Posts for August 10, 2010

AON CONSULTING'S HEALTH CARE REFORM WEEKLY BRIEFING

August 10, 2010 – AON Consulting

Last Week in Washington

HHS Awards $159 Million to Support Health Care Workforce Training
On August 5, HHS announced it will provide $159.1 million in grants to health care workforce training programs under the Affordable Care Act and Recovery Act to strengthen and grow the nation’s primary care workforce. The grants will target three types of programs: Nursing Workforce Development programs; interdisciplinary geriatric education and training programs; and Centers of Excellence programs for underrepresented minority students. State by state charts of the grant awards are also available on the HHS website.

Virginia Victory Boosts the Hopes of Health Care Mandate Opponents
On August 2, a Federal District Court Judge denied the Federal government’s motion to dismiss a constitutional challenge to the provision requiring citizens to acquire health insurance or pay a penalty under PPACA. In its motion to dismiss, the Federal government argued that Virginia lacks standing to bring a suit challenging the penalty and that the penalty is within the scope of congressional authority under either the commerce clause or the taxation power of the general welfare clause. Judge Hudson found that section 5000A expands prior applications of the commerce clause and that the conflict between Virginia law and Federal law gave the Commonwealth standing. The Federal motion to dismiss also argued that Virginia’s challenge amounted to an abatement of a tax. Under Section 7421, a person must pay a tax and then file suit for a refund. However, Judge Hudson ruled that Section 7421 does not prevent Virginia from filing suit, because a State is not a person as contemplated by the statute. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said that the judge’s decision “sends a strong signal that the constitutional case for the healthcare law is deeply flawed.”

HHS Announces $51 Million to Establish Insurance Exchanges
On July 29, HHS announced it will provide $51 million in grants for States to set up health insurance exchanges that will allow consumers to compare and select health insurance policies online. Each State and the District of Columbia are eligible for up to $1 million to create an exchange. The exchanges will not take effect until 2014, but analysts have said States must immediately begin working on them. HHS is soliciting comments from States, consumer advocates, employers, insurers, and others on rules and standards that exchanges should be required to meet; these are due by October 4.

Most Employers Will Keep Health Care Benefits—Fidelity Study
According to a Business Insurance report on a survey by Fidelity, 84% of employers are rethinking their health benefits strategies, but only 20% are considering dropping benefits entirely. The survey was conducted between June 10 and June 30 and includes responses from 459 employers. Findings include:
· 22% of small employers (500 or fewer employees) and 14% of large employers (more than 500 employees) said they were seriously considering eliminating coverage;
· 41% of small employers and 55% of large employers said they were considering implementing high-deductible consumer-driven health plans; and
· 49% of small employers and 25% of large employers expressed concerns about the potential cost of the legislation.

DRUG TESTING: A NO-NONSENSE APPROACH

August 10, 2010 – Employers Council

Recent changes to Utah's drug testing laws have left many people perplexed – but you don't have to be one of them! In this practical September 8th seminar, Council attorneys and guest expert Dr. Paul Teynor, a renowned medical review officer, will cover drug and alcohol testing laws (including the new changes to Utah's laws); specimen collection, testing, and confirmation processes; signs and symptoms of drug abuse; policy considerations, a sample policy; and more. You don't want to miss this seminar! Register using the attached form or contact Terri at 801.364.8479 or terriw@ecutah.org.

GERMAN EXPORTS SIGNAL STRONG GROWTH

August 10, 2010 – LateWire from Manufacturing.net

Germany's recovery is gaining pace as it leads Europe out of this year's debt crisis turmoil, with exports rising in June to their highest level since late 2008 ... continue

ONE MORE ACTION AGAINST EPA'S GREENHOUSE GAS REGULATION:

August 10, 2010 – FLAGG Weekly Communications

On August 2, the NAM filed a petition in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit seeking review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's tailoring rule, "Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring ruling; Final Rule, 75 Fed. Reg. 31,514." The NAM-led multi-industry coalition was just one of many groups to file petitions on the tailoring rule, as covered in an Aug. 3 Greenwire report, "Sierra Club, States File Challenges to EPA's 'Tailoring' Rule for Greenhouse Gases. "
Excerpt: Other groups that filed petitions yesterday: the Portland Cement Association, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, an industry coalition led by the National Association of Manufacturers, the Clean Air Implementation Project, the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission, the Utility Air Regulatory Group, the National Environmental Development Association's Clean Air Regulatory Project, Mark R. Levin and the Landmark Legal Foundation, the South Carolina Public Service Authority, and the Energy Intensive Manufacturers Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Regulation.

SLUGGISH RETAIL SALES EXTEND INTO AUGUST

August 10, 2010 – Today in Manufacturing.net

First week of August was sluggish at America's retailers, even with sales tax holidays kicking in for about 20 states, data showed Tuesday ... continue

THE PELOSI-REID ECONOMY

August 10, 2010 – Senator Jim DeMint – Forbes Commentary

Democrats haven't stimulated the economy. They've tranquilized it.

