EPIC Radio Podcasts:Fanny Crawford and Ellouise Schoettler share stories of women pioneers in the US military services

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Blog: EPIC Radio Podcasts
Post: Fanny Crawford and Ellouise Schoettler share stories of women pioneers in the US military services
Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/02/fanny-crawford-and-ellouise-schoettler.html

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Resistance Radio, Wed Feb 22 at 10 am

Resistance Radio

Please join me and special guest Laura Markwardt for Resistance Radio tomorrow at 10 am est as we bring you up to date on Our Resistance and all the threats to our democracy including the fascistic assault on academic freedom. Please find our small but great, global radio station at www.enlightenradio.org.

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Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio:EPIC Radio Podcasts: the Are You Crazy? podcast: Dr Leslie-Beth Wish, D...

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Blog: Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio
Post: EPIC Radio Podcasts: the Are You Crazy? podcast: Dr Leslie-Beth Wish, D...
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/02/epic-radio-podcasts-are-you-crazy.html

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Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio:Quaker Radio, the Partially Examined Life, and Richard Diamond, Private EYE -- Sunday on EPIC Radio

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Blog: Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio
Post: Quaker Radio, the Partially Examined Life, and Richard Diamond, Private EYE -- Sunday on EPIC Radio
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/02/quaker-radio-partially-examined-life.html

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EPIC Radio Podcasts:Paris on the Potomac Reviews the Gaslighting and Confusion downstream

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Blog: EPIC Radio Podcasts
Post: Paris on the Potomac Reviews the Gaslighting and Confusion downstream
Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/02/paris-on-potomac-reviews-gaslighting.html

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Letter to the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections on federal wage and hour policies [feedly]

Letter to the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections on federal wage and hour policies
http://www.epi.org/publication/letter-to-the-subcommittee-on-workforce-protections-on-federal-wage-and-hour-policies/

EPI Senior Economist and Director of Policy Heidi Shierholz sent the following letter to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections on February 16th, 2017.

Dear Representatives Foxx, Scott, Byrne, and Takano:

The Economic Policy Institute is pleased to submit this letter in regards to the February 16, 2017, Subcommittee on Workforce Protections hearing, "Federal Wage and Hour Policies in the Twenty-First Century Economy." The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, is this country's premier think tank that focuses on the economic condition of low- and middle-income workers and their families. We are deeply interested in any changes to wage and hour policies that protect workers. The components that must be a core part of any reform related to the minimum wage and to overtime protections are described below.

The Minimum Wage

The current federal minimum wage, $7.25, is roughly 25 percent below its historic value in real terms. A full-time worker with one child who earns the federal minimum wage is earning below the federal poverty line. There is an enormous amount of rigorous research on the economic impacts of minimum wage increases, and what the weight of that literature shows is that minimum wage increases have raised wages but have caused little to no negative effect on the employment of low-wage workers. The vast majority of those who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage are adults in working families, they are disproportionately women, and their households depend on these earnings to make ends meet.

Any reform related to the minimum wage must do the following things:

1. Establish a wage floor that ensures a decent standard of living for all workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2015 provides a blueprint for what a decent wage floor could be, along with reasonable steps to get there.
2. An increase of the minimum wage must be accompanied by gradual phasing out of a lower subminimum wage for tipped workers. Tipped workers experience dramatically higher poverty rates in states where they can be paid a separate, lower minimum wage, and this practice must end.
3. To prevent future erosion of the minimum wage and to provide predictability for employers, the minimum wage should be indexed to growth in overall wages on an annual basis.

Overtime Protections

To help ensure the basic, family-friendly right to a limited workweek, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires that most workers—including both hourly and salaried workers—be paid at least 1.5 times their regular rate of pay when they work more than 40 hours a week. One narrow exception to this is for bona-fide executive, managerial, and professional workers. However, the way that exception is defined has become woefully out of date, and in May of 2016, the Department of Labor issued a rule to provide a much needed update. The rule is currently under a nationwide injunction, but that injunction will hopefully be short-lived, since the rule delivers better work-life balance and fairer pay to millions of workers.

The new rule updated the salary threshold below which most salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week. Before this rulemaking, the threshold had been updated only once since 1975, and had thus eroded dramatically—providing overtime protections to less than 10 percent of full-time salaried workers, compared with more than 60 percent in 1975. The current threshold of $455 per week ($23,660 annually for a full year) is well under the poverty threshold for a family of four.

The update includes two crucial components:

1. It increases the salary threshold from $455 per week ($23,660 annually) to $913 per week ($47,476 annually). This updated threshold is well within historical norms; if the 1975 threshold had simply kept up with inflation, it would now be around $57,000 annually.
2. It automatically updates the salary threshold every three years based on weekly wage growth of full-time salaried workers. Thus, as salaries rise over time, the threshold would rise with it, ensuring that the standard laid out in the new rule is preserved, instead of steadily weakening over time. This is good for workers and provides crucial predictability to employers.

