JWN is not an organized entity for disseminating information like say, a school or The New York Times. It's a collection of people who like to talk about a common interest. Individuals bring varying levels of knowledge to the table. We also have our own experiences and consequently our own point of view on whatever subject we're talking about.
Posts by JeffT
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35How Accurate Is JWN In Your Opinion?
by minimus inwould you say this board gives accurate information, overall?
if someone started reading the comments here, do you think they would find this discussion board as accurate?.
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89
US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs inthe old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
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JeffT
I read today that Hobby Lobby is self-insured. That is, it is there money going to directly pay for employee healthcare, rather than buying an insurance policy. That's why they can make their own decisions about not covering certain kinds of birth control and why its important to them.
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89
US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs inthe old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
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JeffT
Workman's Comp is one name it goes by. Here (Washington State) everybody calls it L&I, Labor and Industries the state department that runs it. I also forgot Unemployment Insurance which employers will consider an employment cost.
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27
For those who have been out for 5 years or more.......
by Phizzy in........... do you find you are now far more relaxed about things ?
things in general, and things wt/jw related ?.
i find i am much more relaxed and pragmatic about life in general, mrs phizzy and i do what we can, but we don't get overly upset at what we cannot do.
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JeffT
I've been out twenty-five years. Except for the influence it has on some of my writing, I'm done with JW issues. My presence here is mostly about research on something that interests me (I go to a bunch of history sites for the same reason). As an example of how things have changed a couple of days ago my wife and I signed as witnesses to our daughter's marriage - to another woman.
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89
US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs inthe old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
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JeffT
Employer provided health care began during WWII as an end-around to wage control laws. It was a tight labor market and employers could not just offer more money. So they started paying for health care as a bonus. Now its turned into something everybody expects to get at anything like a decent job.
We've created a monster and we need to kill it somehow. Try to imagine what it would look like if auto insurance worked the same way. You're interviewing for a job that sounds great until you find out the company plan doesn't cover your car, or requires you to pay for one you don't own. We should be able to buy health insurance the same way, get what you need at the price you can afford. How many commercials do you see every night claiming to reduce the cost of your auto insurance? Compare that to the number of commercials you see offering to save you money on your health insurance.
BOTR, you're smart to make that calculation, its what your employer does. You should also add in the cost of on the job accident coverage (I don't know what they call it in NY), and the portion of social security and medicare paid by the employer. All of those items
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89
US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs inthe old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
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JeffT
Here's another inconvenient post y'all can ignore.
The Illogic of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance
JULY 1, 2014
Uwe E. Reinhardt
Imagine yourself in a bar where a pickpocket takes money out of your wallet and with it buys you a glass of chardonnay. Although you would have preferred a pinot noir, you decide not to look that gift horse in the mouth and thank the stranger profusely for the kindness, assuming he paid for it. You might feel differently, of course, if you knew that you actually had paid for it yourself.
Persuaded by both theory and empirical research, most economists believe that employer-based health insurance is an analogue of this bar scene.
The argument is that the premiums ostensibly paid by employers to buy health insurance coverage for their employees are actually part of the employee’s total pay package – the price of labor, in economic parlance – and that the cost of that fringe benefit is recovered from employees through commensurate reductions in take-home pay.
Score it 1-0 in “Supremes v. Economists.”
In the ruling, the owner of Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, gained the right not to include certain contraceptive goods and services in the insurance bought for employees, because use of these services conflicts with the owner’s Christian beliefs. Although the justices argue that their ruling is narrowly confined to contraceptive services, one must wonder what other items other business owners in the future may seek to jettison from benefit packages on the basis of this or that professed religious belief.
The ruling raises the question of why, uniquely in the industrialized world, Americans have for so long favored an arrangement in health insurance that endows their employers with the quasi-parental power to choose the options that employees may be granted in the market for health insurance. For many smaller firms, that choice is narrowed to one or two alternatives – not much more choice than that afforded citizens under a single-payer health insurance system.
Furthermore, the arrangement induces employers to intervene in many other ways in their employees’ personal life – for example, in wellness programs that can range from the benign to annoyingly intrusive, depending upon the employers’ wishes.
And what kind of health “insurance” have Americans gotten under this strange arrangement? Once again, uniquely in the industrialized world, it has been ephemeral coverage that is lost with the job or changed at the employer’s whim. Citizens in any other industrialized country have permanent, portable insurance not tied to a particular job in a particular country.
Nor has this coverage been cheap by international standards. American employers can be said to have played a major role in driving up health spending per capita in the United States measured in internationally comparable purchasing power parity dollars, to roughly twice the level found in other industrialized populations. As a recent article in the health policy journal Health Affairs reported, a decade of health care cost growth wiped out real income gains for the average American family during the period from 1999 to 2009.
The Supreme Court’s ruling may prompt Americans to re-examine whether the traditional, employment-based health insurance that they have become accustomed to is really the ideal platform for health insurance coverage in the 21st century. The public health insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act are likely to nibble away at this system for small and medium-size business firms, especially those with a mainly low-wage work force.
