NEW YORK, July 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue: Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Turkey, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2018...
Reported by PR Newswire 7 hours ago.
Personal Accident and Health Insurance in Turkey, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2018
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Medicare expected to stay solvent longer
The finances of the government health insurance programme for the elderly are improving, but disability fund will run out of money by the end of 2016
Reported by FT.com 5 hours ago.
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Satanists Cite Hobby Lobby In Campaign For Religious Exemption To Abortion Laws
A Satanist group is using the Hobby Lobby ruling to campaign for a religious exemption to anti-choice abortion laws.
The Satanic Temple (TST) is a religious group that "believes that the body is inviolable subject to one’s own will alone" and encourages making personal health decisions "based on the best scientific understanding of the world, regardless of the religious or political beliefs of others.” The group launched a campaign Monday on behalf of a woman's right to accurate medical information and cited the Hobby Lobby ruling as bolstering this position.
Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned arts and crafts store based in Oklahoma, filed a lawsuit in 2012 due to a stipulation in President Obama's Affordable Care Act which required employer-provided health insurance to cover contraceptives. Hobby Lobby disagreed with this on the basis that certain contraceptives could be abortive and argued the law violates religious freedom. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that some closely held, for-profit corporations could be exempt from providing contraception to employees on the basis of religious beliefs.
"Any suggestion that for-profit corporations are incapable of exercising religion because their purpose is simply to make money flies in the face of modern corporate law," the court's ruling said. Requiring religious corporations to cover contraception "demands that they engage in conduct that seriously violates their religious beliefs," the ruling also stated.
TST says that same ruling can apply to "informed consent" laws.
Informed consent documents are distributed to patients before surgical and aesthetic procedures so the patients will know what these procedures entail and what to expect from them. In terms of abortions, informed consent docs list the types of abortion procedures, complications and risks.
Here is TST's objection to the dissemination of information that could potentially discourage a woman from obtaining an abortion:
Informed consent bills requiring abortion providers to give their patients official “informational” material regarding the procedure have been criticized in the past for providing biased and false information to women in a bald effort at dissuading them from abortions. Such materials have included claims of a link between abortion and breast cancer, as well as claims regarding a depressive “postabortion syndrome”, both of which The Satanic Temple view as “scientifically unfounded” and “medically invalid” and therefore an affront to their religious beliefs.
Currently, 35 states require that women receive "informational" abortion counseling before terminating a pregnancy. This can include written materials with statements about the fetus' ability to feel pain, erroneous links between abortion and increased breast cancer risks and supposed psychological responses to abortion.
TST considers this misleading and believes the Hobby Lobby ruling bolsters the temple's goal for religious exemption.
“While we feel we have a strong case for an exemption regardless of the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that religious beliefs are so sacrosanct that they can even trump scientific fact," TST spokesperson Lucien Greaves said in a press release. "This was made clear when they allowed Hobby Lobby to claim certain contraceptives were abortifacients, when in fact they are not. Because of the respect the Court has given to religious beliefs, and the fact that our our beliefs are based on best available knowledge, we expect that our belief in the illegitimacy of state mandated ‘informational’ material is enough to exempt us, and those who hold our beliefs, from having to receive them.”
On TST's website, the group provides a printable letter that women can give their health care providers to opt out of informed consent, stating that such a precondition is "based on politics and not science" and that it is against the Satanic religion.
The letter lists specific principles that allow TST's campaign to fall under the category of religious exemption:
• My body is inviolable and subject to my will alone.
• I make any decision regarding my health based on the best scientific understanding of the world, even if the science does not comport with the religious or political beliefs of others.
• My inviolable body includes any fetal or embryonic tissue I carry so long as that tissue is unable to survive outside my body as an independent human being.
• I, and I alone, decide whether my inviolable body remains pregnant and I may, in good conscience, disregard the current or future condition of any fetal or embryonic tissue I carry in making that decision.
Last year, TST made headlines for performing a "pink mass" ritual over the grave of Catherine Idalette Johnston, the mother of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, supposedly turning her gay for all eternity. Earlier this year, the group was back in the news after commissioning a seven-foot statue of Satan to be placed at the Oklahoma state Capitol, where a Ten Commandments monument was erected in 2012.
h/t ThinkProgress Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.
The Satanic Temple (TST) is a religious group that "believes that the body is inviolable subject to one’s own will alone" and encourages making personal health decisions "based on the best scientific understanding of the world, regardless of the religious or political beliefs of others.” The group launched a campaign Monday on behalf of a woman's right to accurate medical information and cited the Hobby Lobby ruling as bolstering this position.
Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned arts and crafts store based in Oklahoma, filed a lawsuit in 2012 due to a stipulation in President Obama's Affordable Care Act which required employer-provided health insurance to cover contraceptives. Hobby Lobby disagreed with this on the basis that certain contraceptives could be abortive and argued the law violates religious freedom. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that some closely held, for-profit corporations could be exempt from providing contraception to employees on the basis of religious beliefs.
"Any suggestion that for-profit corporations are incapable of exercising religion because their purpose is simply to make money flies in the face of modern corporate law," the court's ruling said. Requiring religious corporations to cover contraception "demands that they engage in conduct that seriously violates their religious beliefs," the ruling also stated.
TST says that same ruling can apply to "informed consent" laws.
Informed consent documents are distributed to patients before surgical and aesthetic procedures so the patients will know what these procedures entail and what to expect from them. In terms of abortions, informed consent docs list the types of abortion procedures, complications and risks.
Here is TST's objection to the dissemination of information that could potentially discourage a woman from obtaining an abortion:
Informed consent bills requiring abortion providers to give their patients official “informational” material regarding the procedure have been criticized in the past for providing biased and false information to women in a bald effort at dissuading them from abortions. Such materials have included claims of a link between abortion and breast cancer, as well as claims regarding a depressive “postabortion syndrome”, both of which The Satanic Temple view as “scientifically unfounded” and “medically invalid” and therefore an affront to their religious beliefs.
Currently, 35 states require that women receive "informational" abortion counseling before terminating a pregnancy. This can include written materials with statements about the fetus' ability to feel pain, erroneous links between abortion and increased breast cancer risks and supposed psychological responses to abortion.
TST considers this misleading and believes the Hobby Lobby ruling bolsters the temple's goal for religious exemption.
“While we feel we have a strong case for an exemption regardless of the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that religious beliefs are so sacrosanct that they can even trump scientific fact," TST spokesperson Lucien Greaves said in a press release. "This was made clear when they allowed Hobby Lobby to claim certain contraceptives were abortifacients, when in fact they are not. Because of the respect the Court has given to religious beliefs, and the fact that our our beliefs are based on best available knowledge, we expect that our belief in the illegitimacy of state mandated ‘informational’ material is enough to exempt us, and those who hold our beliefs, from having to receive them.”
On TST's website, the group provides a printable letter that women can give their health care providers to opt out of informed consent, stating that such a precondition is "based on politics and not science" and that it is against the Satanic religion.
The letter lists specific principles that allow TST's campaign to fall under the category of religious exemption:
• My body is inviolable and subject to my will alone.