These updates to the overtime rule mean that millions of workers, disproportionately women, would likely be asked to work fewer overtime hours, and would get the overtime pay they deserve when they do work more than 40 hours a week. This is good for families; close to 2.5 million children would see at least one parent gain overtime protections. And an increase in the threshold would be a job creator, with Goldman Sachs estimating that it would add around 100,000 jobs to the economy.

Since 1975, the top 5 percent of all households have seen their incomes grow by more than 90 percent, whereas the median (or "typical") household has seen its income grow by less than 20 percent. That means that the last quarter of the 20th century and the first 17 years of the 21st century have been marked by rising inequality. Reform for the 21st century should focus on reversing that rising inequality and building a fairer economy. Providing a strong minimum wage and overtime salary threshold, and then indexing them going forward so they don't erode over time as prices and wages rise, are common sense steps towards creating an economy that works for everyone and should be at the center of any effort to "update" wage and hour policy for the 21st century.

Sincerely,

Heidi Shierholz
Senior Economist and Director of Policy
The Economic Policy Institute
1225 Eye St. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005

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Trump Administration’s New Health Rule Would Reduce Tax Credits, Raise Costs, For Millions of Moderate-Income Families [feedly]

Trump Administration's New Health Rule Would Reduce Tax Credits, Raise Costs, For Millions of Moderate-Income Families
http://www.cbpp.org/research/health/trump-administrations-new-health-rule-would-reduce-tax-credits-raise-costs-for

The Trump Administration's new proposed rule on health care would raise premiums, out-of-pocket costs, or both for millions of moderate-income families. If finalized as proposed, the rule would reduce the amount of health care that marketplace plans have to cover. That would allow individual-market insurers to offer plans with higher deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs than they can now sell through the marketplaces.[1] It would also have the hidden impact of reducing the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) premium tax credits, which help moderate-income marketplace consumers afford health care. As a result, the rule would force millions of families to choose between higher premiums and worse coverage.

THIS MEANS THAT FOR PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO MAINTAIN THE SAME COVERAGE THEY HAVE TODAY, TAX CREDITS WOULD COVER LESS OF THE COST.  As explained in more detail below, the proposed rule would result in reduced premium tax credit amounts because it would lower the standards for "silver" plan coverage. Under the ACA, the premium tax credits that consumers receive to help pay for marketplace plans are calculated based on the local cost of a silver plan. By allowing less generous silver plans, the rule would reduce the value of premium tax credits for many of the more than 9 million consumers who receive them — an effect the rule itself acknowledges.[2] This means that for people who wanted to maintain the same coverage they have today, tax credits would cover less of the cost.

The Administration argues that allowing less generous health plans, with higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs but lower premiums, will give consumers more choices, draw more people into the marketplace, and, in this way, stabilize the market. But, in fact, this provision of the rule will do just the opposite. Due to the impact on premium tax credits, it will mainly serve to make marketplace coverage more expensive for marketplace consumers. Together with other provisions of the rule, that will almost certainly result in lower enrollment and a weaker risk pool which, in turn, will weaken market stability. Moreover, the rule does nothing to dispel the main source of uncertainty and instability currently affecting the marketplace: the looming threat that congressional Republicans will repeal the ACA, without enacting a comprehensive replacement.

What the Proposed Rule Would Do

The proposed rule allows individual-market insurers to offer plans with higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, but lower premiums, than they're now allowed to offer. That's because it allows plans with lower "actuarial value." Actuarial value is the share of a typical consumer's medical costs that the plan covers, as opposed to what the consumer pays directly through deductibles, copays, and coinsurance. For example, in a silver plan with an actuarial value of 70 percent, the plan picks up 70 percent of a typical consumer's costs for covered benefits, while the consumer would expect to pay 30 percent of costs out of pocket.

To help consumers understand and compare plans, marketplace health plans are tiered by actuarial value: 60 percent (bronze), 70 percent (silver), 80 percent (gold), and 90 percent (platinum).[3] Current rules allow insurers to still meet their actuarial value standards if they deviate by a "de minimis" 2 percentage points from these standard values.[4] The proposed rule would allow plans with actuarial values as much as 4 percentage points below the standard values. That would allow bronze plans with higher deductibles than any current marketplace plans.[5] It also would allow silver plans with actuarial values as low as 66 percent. By allowing for such silver plans, the rule would reduce the size of premium tax credits for millions of families, as explained in the next section.