In the meantime, the case should help puncture the illusion that employer-provided health insurance is an unearned gift bestowed on them by the owners and paid with the owners’ money, giving those owners the moral right to dictate the nature of that gift.
Correction: July 1, 2014
A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of the Health and Human Services commissioner originally named in the case, and gave an outdated name for the case. It is Sebelius, not Sibelius, and the case is now known as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.
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US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs inthe old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
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JeffT
Now here's a sensible solution.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/01/otc-birth-control-your-body-your-choice-your-responsibility/
OTC Birth Control: Your Body, Your Choice, Your Responsibility
JULY 1, 2014 By Ben Domenech
Yesterday’s narrow Hobby Lobby decision shows why the culture war isn’t over – it’s just getting started. The reality is that in the absence of the ability to compel employers to pay for things over their religious objections, and at a time when covering 16 forms of birth control out of 20 is culturally insufficient, the Obama administration will be more than happy to turn to the traditional method of the left: skipping the middle man of the employer and just handing people other people’s money.
So because some people cannot be compelled to pay for their employee’s IUDs, Plan B, and Ella, everyone will be compelled to pay for it. It renders the whole argument over deeply held religious beliefs a cute sideshow: if employers can’t be forced to pay for it, all taxpayers will. Congratulations on retaining your personal image of faithfulness while sticking the rest of us with the bill.
That’s one of the reasons why support for making birth control available over the counter is rising on the right and the left. There are a number of objections to this, but I find them to largely amount to unconvincing paternalism. The chief argument advanced is that standard oral contraceptives mess with hormones and have all sorts of side effects. This is, of course, true! But: dangerous side effects are rampant within all sorts of other over the counter drugs. Women can think for themselves and make decisions with their doctor and pharmacist about what drugs they want to take – and the evidence shows they are good at self-screening. In fact, it would actually increase the ability to mitigate and respond to unanticipated side effects, since changing tracks will no longer require a doctor’s visit and getting a new prescription. Assuming that women won’t or can’t take responsibility for themselves to consult with a doctor unless required to by arbitrary government policy is absurd.
It’s obvious why libertarians like the idea of OTC birth control. Conservatives should like it because it removes the responsibility for redistributive payment from themselves while demonstrating that yes, they really aren’t about banning things or preventing access to birth control. And liberals should like it because it will lower the drop-out rate, which is currently largely driven by the requirement to re-up the prescription as much as every few months. The American College of OB-GYNs supports it, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Colorado Rep. Cory Gardner support it, most of the world already has it, and making it official policy would lower prices, lower health care costs, and make consumers more cost conscious. All of these are good things.
Now, some liberals won’t be satisfied by this OTC solution in the absence of the overall contraception mandate, because it would only address the challenge with oral contraceptives, not IUDs. In her dissent, Justice Ginsberg pointed out the high cost of IUDs as reason why employers need to cover the cost. But I suspect that making a policy change which addresses concerns about contraception’s availability for the vast majority of people will really take the energy out of that push, just as an honest case against Hobby Lobby (that they just didn’t want to pay for things that can prevent the implantation of a living embryo – two morning after pills and two implants – versus preventing the creation of that embryo in the first place) would’ve aroused a far less aggressive opposition to their stance. I think those on the left who prioritize this issue know this, too.
Social conservatives who can see the writing on the wall with the over the counter availability of Plan B – a supercharged version of the low-dose contraceptive hormone, now available via vending machines on college campuses, and which sexually active teenagers (which is to say: teenagers) are already using as an abortifacient substitute for the daily pill – should know that they’re not going to get this horse back in the barn. The question becomes whether you will have to pay for other people’s choices in violation of your religious beliefs. Here, I think the OTC solution is not just viable, but leads people to the logical conclusion they ought to have about birth control policy: your body, your choice, your responsibility. People don’t naturally assume that over the counter drugs should be available for free: they think they should be able to buy them.
I’d encourage social conservatives who oppose this idea to rethink their opposition. Otherwise, birth control and abortifacients are simply going to become the name we give to the things we choose to buy together. -
89
US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs inthe old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
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JeffT
Here's a question: Do you believe that women are capable of managing their own lives without the intervention of somebody else (the government, their employer or whatever) to manage it for them?
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89
US Supreme Court: Hobby Lobby wins we lose
by designs inthe old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
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JeffT
If the government thinks everybody should have birth control, the governemnt should provide it. Some time back during the Obamacare debates I reversed my position on all of this. We need a single-payer system. If society wants to accept the idea that everybody is entitled to something, that cost should be borne by everyone, not a few (like employers).
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19
A Warning for anyone with Fibromyalgia or CFS
by LisaRose ini had been hearing about a food supplement that has shown to be a promising therapy for fibromyalgia or chronic fatique syndrome, a food supplement called d ribose.
i tried it and was impressed with the results, so i have been taking it for the last three months.
unfortunately during this time i have also had intestinal issues, which have gotten progressively worse, to the point it was debilitating, also nausea, dizziness and a mild headache.
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JeffT
This is a warning to everybody that takes supplements. Just because something is natural and/or organic or whatever doesn't mean its free of side effects. I take a few things myself, but I've researched them thoroughly before doing so.