• I make any decision regarding my health based on the best scientific understanding of the world, even if the science does not comport with the religious or political beliefs of others.
• My inviolable body includes any fetal or embryonic tissue I carry so long as that tissue is unable to survive outside my body as an independent human being.
• I, and I alone, decide whether my inviolable body remains pregnant and I may, in good conscience, disregard the current or future condition of any fetal or embryonic tissue I carry in making that decision.
Last year, TST made headlines for performing a "pink mass" ritual over the grave of Catherine Idalette Johnston, the mother of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, supposedly turning her gay for all eternity. Earlier this year, the group was back in the news after commissioning a seven-foot statue of Satan to be placed at the Oklahoma state Capitol, where a Ten Commandments monument was erected in 2012.
h/t ThinkProgress Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.
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Statement on the 2014 Medicare Trustees' Report
Medicare has grown somewhat stronger financially in both the short and long term since last year but continues to face long-term financing challenges, today's report from its trustees shows. The projected date of insolvency for Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund is 2030 -- four years later than projected last year.
Health reform, along with other factors, has significantly improved Medicare's financial outlook, boosting revenues and making the program more efficient. The HI trust fund's projected exhaustion date of 2030 is 13 years later than the trustees projected before the Affordable Care Act. And the HI program's projected 75-year shortfall of 0.87 percent of taxable payroll is down from last year's estimate of 1.11 percent and much less than the 3.88 percent that the trustees estimated before health reform.
In a shift from previous practice, the trustees' report now assumes that Congress will continue to override the substantial reductions in Medicare payments to physicians scheduled under current law, as Congress has consistently done in recent years. This change raises projected Medicare spending and makes the trustees' projections more realistic.
Medicare spending per beneficiary in recent years has grown at historically low rates -- 0.3 percent in 2012 and zero in 2013. The trustees have reduced projected Medicare spending, compared to past reports, to reflect this favorable experience. Over the next ten years, they project that Medicare spending per beneficiary will grow by 3.6 percent a year, well below its 2000-2010 average of 7.4 percent a year and below the projected growth in private health insurance costs. They project that total Medicare spending will rise from 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013 to 5.2 percent of GDP in 2035 -- compared to last year's estimate of 5.6 percent.
The trustees' projections assume that the Affordable Care Act's cost-control provisions, including the productivity adjustments to payment rates and the Independent Payment Advisory Board, will be successfully implemented. The recent slowdown in health care cost growth and the new projections offer encouraging signs that these savings are achievable, if challenging.
The projected insolvency of the HI trust fund doesn't mean that Medicare is "going bankrupt," as some suggest. Even in 2030, when the trust fund is projected for exhaustion, incoming payroll taxes and other revenues will be sufficient to continue paying 85 percent of program costs. Moreover, trustees' reports have been projecting impending Medicare insolvency for four decades, but Medicare has always paid the benefits owed because Presidents and Congresses have taken steps to keep spending and resources in balance in the near term.
The long-run shortfall in the Hospital Insurance program should also be put in context. The 75-year deficit of 0.87 percent of taxable payroll could be closed by increasing the Medicare payroll tax -- now 1.45 percent each for employees and their employers -- to 1.9 percent, or by enacting an equivalent combination of program cuts and tax increases.
Despite the improvements made by the Affordable Care Act and a slowdown in health-care cost growth nationally, Medicare continues to face significant long-term financial challenges -- stemming from the aging of the population and the continued rise in health care costs -- that contribute to the challenging long-term fiscal outlook. It is essential that policymakers take further substantial steps to curb cost growth throughout the U.S. health care system as we learn more about how to do so effectively in both public programs and private-sector health care. Those lessons will be based in part on research and pilot projects that the Affordable Care Act establishes to test new approaches to delivering health care in ways that can lower cost while maintaining or improving quality.
Until these efforts bear fruit, it will be difficult to achieve big additional reductions in Medicare expenditures. But we can generate some additional savings over the next ten years while preserving Medicare's guarantee of health coverage and without raising the program's eligibility age or otherwise shifting costs to vulnerable beneficiaries. Possible measures include ending Medicare's excessively high payments to pharmaceutical companies for drugs prescribed to low-income beneficiaries, increasing funding for actions to prevent and detect fraudulent and wasteful Medicare spending, restructuring Medicare's cost sharing and Medigap supplemental insurance (while protecting low- and moderate-income beneficiaries), and raising premiums for better-off beneficiaries.
A key fiscal policy goal is to stabilize the federal debt relative to the size of the economy. But it's neither necessary nor desirable to accomplish this by radically restructuring Medicare -- such as through "premium support" proposals that would convert Medicare to vouchers whose purchasing power doesn't keep pace with the cost of health care -- or by severely cutting Medicare or other programs that protect Americans with low and moderate incomes. Instead, we should pursue a balanced deficit-reduction approach that puts all parts of the budget on the table, including revenues. Reported by Huffington Post 4 hours ago.
Health reform, along with other factors, has significantly improved Medicare's financial outlook, boosting revenues and making the program more efficient. The HI trust fund's projected exhaustion date of 2030 is 13 years later than the trustees projected before the Affordable Care Act. And the HI program's projected 75-year shortfall of 0.87 percent of taxable payroll is down from last year's estimate of 1.11 percent and much less than the 3.88 percent that the trustees estimated before health reform.
In a shift from previous practice, the trustees' report now assumes that Congress will continue to override the substantial reductions in Medicare payments to physicians scheduled under current law, as Congress has consistently done in recent years. This change raises projected Medicare spending and makes the trustees' projections more realistic.
Medicare spending per beneficiary in recent years has grown at historically low rates -- 0.3 percent in 2012 and zero in 2013. The trustees have reduced projected Medicare spending, compared to past reports, to reflect this favorable experience. Over the next ten years, they project that Medicare spending per beneficiary will grow by 3.6 percent a year, well below its 2000-2010 average of 7.4 percent a year and below the projected growth in private health insurance costs. They project that total Medicare spending will rise from 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013 to 5.2 percent of GDP in 2035 -- compared to last year's estimate of 5.6 percent.
The trustees' projections assume that the Affordable Care Act's cost-control provisions, including the productivity adjustments to payment rates and the Independent Payment Advisory Board, will be successfully implemented. The recent slowdown in health care cost growth and the new projections offer encouraging signs that these savings are achievable, if challenging.
The projected insolvency of the HI trust fund doesn't mean that Medicare is "going bankrupt," as some suggest. Even in 2030, when the trust fund is projected for exhaustion, incoming payroll taxes and other revenues will be sufficient to continue paying 85 percent of program costs. Moreover, trustees' reports have been projecting impending Medicare insolvency for four decades, but Medicare has always paid the benefits owed because Presidents and Congresses have taken steps to keep spending and resources in balance in the near term.
The long-run shortfall in the Hospital Insurance program should also be put in context. The 75-year deficit of 0.87 percent of taxable payroll could be closed by increasing the Medicare payroll tax -- now 1.45 percent each for employees and their employers -- to 1.9 percent, or by enacting an equivalent combination of program cuts and tax increases.
