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What’s New in Work and Family

Karen Corday November 6th, 2009

New from the Network:

  • Our latest Topic Page, Single Workers, is live! Thank you to Caroline Ogilvy and Jane Case for compiling and Bella DePaulo for advising. Please let us know what you think!

New, free work-life content online:

Military Families and Workplace Flexibility: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010

Featured Guest Blogger November 3rd, 2009

Marcy Karin is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of a new Work-Life Policy Unit of the Civil Justice Clinic at the ASU Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Her research interests include workplace law, policy, and practice, civil justice and litigation, and women’s legal history. She is also an active member of the national work-life law and policy community. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

Military families have acute needs for workplace flexibility. Dealing with multiple deployments, war-related disabilities and injuries, frequent moves, geographic isolation from services at bases, transitions back to civilian life, and other service-related needs impact servicemembers and their families in a real way. Military families also struggle with many work-life stresses that all families face. As The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation correctly notes, “policies that ease the strains on service members’ families” must be enacted.

Last week, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (NDAA 2010) into law. The NDAA 2010 includes the Supporting Military Families Act of 2009, which expands the qualifying exigency and military caregiver provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). President Bush enacted these provisions last year in the first successful attempt to amend the FMLA.

Under the 2008 FMLA expansion, eligible employees are allowed to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected time off for any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the spouse, son, daughter, or parent of an employee is on active duty (or has been notified of an impending call to active duty) in the National Guard or Reserves in support of a contingency operation. Department of Labor regulations define a qualifying exigency to include short-notice deployment, military events and related activities, childcare and school activities, financial and legal arrangements, counseling, rest and recuperation, post-deployment activities, and any other service-related activity that the employer and employee agree is a qualifying exigency.

The 2008 law also created military caregiver leave, which allows an eligible employee (spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin of a covered servicemember) to take up to 26 weeks of job-protected time off to care for a wounded servicemember.

The NDAA 2010 expands the scope of who may take time off under the 2008 provisions. Specifically, the new law allows:

  • family members of active duty members of the regular Armed Forces to use qualifying exigency leave when the servicemember is deployed to a foreign country. (The 2008 law only applied to family members of the National Guard and Reserves who were called to active duty in support of a contingency operation.);

  • federal employees to use qualifying exigency leave. (Only certain federal employees were allowed to use it under the 2008 law.);

  • military caregiver leave to be taken for veterans who served within 5 years of the date of medical treatment, recuperation, or therapy. (The 2008 law only applied to servicemembers who were currently in the military.); and

  • military caregiver leave for existing or preexisting injuries that are aggravated in the line of duty during active duty service. (The current regulations deny coverage for these injuries.).

The expansions took effect when the President signed the law. Proposed regulations from the Department of Labor and the Office of Personnel Management, which will be drafted in consultation with the Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs, should be issued shortly.

At the bill signing ceremony, President Obama noted that this law “reaffirms our commitment to our brave men and women in uniform and our wounded warriors.” This is just the first of many laws that President Obama will likely sign that reaffirm this commitment and provide military families with access to additional time off and other types of workplace flexibility. We can also expect the President to fulfill his campaign promise to support the needs of all workers as they struggle to find a work-life balance. Stay tuned for more action from the Obama Administration in the months and years to come. In the meantime, employers should revise their FMLA policies to reflect the NDAA 2010, as well as notify employees of these changes.

For more stories about the flexibility needs of military families, listen to the remarks of Dr. Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, Kelly Hruska, Sheila Casey, and Patricia Kempthorne at this 2008 Workplace Flexibility 2010 briefing.

Health Care in America: The Work-Family Effects: PART III: Health Care and American Businesses

Featured Guest Blogger October 28th, 2009

Andrew Kang is a Graduate Policy Assistant at the Sloan Work and Family Research Network. This is a continuation of PART I: The Current Health Care System in America and PART II: The American Health Care System and Families.

How Health Care Costs Affect Businesses:

Since most people get their health insurance through their jobs, employers are saddled with most of the burden of rising health care costs and insurance premiums. As employees’ shares of the cost of insurance increase, it is easy to ignore the financial expenses employers are absorbing on their employees’ behalf.

  • Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing cost components for employers.
  • In 2008, employer health insurance premiums increased by 5%, twice the rate of inflation.
  • Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have been rising four times faster than workers’ earnings since 1999.
  • This increase places corresponding downward pressure on salary increases, new hiring, and capital investment.
  • For small businesses, health insurance premiums have increased 12% annually. Rapidly rising health insurance premiums are the main reason cited by small firms for not offering coverage.
  • Surging health care costs slow the rate of job growth, contributing to a recessionary economy) and making it more expensive for companies to add new workers.
  • The high cost of health care for businesses also suppresses wage growth for current workers by increasing total compensation costs.
  • As health care costs rise as a percentage of operations expenses, corporate operating margins are reduced, which limits the capacity of companies to grow through investment in research, plant and equipment.
  • High medical insurance costs place American firms at a disadvantage in world markets where they compete against companies with much lower health care costs in the nations where they operate.

Health Care For Profit

In America, health care is not considered a right, but a privilege to be earned. And as a privilege, a lot of money is made by providing it.

  • In 2007, health-related companies in the Fortune 1000 earned nearly $71 billion.
  • The medical establishment (hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, medical device manufacturers, etc.) spend nearly $6 billion per year on advertising.
  • Pharmaceuticals and medical equipment ranked third and fourth, respectively, in terms of profits as a share of revenue.
  • From 2000-2007, the annual profits of America’s top 15 health-insurance companies increased from $3.5 billion to $15 billion.
  • The 50 largest nonprofit hospitals or hospital systems made a combined net income (profit) of $4.27 billion in 2006, nearly eight times more than five years earlier.

Facts About Medical Malpractice:

Much has been made of the effect of medical malpractice jury awards, settlements, and rising premiums on the cost and quality of health care. However, there is little evidence establishing conclusive links. Meanwhile, medical malpractice premiums continue to increase at a rate that puts economic pressure on practitioners. The question is, does this influence outcomes?

  • A new Dartmouth study suggests that medical malpractice jury awards and settlements are not responsible for raising insurance premiums or health care costs.
  • The GAO recently found that access to care was generally not impacted by increasing cost of medical malpractice lawsuits.
  • The GAO concluded that liability laws have positive effects on doctors’ behavior, and are frequently the only means by which the consumer can hold the medical establishment accountable.
  • The Congressional Budget Office estimated that malpractice costs account for less than 2% of the national health spending.
  • There is little research to support anecdotal reports that rising malpractice costs contribute to defensive medicine creating barriers to care and reduced quality of service.

With so much information circulating about heath care in America, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. It’s difficult to navigate these thick woods of interested party rhetoric to gain a true understanding of the system, its strengths and its weaknesses, but only then can we make a proper evaluation of the best possible changes.

The information contained in this blog was obtained from the following sources:

Beider, P. & Hagen, S. (2004). Limiting tort liability for medical malpractice. Retrieved from the Congressional Budget Office web site: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=4968&type=0

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2007). Health care costs, a primer: Key information on health care costs and their impacts. Retrieved from: http://www.kff.org/insurance/upload/7670.pdf

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2008). Employee health benefits: 2008 annual survey. Retrieved from: http://www.kff.org/insurance/7672/index.cfm.

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, (2005). Background brief: Medical malpractice policy. Retrieved from: http:/www.kaiseredu.org/topics_im.asp?id+226&imID+1&parented+59

National Coalition on Health Care. (2009). Facts about health care: Economic costs fact sheets. Retrieved from: http://www.nchc.org/facts/economic.shtml

Rowland, D. & Hoffman, C. (2009). Health care and the middle class: More costs and less coverage. Retrieved from he Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation web site: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7951.pdf

Health Care in America: The Work-Family Effects: PART I: The Current Health Care System in America

Featured Guest Blogger October 14th, 2009

Andrew Kang is a Graduate Policy Assistant at the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

Every day we hear about the raging debate about health care in America. But politics aside, the fact is that health care directly impacts work and family concerns on virtually every level–from employer-provided health care insurance, to wages and salaries, to increasing work loads. In this three-part series, we will examine the facts about the current U.S. health care system, its impact on working families, and its  impact on American businesses.

With all of the political fighting and posturing over health care reform, it is hard to know who and what to believe. Here are some straight-up facts about our health care system stripped bare of interested biases and political rhetoric.

