DAILY NEWS
ACA challenges, deportation politics, trade losers…
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
AFFORDABLE CARE ACT
► In the WSJ — New costs from health law snarl union contract talks — Disputes between unions and employers over paying for new costs associated with the Affordable Care Act are roiling labor talks nationwide. Unions and employers are tussling over who will pick up the tab for new mandates, such as coverage for dependent children to age 26, as well as future costs, such as a tax on premium health plans starting in 2018. The question is poised to become a significant point of tension as tens of thousands of labor contracts covering millions of workers expire in the next several years, with ACA-related cost increases ranging from 5% to 12.5% in current talks.
► In today’s Seattle Times — Safety-net hospitals reaping benefit of more insured patients — Harborview Medical Center and other safety-net hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare have seen an increase in revenue as they serve fewer patients who are uninsured. At Harborview, the proportion of uninsured patients fell from 12 percent last year to an unprecedented low of 2 percent this spring — a drop expected to boost its revenue by $20 million this year.
STATE SUPREME COURT
► From KUOW — High court weighs whether Fred Meyer janitors should get overtime — What distinguishes a contractor from an employee? The Washington State Supreme Court is deliberating that question now. The decision could have big implications, because businesses increasingly rely on contractors.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Tom McCabe, who ran the BIAW for many years, got a $1.25 million “severance package” to leave the non-profit homebuilders’ association back in 2010. Now he’s CEO of the ALEC-tied anonymously funded Freedom Foundation and travels the state advocating for anti-union “right-to-work” laws. I wonder how much they’ll have to pay him to leave when he makes a dog’s breakfast of that non-profit?
IMMIGRATION REFORM
► In Roll Call — Obama gives Boehner one more chance to pass immigration reform — President Barack Obama won’t act to reduce deportations on his own until the end of the summer — giving Speaker John A. Boehner one more chance to vote on an immigration overhaul.
► In today’s Seattle Times — Despite Obama, immigration is still splitting up families (by Danny Westneat) — The government will either split his family, forcing a 1-year-old American to be raised by a single mom. Or it will effectively deport two of our own citizens down to Mexico. All to rid our shores of an immigrant success story. If you were in charge, what would you do with Jaime Rubio-Sulficio? Well that’s the biggest problem: Nobody is in charge. Obama talks compassion but keeps up the family-splitting deportations. Congress is paralyzed, as Republicans want even more deportations and regard the Democratic ideas as soft.
NATIONAL
► In the NY Times — The fruits of forced labor (editorial) — Exploiting the poor is a huge $150 billion a year business in a world where 21 million men, women and children are trapped in forced labor and outright slavery, according to the latest United Nations survey. “Fundamentally evil, but hugely profitable,” is the summary from the United Nations International Labor Organization report on global forced labor. It found profits more than tripling since 2005 from an array of abysmally underpaid jobs stretching from the world’s pornography parlors to its hardscrabble farm fields.
► From CNN — Michigan raises minimum wage to $9.25 — The state’s hourly minimum wage will increase in phases from $7.40 until it reaches $9.25 in 2018.
► In The Hill — Bikini contest firing voided by labor board — An NLRB administrative law judge has sided with Hooters waitress Alexis Hanson, who argued that the company fired her because she complained the April 2013 bikini contest was “rigged.” The winner of the $300 bikini contest, was Marketing Director Pamela Nobles, who organized the contest and included her best friend and her boyfriend on the judges panel.
TODAY’S MUST-READ
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