Despite the improvements made by the Affordable Care Act and a slowdown in health-care cost growth nationally, Medicare continues to face significant long-term financial challenges -- stemming from the aging of the population and the continued rise in health care costs -- that contribute to the challenging long-term fiscal outlook. It is essential that policymakers take further substantial steps to curb cost growth throughout the U.S. health care system as we learn more about how to do so effectively in both public programs and private-sector health care. Those lessons will be based in part on research and pilot projects that the Affordable Care Act establishes to test new approaches to delivering health care in ways that can lower cost while maintaining or improving quality.
Until these efforts bear fruit, it will be difficult to achieve big additional reductions in Medicare expenditures. But we can generate some additional savings over the next ten years while preserving Medicare's guarantee of health coverage and without raising the program's eligibility age or otherwise shifting costs to vulnerable beneficiaries. Possible measures include ending Medicare's excessively high payments to pharmaceutical companies for drugs prescribed to low-income beneficiaries, increasing funding for actions to prevent and detect fraudulent and wasteful Medicare spending, restructuring Medicare's cost sharing and Medigap supplemental insurance (while protecting low- and moderate-income beneficiaries), and raising premiums for better-off beneficiaries.
A key fiscal policy goal is to stabilize the federal debt relative to the size of the economy. But it's neither necessary nor desirable to accomplish this by radically restructuring Medicare -- such as through "premium support" proposals that would convert Medicare to vouchers whose purchasing power doesn't keep pace with the cost of health care -- or by severely cutting Medicare or other programs that protect Americans with low and moderate incomes. Instead, we should pursue a balanced deficit-reduction approach that puts all parts of the budget on the table, including revenues. Reported by Huffington Post 4 hours ago.
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Here's Why Medicare Isn't Actually Going To 'Run Out Of Money' In 2030
The general slow down in health spending means Medicare, the federal insurance program for Americans 65 and older, is doing better financially, but is still expected to run out of money in 2030. This marks a four-year increase from last year, when the Medicare Board of Trustees predicted the program would remain solvent through 2026.The insolvency date of Medicare has fluctuated wildly since 1970, from "as close as two years away or pushed as far as 28 years into the future," according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And despite the impending financial doom, it is highly likely that the program will still be operational come 2030. That's because even if Medicare were to hit the point of "insolvency," it would still continue to function.
In 2013, the four Medicare programs: Parts A, B, C and D, covered 52.3 million people at a cost of $582.9 billion. Part A covers the cost of hospital care and is financed by a 2.9% payroll tax paid by employees and employers that goes into a trust fund. When the trustees talk about the "solvency" of the program, they are referring to the date through which the payroll tax will adequately cover the cost of hospital care for Medicare beneficiaries.
If Medicare is projected to remain solvent through 2030, this means that after 2030, the government wouldn't be able to finance the program 100%; however, the payroll tax would still be collected and the government could finance up to 85% of the cost. That percentage, though, would continue to decline into the future.
Parts B and D are considered supplementary medical insurance. Part B pays for physician services and Part D covers prescription drugs. (Part C is Medicare Advantage, and beneficiaries chose to have the program administered by a commercial health insurance plan.) Parts B and D are funded by a combination of premiums paid by the elderly enrolled in the programs and general revenue tax dollars, which are unallocated tax dollars. These programs are not affected by the solvency projections of Medicare Part A.
"Trustees’ reports have been projecting impending insolvency for four decades, but Medicare has always paid the benefits owed because Presidents and Congresses have taken steps to keep spending and resources in balance in the near term," Paul N. Van de Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote at this time last year.
Even so, policy analysts stress that the Medicare programs will need to undergo some changes as the Baby Boomers are growing older and living longer. "As the largest generation in American history enters retirement, the pressure on our social insurance programs has grown," Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew said Monday. "We must make changes now, so we don’t need to make drastic changes later."
*SEE ALSO: The 'Biggest Fiscal Development' Of The Last 3 Decades Is The Stunning Slow Down In Healthcare Spending *
Join the conversation about this story » Reported by Business Insider 3 hours ago.
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HUFFPOLLSTER: Nationwide Web Poll Gives GOP Senate Edge
CBS and The New York Times unveil a massive new online panel tracking survey conducted by YouGov, showing the GOP with a slight edge in the Senate. The Upshot's David Leonhardt explains the shift in the Times' polling standards, and how they will continue to evolve. This is HuffPollster for Monday, July 28, 2014.
*NEW TIMES/CBS/YOUGOV POLL DATA FINDS GOP SENATE EDGE* -
Anthony Salvanto, Doug Rivers and Andy Guess: "A new CBS News/New York Times Battleground Tracker estimate finds the Republicans positioned to take the Senate this year, *with a likely 51-49 seat edge if the November election were held right now*….The data is based on more than 100,000 interviews conducted online for CBS News and the New York Times by YouGov exclusively as part of this joint project, with samples for every individual Senate race and House race, oversamples in competitive races, and each matched to the demographics and voter characteristics in the states and districts….The seat estimate is made through a computer simulation model that considers all the possible outcomes that might arise out of the data, and points us to the likeliest overall Senate tally, as though this were election day. ...*Republicans' current edge looks like enough to win at the moment, but that edge is politically tenuous and statistically narrow*. It's based on a string of razor-tight races that are all-but tossups, notably one-point race estimates that narrowly favor the GOP in Louisiana, North Carolina, Iowa and Michigan." [CBS]
*Bigger news: Times/CBS embrace 'non-probability' internet polling* - Nate Cohn: "Random-digit dialing has long been the gold standard for public polling, but declining response rates may be complicating the ability of telephone polls to capitalize on the advantages of random sampling...As the young voters who are less likely to respond to telephone surveys become an ever-greater share of the population over time, *it is probably more important for analysts to have an ensemble of surveys using diverse sampling and weighting practices*...There are still questions about the effectiveness of web panels, which can reach only the 81 percent of Americans who use the Internet....Another issue is that the YouGov panel does not use probability sampling, the theoretical underpinning of modern polling....Instead, YouGov attempts to build a large, diverse panel and then match its panelists to demographically similar respondents from the American Community Survey, an extremely rigorous probability survey conducted by the Census Bureau. This step is intended to mimic probability sampling. But it can require significant assumptions about the composition of the electorate, including partisanship. These assumptions are contestable and based on varying amounts of evidence. *All of this is controversial among survey methodologists, who are vigorously debating whether a non-probability web panel should be used for survey research*...While the methodology debate rages, it’s probably best to have an eye on a diverse suite of surveys employing diverse methodologies, with the knowledge that none are perfect in an increasingly challenging era for public-opinion research." [NY Times]
*A BFD in the polling world* - Pew Research Director of Survey Research Scott Keeter: "This is a very big deal in the survey world. Until now, no major news organization has put its brand on using surveys based on non-probability methods. The move has set off a very lively debate on Twitter among journalists and pollsters. There are strong opinions about the issue of non-probability samples...I can’t predict what other organizations are going to do, but *I do expect this to spur more experimentation – and that’s a good thing for the field*. Because the Times and CBS News have good reputations for transparency, I fully expect that we will learn a lot more about the YouGov methodology in the coming weeks. That’s a good thing as well. [Pew Research]
-*Washington Post pollster Scott Clement*, via Twitter, was more critical: "News of the weekend: @nytimes and @CBSNewsPoll abandon decades of quality research methods." [@sfcpoll]
*Our take* - HuffPollster is no stranger to YouGov and its work. Doug Rivers, now YouGov's Chief Innovations Officer, co-founded the original Pollster.com and the company was our prinicpal sponsor. *The explanation that Nate Cohn outlined for The Times' decision to publish YouGov's panel data mirrors our own rationale for launching the HuffPost/YouGov polling collaboration nearly two years ago.* The reality is that all media polls, whether they begin with random samples or not, now collect data that shows considerable bias in its raw form. All such polls attempt to remove or correct those errors, usually by weighting the data. The use of non-probability panels involves a trade-off: The panels themselves are far from representative, but they come with a richer set of tools to help correct bias. YouGov, as Cohn explains, "has tracked many of its respondents over months, if not years, which gives it additional variables, such as a panelist’s [self-reported] voting history, to try to correct for non-response. After the first 2012 debate, YouGov showed less of a swing than many other polls, and its final pre-election polls were as good as or better than many other surveys in forecasting the results."
