over, struggling to push his cart with frozen treats. Fidencio Sanchez works long hours every day selling the treats because he couldn't afford to retire. The photo and his story went viral and thousands of people donated more than $384,000 for his retirement. His story is a window into a dark reality: Many low-wage workers say they can't afford to retire. With no money saved for retirement, home care worker Gwen Strowbri… Continue Reading
U.S. Parents Are Sweating And Hustling To Pay For Child Care
by Maureen Pao
10.22.16 Life is pretty busy for Mike Buchmann, a high school art teacher and football coach, and his wife Shannon, who works as an assistant controller at a small private college near their home in Mishawaka, Ind. Everyone is out the door by 7:45 each morning: Mike shuttles their two older kids to before-school care, while Shannon drops off their 14-month-old at a church-based child care center before they head off to their full-time jobs. After their mortgage - which is about 20 percent of their comb… Continue Reading
Thousands Of Girls Are Locked Up For Talking Back Or Staying Out Late
by Hanna Levintova
09.20.16 It was late on a weekend night and Kara was bored. Her adopted mother, Dotty-nearly 70, arthritic, and having recently recovered from heart surgery-was asleep upstairs. Talking with her cousin on the phone wasn't easing Kara's restlessness. She wanted a snack from the corner store a few blocks away, so the 12-year-old told her cousin she was going to drive her mom's car. "That is not a good idea," her cousin warned. "I'll be all right," Kara said before hanging up. She went outside, turned… Continue Reading
Companies Can't Set Own Rules For Injured Workers, Okla. Court Says
by Michael Grabell
09.13.16 A national campaign to rewrite state laws and allow businesses to decide how to care for their injured workers suffered a significant setback Tuesday when the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma's version of the law is unconstitutional. The 2013 legislation gave Oklahoma employers the ability to "opt out" of the state workers' compensation system and write their own plans, setting the terms for what injuries were covered, which doctors workers could see, how workers were compensated and … Continue Reading
Enrollments surge at historically black colleges amid rise in racial tensions
by Valerie Strauss
09.11.16 Racial tension rose on many colleges and university campuses last year, with protests erupting on dozens of campuses and a national debate over "safe spaces," "trigger warnings" and freedom of expression. A recent survey of college and university presidents conducted by Insider Higher Ed and Gallup found that less than 25 percent thought race relations on campuses other than their own were good or excellent during 2015-16 (though 84 percent said race relations on their own campuses were just fin… Continue Reading