In January 2007, when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took control of Congress, the unemployment rate was 4.6% and the national debt was $8.6 trillion. Today, unemployment is 9.6% and the nation is $13 trillion in debt.

Pelosi and Reid have tried to convince voters they inherited all the debt from President Bush, but it was their bailouts, takeovers and power grabs that have blown the budget for years to come. These bills were written by Democrats and made law with Democrat votes.
The only thing that changed when President Obama took office is that the Democrats' economic agenda went from bad to worse. The Democrats have made the big-spending Republicans they knocked out of power in 2006 look like bean counters.

The first failed stimulus bill written by the Democrats to issue $600 checks so America could go shopping was crowned with the mother of all government handouts when President Obama signed his $787 billion stimulus bill in 2009. The Democrats topped that off with yet another "jobs bill" worth $18 billion, last March. Three stimulus bills and trillions of dollars later, what do the Democrat have to show for it? Three straight years of job losses.

The Pelosi-Reid 2008 stimulus also approved $300 billion in new loans for the Federal Housing Authority for risky, subprime borrowers and authorized Treasury to start buying shares of Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ) in July 2008.
In the fall of 2008, with an assist from then-presidential candidate Barack Obama who left the campaign trail for Washington to help broker the deal, Democrats wrote the $700 billion TARP bill to bailout banks that couldn't balance their books because of the trades they made on shaky housing loans. When Republicans tried to block the second $350 billion installment of the TARP funds from being released in January 2009, the Democrats stopped them, even though there was little accounting for how the first $350 billion was spent. To this day, the public doesn't know where all the TARP money has gone.

The Obama administration then gave Fannie and Freddie, organizations at the center of the financial meltdown, unlimited access to government coffers on Christmas Eve 2009. Today Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee half the nation's mortgages, worth about $5.5 trillion. Experts estimate it will take between $389 billion to $1 trillion tax dollars to keep Fannie and Freddie afloat. After all these housing bailouts, more than a million homes are expected to be foreclosed this year--a record high.

The biggest debt bomb, however, didn't come until 2010. It took the Pelosi-Reid Congress years to write their budget crushing, 2,300-page health care takeover.When they were done, taxpayers were on the hook for more than $2.6 trillion to pay for the new federal health care entitlement by the year 2023.

Stimulus. TARP. ObamaCare. These three words are being written into the political obituaries of politicians who voted for the programs--for good reason. These three bills, made law by the Pelosi-Reid Congress in only three years, will take decades' worth of work by regular folks, who dutifully clock in and out of their jobs 40 hours a week or more, to pay off.

In 2006 then-Senate Minority Leader Reid called President Bush and the Republican Congress "the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country" and said "no other president or Congress comes close." That may have been true, until he and Speaker Pelosi took their gavels. Rather than cutting the deficit, they used the spending mistakes of the Bush-era as a license to pile up exponentially more debt.

The day Pelosi became speaker and Reid became leader, the government's debt was 62% of gross domestic product. In 2012 government debt will be 100% of GDP. When the Obama stimulus bill passed in February 2009, 12.5 million Americans were unemployed. Today, 14.6 million Americans, 2 million more, are looking for work. Even more depressing is the fact that the jobs outlook remains bleak for years to come. The Obama administration's economic team has forecast that the national unemployment rate will average 9% or higher until 2012.
The high unemployment and debt rates prove Democrats haven't stimulated the economy. They've tranquilized it.

In a little over three years of the Pelosi-Reid Congress, the number of unemployed has increased by over 2 million, federal spending has increased 25%, our national debt has increased by 50%, and yearly deficits have risen over 550%. Today, 41 cents of every dollar spent by Washington is borrowed from nations like China. The $3.6 trillion in federal spending this year is equal to $30,543 for every American household.

Americans simply cannot afford the Democrats' agenda any longer. It's time to enact commonsense policies we know will work. Republicans must fight to pass a balanced budget amendment, repeal ObamaCare, eliminate wasteful pork-barrel spending, stop the Democrat tax increases and instead enact broad-based permanent tax relief. These are the pro-growth policies that will allow our economy to create long lasting jobs.

Although Obama won't be on the ballot in November, the Pelosi-Reid economy will. Americans who have lost work as a consequence of their misguided economic plans should consider putting the Democrats out of work, too.


Sen. DeMint is chairman of the Senate Steering Committee and a member of the Joint Economic Committee.

U.S. WORKER PRODUCTIVITY DROPS IN 2Q

August 10, 2010 – Today in Manufacturing.net

Worker productivity dropped 0.9 percent, the first drop in more than a year and a sign that companies may need to step up hiring if they hope to grow ... continue

WHOLESALE INVENTORIES UP IN JUNE, SALES FALL

August 10, 2010 – Today in Manufacturing.net

Commerce Department said inventories at the wholesale level edged up slightly in June but sales fell by the largest amount in 15 months ... continue