*Spurs a change in the New York Times polling standards* - Until mid-day on Monday, the New York Times Poll Watch page continued to point to the New York Times Polling Standards as last revised in 2011. Those standards offered an unambiguous ban on the reporting of non-probability internet polls:
Self-selected or 'opt-in' samples — including Internet, e-mail, fax, call-in, street intercept, and non-probability mail-in samples — do not meet The Times’s standards regardless of the number of people who participate....In order to be worthy of publication in The Times, a survey must be representative, that is, based on a random sample of respondents. Any survey that relies on the ability and/or availability of respondents to access the Web and choose whether to participate is not representative and therefore not reliable.
Sometime Monday afternoon, the Poll Watch page started pointing to an updated version that makes no mention of the old rules barring publication of specific categories of "bad polls:"
Polls – both those that meet our standards and those that do not – may be used in larger discussions of the polls themselves as long as it is clear to readers that some of the polls may not be valid measures of opinion...
The world of polling is currently in the midst of significant change, and The Times has begun a process to review its polling standards. While the process is ongoing, the paper will be making individual decisions about which polls meet Times standards and specifically how they should be used. As technology changes, we expect there will be multiple methods for capturing public opinion; we also fully expect that there will continue to be a proliferation of polls that do not meet our standards. (A copy of the standards released in May 2011 is available online.)
*Is this an amendment, or do the new standards entirely supplant the old?* - It's "somewhere in between," Upshot Editor David Leonhardt explained to HuffPollster via email. "It's an explanation that there will be a new document in the near future. It explains where we are in the interim."
More from Leonhardt's email:
Response rates on traditional polls have fallen, and a few of the newer polls are making serious efforts to reflect public opinion accurately. Given these developments, we have started a process to review our polling standards to decide which polls today meet them. We'll make the decision empirically….Until the process is complete, we'll make individual decisions about which polls meet our standards and how to use them.
Obviously, there is a difference between dropping a single poll number into a story set in a swing state, to use as a snapshot of that race, and talking about a range of polls in the context of a forecasting model or of detailed data analysis. The Times has been doing the latter for several years now, and we'll continue to. Our work with YouGov is partly an attempt to learn more about some of the most promising efforts to capture public opinion through an online panel, with all the benefits and limitations that we described.
*MENTIONING OBAMA DRASTICALLY CHANGES PARTISAN VIEWS ON ACA DELAY* - Kathy Frankovic: "Whether or not people support delaying the business health insurance mandate depends on whether or not you mention the president in the question. Americans take their cues from the people associated with an action. In last week’s Economist/YouGov Poll, opinions about the employer mandate and its delayed implementation may have suggested significant confusion, but really indicated how partisans react to mentions of President Obama. Those who favored the mandate (who are more Democratic than Republican), when told the Obama Administration had delayed implementation, supported the delay. Those opposed to the employer mandate (more Republicans than Democrats) opposed the delay in implementation. This week, respondents were asked the same question without the information that the delayed implementation was a decision made by the Obama administration. And the responses became much less partisan than they had been. *Fundamentally, without party cues and the indication it was the Obama administration that delayed implementation, Americans aren’t quite sure what to think about delaying the employer mandate.*" [YouGov]
*RELIGION, POLITICS REMAIN TIGHTLY LINKED* - Frank Newport: "Even as overall party identification trends in the U.S. have shifted over the past six and half years, the relationship between religion and party identification has remained consistent. *Very religious Americans are more likely to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and less frequently identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with those who are moderately or nonreligious*….From a practical politics standpoint, Republicans face the challenge of expanding their party's appeal beyond the minority of Americans who are very religious, and appealing to Hispanics and Asians given that even the most religious of these growing groups tilt Democratic, albeit not as much as others in these groups who are less religious. Democrats face the challenge of attempting to broaden their party's appeal beyond the base of those who are moderately or nonreligious, a tactic that most likely will require effort to frame the party's positions on social justice and equality issues in a way that is compatible with a high degree of religiousness." [Gallup]
*HAMAS TAKES MORE BLAME THAN ISRAEL FOR VIOLENCE* - Pew Research: "As fighting continues to rage in Gaza amid calls for a cease-fire, *about twice as many Americans say Hamas (40%) as Israel (19%) is responsible* for the current violence. Just a quarter (25%) believe that Israel has gone too far in responding to the conflict; far more think Israel’s response has been about right (35%) or that it has not gone far enough (15%). A majority of Republicans (60%) say Hamas is most responsible for the current violence. Democrats are divided: 29% say Hamas is more responsible, 26% Israel, while 18% volunteer that both sides are responsible." [Pew]
*HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL!* - You can receive this daily update every weekday via email! Just click here, enter your email address, and and click "sign up." That's all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).
*MONDAY'S 'OUTLIERS'* - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-Ben Highton doubts Georgia is turning Democratic. [WashPost]
-Seth Masket ponders why the president's approval rating isn't higher. [Pacific Standard]
-CNN/ORC finds Mitt Romney winning in a rematch against Barack Obama, but losing in a matchup with Hillary Clinton. [CNN]
-Aaron Blake defends the CNN Obama/Romney question. [WashPost]
-An Oregon Republican accuses her Democratic rival of push polling. [Salem Statesman-Journal] Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.