Facts about what we spend on health care:

  • As a nation, Americans spend 18% of GDP on health care.
  • Total health care spending is expected to reach $4.3 trillion in 2017, or 20% of GDP.
  • In 1966, Medicare and Medicaid made up 1% of total government spending.  Today it is 20%, and rising.

AMERICANS SPEND MORE ON HEALTH CARE THAN ANYTHING ELSE:

  • 8x more than education
  • 12x more than food aid to children and families
  • 30x more than law enforcement
  • 78x more than land management and conservation
  • 87x more than on the water supply
  • 830x more than on energy conservation

Facts about employer-provided health insurance:

The current health care system in the United States depends upon employer-provided health care insurance. For many who are employed (roughly 90% of the population at last estimate), nearly all health care expenses are covered, at least in part, by employer-provided health care insurance.

  • In 1954, Congress passed a law making employer contributions to health plans tax-deductible without making the benefits taxable for employees, which had the unplanned effect of making employer-funded health care the cheapest option for financing health care.
  • Employer sponsored health insurance covers 63% of the population under 65.  The remaining population is divided among Medicaid and other public assistance (14%), private non group insurance (5%), and the uninsured (17%).
  • For every two doctors in the U.S., there is one health insurance employee.

Facts about free care for the uninsured:

“Free care” is provided by hospitals and other medical providers. These costs are absorbed by the health care system, and result in increased costs in insurance premiums.

  • But the total amount is low–in a survey of 500 nonprofit hospitals, nearly 60% reported that free care is equal to or less than 5% of total revenue, and 20% reported providing less than 2%.
  • The average uninsured American pays $645 for health care each year, while the average insured American pays $583. However, government and/or insurers spent $1,103 and $3,809 on their behalf, respectively. The cost of health care for the insured American is more than triple that of the uninsured.
  • The uninsured patient pays 2.5 times the bill of an insured patient because they lack the ability to negotiate large discounts that are available to insurers.

Facts about Medicare and Medicaid:

Medicare and Medicaid are the largest federal health care programs. Generally, Medicare provides coverage for people 65 and over who are eligible for Social Security. Medicaid is a jointly funded federal-state program that provides coverage for certain low-income individuals, children and families.

  • At inception in 1964, the federal share of spending for Medicare and Medicaid was 10% of total health care spending. By 2002, that figure had risen to 32% of total health care spending.
  • As of 2005, Medicare and Medicaid accounted for more than 60% of health care expenditures for those 65 and older, with private insurance accounting for 14%.
  • For those under 65, Medicare and Medicaid pays for 16% of total health care expenditures with private insurance accounting for 54%.

Next week:  PART II: How the American Health Care System Affects Working Families.

The information contained in this blog was obtained from the following sources:

Goldhill, D. (2009). How American health care killed my father [Online exclusive]. The Atlantic.  Retrieved October 14, 2009, from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200909/health-care

Goldman, D., & McGlynn, E. (2005).  U.S. health care facts about cost, access, and quality. Retrieved from http://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/2005/RAND_CP484.1.pdf

National Coalition on Healthcare. (2009). Health insurance coverage. Retrieved from http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml

National Coalition on Healthcare. (2009). Facts about health care:  Health insurance costs. Retrieved from: http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

Rowland, D., & Hoffman, C. (2009). Health care and the middle class: More costs and less coverage. Retrieved from http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7951.pdf

What’s New in Work and Family

Karen Corday October 9th, 2009

New from the Network:

National Work and Family Month at the Huffington Post:

Several fellow Sloan grantees have posted recently at the Huffington Post in honor of October being National Work and Family Month:

New, free work-life content online:

Back to School Means Back to Basics

Featured Guest Blogger September 14th, 2009

Christina Barlowe founded LifeWork Alliance in 2008 to address the paradigm shift that is reshaping today’s workforce and institute and promote open dialogue between organizations and working parents. Nearly two decades of professional corporate experience, coupled with an MBA and a Masters in Social Work, form the well-rounded skill set necessary to head the innovative organization that is LifeWork Alliance. Christina has a four year old son and a newly adopted little boy who has reshaped her life and has been her source of inspiration.

