Good news for workplace safety advocates. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times, OSHA has been ordered to release company names and the worker injury and illness rates of the American workplaces with the worst safety records. This will allow reporters and the general public to identify the riskiest employers and will also provide the data to evaluate OSHA’s efficacy. Read more on this story at Confined Space.
In a recent report, The Center for Studying Health System Change finds that the proportion of Americans under age 65 covered by employer-sponsored insurance fell dramatically from 67 percent to 63 percent between 2001 and 2003. According to Ross at The Bloviator, this change affects 9 million people, many in the 18-39 age range.
Thanks to Tom at Inter Alia, we learn that The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Information has launched a new version of Quality Check, a tool to compare the quality of medical care at more than 16,000 facilities nationwide. Tom points out that you can compare up to 6 organizations at the same time.
According to a recent survey of 450 large employers conducted by Hewitt Associates, most employers don’t track the costs of employee absence. The study notes that almost one-third of the company’s polled had implemented absence management programs.
Posts Tagged ‘health care’
Health & safety news briefs
Wednesday, August 4th, 2004Cover the Uninsured Week
Thursday, May 13th, 2004Thanks to Ross at The Bloviator for informing us that we are midway into the Cover the Uninsured Week, and that more than 20 million workers lack health insurance.
Ross provides a link to a 57-page state-by-state analysis of Americans without health insurance (PDF) commissioned by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and conducted by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center located at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. It uses data from the CDC’s 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Pages 23 through 36 provide state-by-state tables on uninsured rates for adults, comparisons of the uninsured by ethnicity, rates of both insured and uninsured who do not have a personal doctor or health care provider, and other important data. Texas has the dubious distinction of leading the nation with 27% uninsured working adults.
In conjunction with the week’s activities, the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a study that examines the cost of medical care for the uninsured and how much care they receive compared to fully insured people.
The study reports:
“Uninsured Americans could incur nearly $41 billion in uncompensated health care treatment in 2004, with federal, state and local governments paying as much as 85 percent of the care, according to a new Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) study. Even with uncompensated care, the study shows that people uninsured for the entire year can expect to receive about half as much care as people fully insured.
“Another major finding of the study, authored by Urban Institute researchers Jack Hadley and John Holahan, is that if the country provided coverage to all the uninsured, the cost of additional medical care provided to the newly insured would be $48 billion – an increase of 0.4 percent in health spending
Trading tax cuts for health care?
Sunday, April 11th, 2004How important is health care to the average American? We certainly knew it was important, but an article in bizjournals about a recent poll on health care conducted by the Commonwealth Fund drove the point home: It is apparently important enough that “62 percent of Americans would be willing to give back all of the recent federal tax cuts in exchange for universal health insurance coverage.”
And also on the topic of health care coverage or the lack of it, read 10 Myths of the Uninsured, testimony presented to a congressional committee by economist Len Nichols, Ph.D., vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). He pokes holes in many common assumptions about health care, including the idea that American businesses pay $400 billion a year to provide coverage for workers, stating that “Economists believe that ultimately most workers end up paying for health insurance in the form of lower wages.” Thanks to Pulse for pointing us to this article.
George’s Employment Blawg also has a good post on health care issues, including a link to a report entitled Health Care Benefit Crisis: Cost Drivers and Strategic Solutions (note: 30 page pdf file) by Eric Parmenter of Grant Thornton. We will quote George in summarizing it:
Packed with facts and figures, this document begins with a comprehensive, yet concise analysis of sources of increases in health care benefit costs, including: the aging of the baby boomers, costs of new technology, legislative initiatives such as HIPAA, “managed-care saturation,” “direct-to-consumer prescription marketing,” “insurance industry consolidation and profit-taking,” our “litigious society,” poor health care quality, “preventable and avoidable accidents and health problems,” lack of insurance, and “consumer cost insulation.”
Rounding out our reading on the health care crisis, Tom Mayo at HealthLawBlog updates us on recent developments on the issue of drug costs. Tom says: “Who knows? Maybe drug costs will be the leading edge of a health-care reform movement that drags the country, kicking and screaming, into universal coverage (maybe single-payer, but probably not).”