*NEW TIMES/CBS/YOUGOV POLL DATA FINDS GOP SENATE EDGE* -
Anthony Salvanto, Doug Rivers and Andy Guess: "A new CBS News/New York Times Battleground Tracker estimate finds the Republicans positioned to take the Senate this year, *with a likely 51-49 seat edge if the November election were held right now*….The data is based on more than 100,000 interviews conducted online for CBS News and the New York Times by YouGov exclusively as part of this joint project, with samples for every individual Senate race and House race, oversamples in competitive races, and each matched to the demographics and voter characteristics in the states and districts….The seat estimate is made through a computer simulation model that considers all the possible outcomes that might arise out of the data, and points us to the likeliest overall Senate tally, as though this were election day. ...*Republicans' current edge looks like enough to win at the moment, but that edge is politically tenuous and statistically narrow*. It's based on a string of razor-tight races that are all-but tossups, notably one-point race estimates that narrowly favor the GOP in Louisiana, North Carolina, Iowa and Michigan." [CBS]
*Bigger news: Times/CBS embrace 'non-probability' internet polling* - Nate Cohn: "Random-digit dialing has long been the gold standard for public polling, but declining response rates may be complicating the ability of telephone polls to capitalize on the advantages of random sampling...As the young voters who are less likely to respond to telephone surveys become an ever-greater share of the population over time, *it is probably more important for analysts to have an ensemble of surveys using diverse sampling and weighting practices*...There are still questions about the effectiveness of web panels, which can reach only the 81 percent of Americans who use the Internet....Another issue is that the YouGov panel does not use probability sampling, the theoretical underpinning of modern polling....Instead, YouGov attempts to build a large, diverse panel and then match its panelists to demographically similar respondents from the American Community Survey, an extremely rigorous probability survey conducted by the Census Bureau. This step is intended to mimic probability sampling. But it can require significant assumptions about the composition of the electorate, including partisanship. These assumptions are contestable and based on varying amounts of evidence. *All of this is controversial among survey methodologists, who are vigorously debating whether a non-probability web panel should be used for survey research*...While the methodology debate rages, it’s probably best to have an eye on a diverse suite of surveys employing diverse methodologies, with the knowledge that none are perfect in an increasingly challenging era for public-opinion research." [NY Times]
*A BFD in the polling world* - Pew Research Director of Survey Research Scott Keeter: "This is a very big deal in the survey world. Until now, no major news organization has put its brand on using surveys based on non-probability methods. The move has set off a very lively debate on Twitter among journalists and pollsters. There are strong opinions about the issue of non-probability samples...I can’t predict what other organizations are going to do, but *I do expect this to spur more experimentation – and that’s a good thing for the field*. Because the Times and CBS News have good reputations for transparency, I fully expect that we will learn a lot more about the YouGov methodology in the coming weeks. That’s a good thing as well. [Pew Research]
-*Washington Post pollster Scott Clement*, via Twitter, was more critical: "News of the weekend: @nytimes and @CBSNewsPoll abandon decades of quality research methods." [@sfcpoll]
*Our take* - HuffPollster is no stranger to YouGov and its work. Doug Rivers, now YouGov's Chief Innovations Officer, co-founded the original Pollster.com and the company was our prinicpal sponsor. *The explanation that Nate Cohn outlined for The Times' decision to publish YouGov's panel data mirrors our own rationale for launching the HuffPost/YouGov polling collaboration nearly two years ago.* The reality is that all media polls, whether they begin with random samples or not, now collect data that shows considerable bias in its raw form. All such polls attempt to remove or correct those errors, usually by weighting the data. The use of non-probability panels involves a trade-off: The panels themselves are far from representative, but they come with a richer set of tools to help correct bias. YouGov, as Cohn explains, "has tracked many of its respondents over months, if not years, which gives it additional variables, such as a panelist’s [self-reported] voting history, to try to correct for non-response. After the first 2012 debate, YouGov showed less of a swing than many other polls, and its final pre-election polls were as good as or better than many other surveys in forecasting the results."
*Spurs a change in the New York Times polling standards* - Until mid-day on Monday, the New York Times Poll Watch page continued to point to the New York Times Polling Standards as last revised in 2011. Those standards offered an unambiguous ban on the reporting of non-probability internet polls:
Self-selected or 'opt-in' samples — including Internet, e-mail, fax, call-in, street intercept, and non-probability mail-in samples — do not meet The Times’s standards regardless of the number of people who participate....In order to be worthy of publication in The Times, a survey must be representative, that is, based on a random sample of respondents. Any survey that relies on the ability and/or availability of respondents to access the Web and choose whether to participate is not representative and therefore not reliable.
Sometime Monday afternoon, the Poll Watch page started pointing to an updated version that makes no mention of the old rules barring publication of specific categories of "bad polls:"
Polls – both those that meet our standards and those that do not – may be used in larger discussions of the polls themselves as long as it is clear to readers that some of the polls may not be valid measures of opinion...
The world of polling is currently in the midst of significant change, and The Times has begun a process to review its polling standards. While the process is ongoing, the paper will be making individual decisions about which polls meet Times standards and specifically how they should be used. As technology changes, we expect there will be multiple methods for capturing public opinion; we also fully expect that there will continue to be a proliferation of polls that do not meet our standards. (A copy of the standards released in May 2011 is available online.)
*Is this an amendment, or do the new standards entirely supplant the old?* - It's "somewhere in between," Upshot Editor David Leonhardt explained to HuffPollster via email. "It's an explanation that there will be a new document in the near future. It explains where we are in the interim."
More from Leonhardt's email:
Response rates on traditional polls have fallen, and a few of the newer polls are making serious efforts to reflect public opinion accurately. Given these developments, we have started a process to review our polling standards to decide which polls today meet them. We'll make the decision empirically….Until the process is complete, we'll make individual decisions about which polls meet our standards and how to use them.
Obviously, there is a difference between dropping a single poll number into a story set in a swing state, to use as a snapshot of that race, and talking about a range of polls in the context of a forecasting model or of detailed data analysis. The Times has been doing the latter for several years now, and we'll continue to. Our work with YouGov is partly an attempt to learn more about some of the most promising efforts to capture public opinion through an online panel, with all the benefits and limitations that we described.
*MENTIONING OBAMA DRASTICALLY CHANGES PARTISAN VIEWS ON ACA DELAY* - Kathy Frankovic: "Whether or not people support delaying the business health insurance mandate depends on whether or not you mention the president in the question. Americans take their cues from the people associated with an action. In last week’s Economist/YouGov Poll, opinions about the employer mandate and its delayed implementation may have suggested significant confusion, but really indicated how partisans react to mentions of President Obama. Those who favored the mandate (who are more Democratic than Republican), when told the Obama Administration had delayed implementation, supported the delay. Those opposed to the employer mandate (more Republicans than Democrats) opposed the delay in implementation. This week, respondents were asked the same question without the information that the delayed implementation was a decision made by the Obama administration. And the responses became much less partisan than they had been. *Fundamentally, without party cues and the indication it was the Obama administration that delayed implementation, Americans aren’t quite sure what to think about delaying the employer mandate.*" [YouGov]
*RELIGION, POLITICS REMAIN TIGHTLY LINKED* - Frank Newport: "Even as overall party identification trends in the U.S. have shifted over the past six and half years, the relationship between religion and party identification has remained consistent. *Very religious Americans are more likely to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and less frequently identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with those who are moderately or nonreligious*….From a practical politics standpoint, Republicans face the challenge of expanding their party's appeal beyond the minority of Americans who are very religious, and appealing to Hispanics and Asians given that even the most religious of these growing groups tilt Democratic, albeit not as much as others in these groups who are less religious. Democrats face the challenge of attempting to broaden their party's appeal beyond the base of those who are moderately or nonreligious, a tactic that most likely will require effort to frame the party's positions on social justice and equality issues in a way that is compatible with a high degree of religiousness." [Gallup]
*HAMAS TAKES MORE BLAME THAN ISRAEL FOR VIOLENCE* - Pew Research: "As fighting continues to rage in Gaza amid calls for a cease-fire, *about twice as many Americans say Hamas (40%) as Israel (19%) is responsible* for the current violence. Just a quarter (25%) believe that Israel has gone too far in responding to the conflict; far more think Israel’s response has been about right (35%) or that it has not gone far enough (15%). A majority of Republicans (60%) say Hamas is most responsible for the current violence. Democrats are divided: 29% say Hamas is more responsible, 26% Israel, while 18% volunteer that both sides are responsible." [Pew]
*HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL!* - You can receive this daily update every weekday via email! Just click here, enter your email address, and and click "sign up." That's all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).
