The BLS unemployment report shows total nonfarm payroll jobs gained were 88,000 for March 2013, with 20,300 of those jobs being temporary. February was revised up by 32,000 to 268,000 jobs gained and January was also revised up by 29,000 to show payrolls gained 148,000 employees for that month.
The BLS unemployment report shows total nonfarm payroll jobs gained were 155,000 for December 2012. October was revised down by 1,000 to 137,000 job and November was revised up, from 146,000 to 161,000 in employment gained. Many in the press are implying this is a good report when the monthly gain represents the very weak job growth America have been experiencing for the last two years.
The BLS unemployment report shows total nonfarm payroll jobs gained were 146,000 for November 2012. But there is hidden bad news in this report. October payroll gains were revised down, from 171,000 to 138,000. September payrolls were also revised down from 148,000 to 132,000. The below graph shows the monthly change in nonfarm payrolls employment.
A federal district judge in Virginia ruled on Monday that the keystone provision in the Obama health care law is unconstitutional, becoming the first court in the country to invalidate any part of the sprawling act and insuring that appellate courts will receive contradictory opinions from below.
You're going to love this one. The New York Times is reporting that instead of reducing health care costs by the reform bill, Doctors, Hospitals and Insurance companies are merging and also using their new clout for lobbying against any regulations. That's right, a monopoly and we all know monopolies do not bring down costs. Even worse, we have predictions that the big winners will be offshore outsourcers on the health care technology front, also consolidating.
Currently, there are bonuses in the new health care law for those bringing down costs. So, instead of really bringing down costs, Hospitals, Doctors are consolidating. The New York Times:
Now, eight months into the new law there is a growing frenzy of mergers involving hospitals, clinics and doctor groups eager to share costs and savings, and cash in on the incentives. They, in turn, have deployed a small army of lawyers and lobbyists trying to persuade the Obama administration to relax or waive a body of older laws intended to thwart health care monopolies, and to protect against shoddy care and fraudulent billing of patients or Medicare.
Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve — by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.
Ever go to a Doctor and feel you are being sold and peddled expensive services, procedures and drugs even to the point of a bogus diagnosis? Well, a new study validates what you perceived.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — When doctors become invested in an outpatient surgery center, they perform on average twice as many surgeries as doctors with no such financial stake, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Health System.
The Obama administration has unveiled a new plan and put it online at whitehouse.gov.
Ya know the White House needs to reduce their wordiness, especially when it doesn't say much.
One good thing is a rate review of insurance premiums.
One essential policy is “rate review” meaning that health insurers must submit their proposed premium increases to the State authority or Secretary for review. The President’s Proposal strengthens this policy by ensuring that, if a rate increase is unreasonable and unjustified, health insurers must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable. A new Health Insurance Rate Authority will be created to provide needed oversight at the Federal level and help States determine how rate review will be enforced and monitor insurance market behavior.
Slate magazine has been so kind to put up a mega links site, with reviews of each, on tracking health care reform.
If you're like me, you gave up on the insanity, are waiting for some bill to at least gel, then go online and read it. You then pray it doesn't change, butchered further by lobbyists, so you can voice your opinion to your representatives to vote yes or no.
If you dare, Kaiser has a spreadsheet of all of the major bills and their features. Of course this is subject to change.
No wonder this topic is a lobbyist pig fest. Who can figure this out to even discover if one of these is a good bill or not?
Slate singles out The Treatment, which for EP readers, you might like. Plenty of stats and graphs.
While the Senate kills any hope of any real health care reform, it looks like the House is gonna stick it to the rich. This happens to have been the original campaign promise.
House Democrats agreed yesterday to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for a sweeping expansion of the nation's health-care system, proposing a surtax on the highest earners that could send the top federal tax rate toward 45 percent.
Beginning in 2011, the plan would target all income over $350,000 a year for families and $280,000 a year for individuals, Democratic sources said. The surtax would start at 1 percent, rise to around 1.5 percent for families earning more than $500,000, then step up again, to around 3 percent, for families earning more than $1 million, Democrats said.
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