How the Proposed Rule Would Reduce Premium Tax Credits

Under the ACA, the premium tax credits that consumers receive to help pay for marketplace plans are calculated based on the local cost of a silver plan. By letting insurers offer less generous silver plans, the rule would reduce premium tax credits for many of the more than 9 million consumers who receive them — and that's true whether a consumer buys a silver plan or any other kind of plan.[6]

Specifically, premium tax credits adjust dollar-for-dollar based on the premium for the second-lowest-cost silver plan where a consumer lives, known as the "benchmark" plan. All else being equal, a plan with a lower actuarial value will have lower premiums than one with a higher value. In particular, a plan that covers 66 percent of a typical consumer's medical costs will have a lower premium than an otherwise identical plan that covers 68 percent of costs. Allowing plans with lower actuarial values to qualify as silver plans can thus result in lower benchmark plan premiums and, in turn, lower premium tax credits. While low-income families would be largely protected by other provisions of the ACA, moderate-income families would be left with the choice of paying higher premiums or opting for worse coverage. [7]

Consider an example: Under the ACA, a family of four with $65,000 of income is expected to contribute $5,664 per year to buy the benchmark plan. Suppose the current benchmark plan has an actuarial value of 68 percent and a premium of $13,080 per year — the national average benchmark premium for a family of four. The family's premium tax credit will equal the difference between the gross premium of $13,080 and the $5,664 that the family is expected to pay: or $7,416. If, however, the benchmark plan's actuarial value falls to 66 percent and its premium falls commensurately, the premium tax credit will fall by $327.[8]

At first blush, the family might be indifferent between these two outcomes because both its premium tax credit and its benchmark premium fell. But in fact, as illustrated by Table 1, the family would now face a worse set of choices.

• It could pay the same amount in premiums as before, but buy a plan with a lower actuarial value, meaning some combination of higher deductibles, higher copays, and higher coinsurance. In the illustrative example in the table, the deductible for a benchmark plan increases by $550 per person under the new rules.
• Or, the family could choose to buy a plan with the same cost sharing as it had before, but it now would have to pay more in premiums. The 68 percent actuarial value plan that previously cost the family $5,664 in premiums will now cost $5,991, a premium increase of $327 per year.

To be sure, the proposed rule does not require all silver plans to reduce their actuarial values to 66 percent.  Just like today, insurers presumably would offer silver plans with a range of actuarial values within the allowed corridor. But because premium tax credits are based on the second-lowest-cost silver plan on offer, they will generally be based on silver plans that adopt the actuarial values at or near the bottom of the allowable range: 68 percent today, 66 percent under the rule. That's especially likely to be the case in more competitive markets.

As a result, while a stated goal of the rule is to expand consumer choice, it actually would leave many moderate-income consumers with worse choices and less affordable coverage.

TABLE 1
How the Proposed Rule Could Affect Coverage Affordability Illustrative Example: Family of Four with Income of $65,000*
	Annual Gross Premium	Premium Tax Credit	Net Premium	Per-person Deductible	Change for Family
Current Rules
68% actuarial value silver plan (benchmark)	$13,080	$7,416	$5,664	$1,900	N/A
Proposed Rule
66% actuarial value silver plan (new benchmark)	$12,753	$7,089	$5,664	$2,450	Deductible ↑$550/person
68% actuarial value silver plan (old benchmark)	$13,080	$7,089	$5,991	$1,900	Premium ↑$327/year

* The illustrative example assumes an initial premium equal to the national average benchmark premium for a family of four with one 40-year-old adult, one 38-year-old adult, and two children. It assumes that 85 percent of the plan's premium covers medical costs, while 15 percent covers administrative costs and profits. Deductible values are calculated using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 2017 actuarial value calculator assuming a plan with a deductible that applies to all services, a 30 percent coinsurance rate above the deductible, and a $7,200 out-of-pocket maximum.

TOPICS: 

Health, Health Reform

End Notes

[1] The proposed rule would also allow lower-value plans in the Affordable Care Act-compliant, off-marketplace individual market.

[2] The rule notes that this provision "would likely reduce the benchmark premium for purposes of the premium tax credit, leading to a transfer from credit recipients to the government."

[3] These rules also apply in the ACA-compliant small group market and off-marketplace individual market.

[4] Starting in 2018, certain bronze plans may have actuarial values of up to 65 percent, but still not below 58 percent.

[5] Catastrophic plans with lower actuarial values can be sold through the marketplace, but are only available to a small subset of consumers and do not qualify for premium tax credits.

[6] Data on consumers currently receiving premium tax credits are as of early 2016: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, "March 31, 2016 Effectuated Enrollment Snapshot," June 30, 2016, https://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Fact-sheets/2016-Fact-sheets-items/2016-06-30.html.

[7] It appears that the proposed rule partially protects consumers who qualify for cost-sharing reductions — those with incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty level — from increases in costs. When these families purchase silver plans, insurers are required to provide them with cost-sharing reduction "variant" coverage with higher actuarial values, for which the insurers are reimbursed by the federal government. The proposed rule does not appear to modify actuarial value requirements for these variant plans. However, the rule would still reduce premium tax credits for these families, increasing their net premiums if they choose to purchase plans in a metal tier other than silver (and in some cases if they choose to purchase a silver plan other than the local benchmark). Meanwhile, families with incomes above 250 percent of the federal poverty level qualify only for premium tax credits, not cost-sharing reductions.

[8] This calculation assumes that 85 percent of the plan's premium covers medical costs, while 15 percent covers administrative costs and profits. Thus, the reduction in actuarial value from 68 percent to 66 percent lowers the premium by $327. Here's the arithmetic: 85%×$13,080×(1-66/68).

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