*MONDAY'S 'OUTLIERS'* - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-Ben Highton doubts Georgia is turning Democratic. [WashPost]
-Seth Masket ponders why the president's approval rating isn't higher. [Pacific Standard]
-CNN/ORC finds Mitt Romney winning in a rematch against Barack Obama, but losing in a matchup with Hillary Clinton. [CNN]
-Aaron Blake defends the CNN Obama/Romney question. [WashPost]
-An Oregon Republican accuses her Democratic rival of push polling. [Salem Statesman-Journal] Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.
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A requirement of the Affordable Care Act leads to a refund for some Utah consumers
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah- (ABC 4 Utah) – A little known rule in the Affordable Care Act is requiring insurance companies to give back millions of dollars to customers.
This year 6.8 million consumers across the country, including some here in Utah will cash in.
It's known as the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR).
It requires insurers to spend at least 80% of premium dollars on medical care for the individual and small group pools and at least 85% for the large group pool.
That would include doctor visits, hospital stays, medication, tests and scans and other covered services, not marketing and other administrative costs.
"What it's really designed to do is make sure when these insurance companies are sitting down and thinking of their budgets and thinking about what their priorities are that they are remembering that paying for patient healthcare should be their top priority," said Jason Stevenson, with Utah Health Policy Project.
If they fall short of those ratios they have to give the difference back to customers.
For 2013 companies will dish out $330 million in refunds nation wide, $3.2 million in Utah.
Eight companies missed the mark in our state.
Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah is paying the most, $1.6 million to its small group market.
Altius is paying more than $500,000 to individual market customers and so is United Healthcare to large group clients.
The Mega Life and Health Insurance Company will pay more than $250,000 to its individual market.
BlueCross BlueShield exceeded the standard for two of the pools and missed the other by one percent.
"This amount we are rebating actually only amounts to about 2/10 of 1%. That means we're in excess of 98% right and by any measure most people would consider 98% a performance," said Lou Riepl, Strategic Communications Manager for Regence BlueCross BlueShield.
The other four companies paying refunds in Utah are Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company, Companion Life Insurance Company, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee and Trustmark Life Insurance Company.
This is the third year companies doing business in Utah have had to pay up for missing the ratios.
Each year the total refunds have declined, starting with $4.9 million in 2011 to the $3.2 million in 2013.
"Every year insurance companies get a little better at making sure they are spending 80% of their premiums on delivering healthcare,” said Stevenson.
Those getting a refund shouldn't expect a windfall, the national average is $80.
The deadline for companies to comply is this Friday, August 1, 2014. Reported by abc4 3 hours ago.
This year 6.8 million consumers across the country, including some here in Utah will cash in.
It's known as the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR).
It requires insurers to spend at least 80% of premium dollars on medical care for the individual and small group pools and at least 85% for the large group pool.
That would include doctor visits, hospital stays, medication, tests and scans and other covered services, not marketing and other administrative costs.
"What it's really designed to do is make sure when these insurance companies are sitting down and thinking of their budgets and thinking about what their priorities are that they are remembering that paying for patient healthcare should be their top priority," said Jason Stevenson, with Utah Health Policy Project.
If they fall short of those ratios they have to give the difference back to customers.
For 2013 companies will dish out $330 million in refunds nation wide, $3.2 million in Utah.
Eight companies missed the mark in our state.
Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah is paying the most, $1.6 million to its small group market.
Altius is paying more than $500,000 to individual market customers and so is United Healthcare to large group clients.
The Mega Life and Health Insurance Company will pay more than $250,000 to its individual market.
BlueCross BlueShield exceeded the standard for two of the pools and missed the other by one percent.
"This amount we are rebating actually only amounts to about 2/10 of 1%. That means we're in excess of 98% right and by any measure most people would consider 98% a performance," said Lou Riepl, Strategic Communications Manager for Regence BlueCross BlueShield.
The other four companies paying refunds in Utah are Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company, Companion Life Insurance Company, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee and Trustmark Life Insurance Company.
This is the third year companies doing business in Utah have had to pay up for missing the ratios.
Each year the total refunds have declined, starting with $4.9 million in 2011 to the $3.2 million in 2013.
"Every year insurance companies get a little better at making sure they are spending 80% of their premiums on delivering healthcare,” said Stevenson.
Those getting a refund shouldn't expect a windfall, the national average is $80.
The deadline for companies to comply is this Friday, August 1, 2014. Reported by abc4 3 hours ago.
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Consumers asked to verify income, other information — or risk losing government subsidies for health insurance
The Obama administration is contacting people with subsidized health plans under the Affordable Care Act to verify their eligibility.
Reported by Miami Herald 3 hours ago.
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Auto Insurance Quote Finder Now Produces Full Coverage Rates at Insurer Website Online
Auto insurance quote finder is now producing full coverage pricing at the Bright Sky Insurance website. The system now in place finds the best agency prices at http://brightskyinsurance.com/auto-insurance.html.
New York, NY (PRWEB) July 28, 2014
The price differences that exist for a state minimum coverage plan and a full coverage option through most insurance companies can now be researched at the Bright Sky website. The auto insurance quote finder now installed finds new rates for collision policies at http://brightskyinsurance.com/auto-insurance.html.
The development of the company system is meant to allow consumer lookups for different plans provided by U.S. based companies. The portal that is now in place requires the entry of a state zip code that will be validated prior to distribution of the price data that is revealed to each system user.
"We've built a finder to help consumers to tackle the complexities of finding a price for a specific policy type from American insurance companies," said a Bright Sky Insurance rep.
A change that was made recently to the national network of providers has opened up the search platform to allow more coverage policies to be explored. The Bright Sky website now provides consumers with more than full coverage car insurance pricing. A state minimum plan, high risk or collector policy is available to quote in real time.
"The providers of policies that are submitting data through our system do underwrite a mixture of plans that can help a person find just the right amount of coverage for an affordable price," said the rep.