It’s September. The air is crisper, the sky seems clearer, and the roads are more congested. Let the games begin! When you have children and you work, the anticipation of September seems as anxiety-provoking as it did when you were a kid starting a new grade.

One of the essential things I have learned is to slow things down; somehow it all manages to get done, eventually. This is termed as the concept of “good enough,” which is not easy for many of us Type A’s to swallow. Sometimes, in fact, approaching a challenge in the most rudimentary fashion is a fail-safe way to ensure that it gets done. As a working parent in today’s society, there is so much planning around an actual event, be it the beginning of a new school year for our children or the purging of old clothes and general fall straightening of the house. It’s a wonder that any of these new tasks get done in addition to our already demanding schedules!

September allows us to refocus, regroup and re-organize, three of my favorite things to do. Fall is the time of year we remember from our childhoods, when were excited about all the new school year had to offer; it is a joy that stays with us. September is invigorating, and embracing all that it has to offer brings us back to basics….stay healthy, be kind, learn something new every day, and say “I love you” to those who matter most before heading out for the day. These are the things that sustain us and these are the tenants that help us grow as people, however basic they may seem.

What’s New from the Network?

Karen Corday September 4th, 2009

New from the Network:

  • August issue of the Network News: For this year’s international issue, Suzan Lewis interviewed Marian Baird on paid parental leave in Australia, and Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay wrote about paid parental leave in Quebec.
  • We updated many of our Topic Pages over the summer: Afterschool Care, Changing Definitions of Family, Dependent Care Tax Assistance, Employer Supported Child Care, Family and Medical Leave Act, Family Leave, Flexible Work Schedules, Gender and Use of Workplace Policies, Generation X/Generation Y, Military Families, Older Workers, Overwork, Paid Sick Days, Phased Retirement, Return on Investment,  Shift Work,  Small Business and Work Family, Spillover: Negative Impacts, and Telework.

New, free work-life content online:

What’s New From the Network?

Karen Corday July 17th, 2009

New from the Network:

New, free work-family content online:

What’s New From the Network?

Karen Corday May 29th, 2009

New from the Network:

New, free work and family content on the web:

2009 Sloan Network Panel Meeting on Global Family Responsive Policies

Judi Casey May 27th, 2009

On April 15, 2009, the Sloan Network convened their 2009 Panel Meeting in Utrecht, the Netherlands on “Intended and Unintended Consequences of Work-Family Policy: Lessons through International Comparison.” Every year, the Network hosts this type of meeting, a small invitation-only event of policy makers, academic researchers and employers on a critical work-family issue. Last year’s panel meeting was on Employed Parents Caring for Children with Disabilities, while the 2007 meeting focused on Older and Younger Workers: How Does Age Matter?

Attendees represented countries from around the globe and included Marian Baird, Ph.D. (Australia); Antoinette Brakel - van der Klei (the Netherlands); Judi Casey, MSW (US); Laura DenDulk, Ph.D. (the Netherlands); Jeanne Fagnani, Ph.D. (France); Linda Haas, Ph.D. (US /Sweden); Suzan Lewis, Ph.D. (UK); Uxio Malvido (Spain); Joya Misra, Ph.D. (US); Birgit Pfau-Effinger, Ph.D. (Germany); Tine Rostgaard, Ph.D. (Denmark); Moshe Semyonov, Ph.D. (Israel/US); Stephen Sweet, Ph.D. (US); Olivier Thevenon, Ph.D. (France); and Monique Valcour, Ph.D. (US).

The goal of the meeting was to identify variations in work-family policies among countries and the forces that shape these variations as well as the extent to which these policies precipitate intended outcomes of supporting working families, their employers, and national economies. In addition, the meeting highlighted some of the unintended consequences of family responsive policies such as the negative impacts on gender equity, career advancement, employer needs, workplace cultures, fertility rates, and international labor flows.

Attendees explored the distinguishing features of the work-family policy framework of various countries and the cultural, economic and political context that facilitated (or erected barriers) to the initiation, structure, and implementation of these family responsive policies. By comparing observations across societies, the attendees considered whether these outcomes are inevitable or can be mediated or resolved through policy reconfiguration.

The meeting concluded with a discussion of the best strategy to move forward with these collective observations as well as the types of products that might be created to share these conversations. An Executive Summary will be released this summer. Please stay tuned for more information!

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