The Bright Sky Insurance website is now a one-stop source to find different structures in pricing from American insurance agencies on the Internet. The issuance of life, health and homeowner policies this year has enhanced the system at http://brightskyinsurance.com/health-insurance.html.
About BrightSkyInsurance.com
The BrightSkyInsurance.com company is now producing a range of pricing data in the insurance industry that is viewable for no cost online. The company data that is supplied is now accessible through a zip code selection process. The BrightSkyInsurance.com company has arranged the use of its public tools to help Americans to locate health, auto, business, homeowner and renter plans that are underwritten by national companies. Reported by PRWeb 8 minutes ago.
New York, NY (PRWEB) July 28, 2014
The price differences that exist for a state minimum coverage plan and a full coverage option through most insurance companies can now be researched at the Bright Sky website. The auto insurance quote finder now installed finds new rates for collision policies at http://brightskyinsurance.com/auto-insurance.html.
The development of the company system is meant to allow consumer lookups for different plans provided by U.S. based companies. The portal that is now in place requires the entry of a state zip code that will be validated prior to distribution of the price data that is revealed to each system user.
"We've built a finder to help consumers to tackle the complexities of finding a price for a specific policy type from American insurance companies," said a Bright Sky Insurance rep.
A change that was made recently to the national network of providers has opened up the search platform to allow more coverage policies to be explored. The Bright Sky website now provides consumers with more than full coverage car insurance pricing. A state minimum plan, high risk or collector policy is available to quote in real time.
"The providers of policies that are submitting data through our system do underwrite a mixture of plans that can help a person find just the right amount of coverage for an affordable price," said the rep.
The Bright Sky Insurance website is now a one-stop source to find different structures in pricing from American insurance agencies on the Internet. The issuance of life, health and homeowner policies this year has enhanced the system at http://brightskyinsurance.com/health-insurance.html.
About BrightSkyInsurance.com
The BrightSkyInsurance.com company is now producing a range of pricing data in the insurance industry that is viewable for no cost online. The company data that is supplied is now accessible through a zip code selection process. The BrightSkyInsurance.com company has arranged the use of its public tools to help Americans to locate health, auto, business, homeowner and renter plans that are underwritten by national companies. Reported by PRWeb 8 minutes ago.
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Real Unemployment Rate Is at Least 18 Percent
Friday, the Labor Department is expected to report the economy added 235,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate remained steady at 6.1 percent, but that hardly tells the story.The jobless rate may be down from its recession peak of 10 percent, but much of this results from adults, discouraged by the lack of decent job openings, having quit altogether. They are neither employed nor looking for work.
Only about half of the drop in the adult participation rate may be attributed to the Baby Boom generation reaching retirement age. Lacking adequate resources to retire, a larger percentage of adults over 65 are working than before the recession.
Many Americans who would like full time jobs are stuck in part-time positions, because businesses can hire desirable part-time workers to supplement a core of permanent, full-time employees, but at lower wages. And Obamacare’s employer health insurance mandates will not apply to workers on the job less than 30 hours a week.
Since 2000, Congress has enhanced the earned income tax credit and expanded programs that provide direct benefits to low-income workers, including food stamps, Medicaid, Obamacare, and rent and mortgage assistance.
Virtually all phase as family incomes rise, either by securing higher hourly pay or working more hours, and impose an effective marginal tax rate as high as 50 percent. Consequently, these programs discourage work and skills acquisition and encourage single parents and one partner in two adult households not to work. Often, these motivate single people to work only part-time.
Undocumented immigrants face more difficulties accessing these programs, and lax immigration enforcement permits them to openly take jobs that government benefits discourage low-income Americans from accepting.
Employers can, intentionally or unintentionally, abuse the H-1B visa program, which permit businesses to employ foreign workers when qualified Americans are unavailable. Americans may be overlooked because they demand higher wages or are not networked with immigrants that are already employed in technical and managerial positions.
The economy has created only about 6 million new jobs during the Bush-Obama years, whereas the comparable figure during the Reagan-Clinton period was about 40 million. A recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that virtually all the new jobs created since 2000 went to immigrants, whereas none were created for native-born Americans.
Adding in discouraged adults who say they would begin looking for work if conditions were better, those working part-time but say they want full time work, and the effects of immigration, the unemployment rate becomes about 15 percent—and that is a lower bound estimate.
Many young people are being duped both by unscrupulous for profit, post-secondary institutions—as well as accredited colleges and universities with low admission standards—to enroll in useless programs. They would likely be in the labor force now but for easy access to federally sponsored loans and will end up heavily in debt.
Adding in these students, the real unemployment rate among U.S. citizens and permanent residents is at least 18 percent.
Since 2000, GDP growth has averaged 1.7 per year, whereas during the Reagan-Clinton years, it was 3.4 percent. The reluctance of both Presidents Bush and Obama to confront Chinese protectionism and currency manipulation and open up offshore oil for development have created a huge trade deficit that sends consumer demand, growth, and jobs abroad.
New business regulations, more burdensome than are necessary to accomplish legitimate consumer protection and environmental objectives, exacerbate these problems.
All of this suppresses wages except for the most skilled and talented workers.
No surprise, average family income, adjusted for inflation has fallen from about $55,600 in 2007 to $51,000 even as the gap between families at the bottom and top widens.
Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, national columnist and five-time winner of the MarketWatch best forecaster award. He tweets @pmorici1. Reported by Breitbart 22 hours ago.
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Tangipahoa council supports proposed clinic
The Tangipahoa Parish Council has unanimously agreed to a proposed Access Health Louisiana clinic designed for those without health insurance or in a low-income bracket.
Reported by Miami Herald 23 hours ago.
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The Fight for Women's Health Post-Hobby Lobby
When I joined the National Health Law Program as its new executive director, I knew to expect challenges. After all, our mission -- securing health care rights for those in need -- is a challenging one, perhaps never more so than now. The Affordable Care Act offers great hope for the tens of thousands of Americans who have been living with no or inadequate health insurance. Unfortunately, it also has generated political gamesmanship, with the most recent fallout harming women across the country.
The Supreme Court's disastrous decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., is an example of the latter.
The decision that closely-held corporations can "exercise religion" under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to deny female employees access to basic health care -- birth control -- is wrong in its holding and its implications. Starting with Justice Ginsburg's dissent, commentators have criticized the decision for blurring the line that corporate law is supposed to create between an individual and a business entity.
This does not begin to touch on the Court's willingness to ignore contemporary science and its complacency in the face of the unequal treatment of women. Religious beliefs are not a license to discriminate, nor to make health care decisions for someone else.
But our focus right now is on minimizing the damage created by the Hobby Lobby decision.
The damage is not just a "woman's problem." The Court's reasoning opened a Pandora's Box of issues at the intersection of employment and health. Closely-held corporations employ a staggering 52 percent of the U.S. workforce. Under the Court's reasoning, an employer could refuse to cover other standard, modern medical treatments on religious grounds. For example, the Affordable Care Act requires all plans to offer vaccinations. But certain religious groups object to vaccinations, either because they have a problem with the vaccine ingredients or the diseases they are meant to prevent. Could an employer refuse to cover vaccinations? Or deny its employees coverage of drugs intended to treat HIV/AIDS?
The immediate challenge, in the aftermath of the Court's ruling, is to address the health needs of women affected and potentially affected by the decision. Nearly 100 employers have pending suits similar to Hobby Lobby, and many more could exercise their newly-declared "religious rights," leaving potentially millions of women without easy access to contraception.
Complicating matters is an order from the Supreme Court just days after the Hobby Lobby decision. In Hobby Lobby, the Court suggested that even without employer coverage, women could still access contraception through other means. For example, the justices noted, the Administration has already made arrangements for such accommodations in the case of non-profit organizations that hold themselves out as religious. All they have to do is fill out a brief form telling the insurer that they have a religious objection to covering contraception, and the insurer will provide coverage to the employees independent of the employer's plan. In fact, the availability of this accommodation seemed to be a deciding factor for certain justices.
Except: Two days later, the Court told Wheaton College, a religious university, that it didn't have to fill out the form if it had a religious objection to it, thus potentially denying Wheaton's female employees (and the employees of other organizations eligible for the accommodation) any access to contraception coverage at all. Ironically, this would now mean that the women would have to pay for the coverage out of pocket, which of course would come from their salary, paid by Wheaton College.
So, filling out a form might not violate the religious beliefs of for-profit companies, but it does violate the beliefs of non-profit institutions? If you are outraged and waiting for the other shoe to drop, the female justices agree with you.
Congress can fix this problem if it passes the Not My Boss's Business Bill and makes clear that RFRA cannot be used to deny employees health or other benefits on the basis of their bosses' religious views, but House Republicans have already made clear that passage will be difficult. While we are waiting for Congress, the Obama Administration should move forward to make the "accommodation" available to for-profit companies that read Hobby Lobby as their license to deny essential health coverage to their employees. There are lots of well-founded concerns about whether and how the accommodation will work, including lack of monitoring, lack of transparency, and unknown cost for the self-insureds, but the Administration needs to make it a priority and make it work effectively, and the process must be transparent so the public can tell whether it's working. If it doesn't work, Justice Kennedy and others on the Court need to know that they are not deciding "from whom" women will receive contraceptive coverage, but "whether" they will receive it at all.
There is some good news in all of this. Because the Supreme Court's decision was based on its interpretation of a fairly narrow federal statute, the Hobby Lobby case did not supersede state law. For women living in the 28 states that already required insurers to cover contraception drugs and devices -- laws that were unremarkable until the ACA politicized the issue -- many of them will still be entitled to coverage for contraceptives, although they will lose the ACA's critical cost sharing protections, a significant factor for many low-income women.
For women in the other 22 states, the future is more uncertain, and their options are limited. They can advocate for a state or federal legislative response to Hobby Lobby; California is doing that now. They can petition closely-held companies in their state to continue to cover contraception services and protest those that don't.
Or they can wait for the Supreme Court to join the 21st century and recognize that contraception is basic health care. Reported by Huffington Post 21 hours ago.
The Supreme Court's disastrous decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., is an example of the latter.
The decision that closely-held corporations can "exercise religion" under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to deny female employees access to basic health care -- birth control -- is wrong in its holding and its implications. Starting with Justice Ginsburg's dissent, commentators have criticized the decision for blurring the line that corporate law is supposed to create between an individual and a business entity.
This does not begin to touch on the Court's willingness to ignore contemporary science and its complacency in the face of the unequal treatment of women. Religious beliefs are not a license to discriminate, nor to make health care decisions for someone else.
But our focus right now is on minimizing the damage created by the Hobby Lobby decision.
The damage is not just a "woman's problem." The Court's reasoning opened a Pandora's Box of issues at the intersection of employment and health. Closely-held corporations employ a staggering 52 percent of the U.S. workforce. Under the Court's reasoning, an employer could refuse to cover other standard, modern medical treatments on religious grounds. For example, the Affordable Care Act requires all plans to offer vaccinations. But certain religious groups object to vaccinations, either because they have a problem with the vaccine ingredients or the diseases they are meant to prevent. Could an employer refuse to cover vaccinations? Or deny its employees coverage of drugs intended to treat HIV/AIDS?
The immediate challenge, in the aftermath of the Court's ruling, is to address the health needs of women affected and potentially affected by the decision. Nearly 100 employers have pending suits similar to Hobby Lobby, and many more could exercise their newly-declared "religious rights," leaving potentially millions of women without easy access to contraception.
Complicating matters is an order from the Supreme Court just days after the Hobby Lobby decision. In Hobby Lobby, the Court suggested that even without employer coverage, women could still access contraception through other means. For example, the justices noted, the Administration has already made arrangements for such accommodations in the case of non-profit organizations that hold themselves out as religious. All they have to do is fill out a brief form telling the insurer that they have a religious objection to covering contraception, and the insurer will provide coverage to the employees independent of the employer's plan. In fact, the availability of this accommodation seemed to be a deciding factor for certain justices.
Except: Two days later, the Court told Wheaton College, a religious university, that it didn't have to fill out the form if it had a religious objection to it, thus potentially denying Wheaton's female employees (and the employees of other organizations eligible for the accommodation) any access to contraception coverage at all. Ironically, this would now mean that the women would have to pay for the coverage out of pocket, which of course would come from their salary, paid by Wheaton College.
So, filling out a form might not violate the religious beliefs of for-profit companies, but it does violate the beliefs of non-profit institutions? If you are outraged and waiting for the other shoe to drop, the female justices agree with you.
Congress can fix this problem if it passes the Not My Boss's Business Bill and makes clear that RFRA cannot be used to deny employees health or other benefits on the basis of their bosses' religious views, but House Republicans have already made clear that passage will be difficult. While we are waiting for Congress, the Obama Administration should move forward to make the "accommodation" available to for-profit companies that read Hobby Lobby as their license to deny essential health coverage to their employees. There are lots of well-founded concerns about whether and how the accommodation will work, including lack of monitoring, lack of transparency, and unknown cost for the self-insureds, but the Administration needs to make it a priority and make it work effectively, and the process must be transparent so the public can tell whether it's working. If it doesn't work, Justice Kennedy and others on the Court need to know that they are not deciding "from whom" women will receive contraceptive coverage, but "whether" they will receive it at all.
There is some good news in all of this. Because the Supreme Court's decision was based on its interpretation of a fairly narrow federal statute, the Hobby Lobby case did not supersede state law. For women living in the 28 states that already required insurers to cover contraception drugs and devices -- laws that were unremarkable until the ACA politicized the issue -- many of them will still be entitled to coverage for contraceptives, although they will lose the ACA's critical cost sharing protections, a significant factor for many low-income women.
For women in the other 22 states, the future is more uncertain, and their options are limited. They can advocate for a state or federal legislative response to Hobby Lobby; California is doing that now. They can petition closely-held companies in their state to continue to cover contraception services and protest those that don't.
Or they can wait for the Supreme Court to join the 21st century and recognize that contraception is basic health care. Reported by Huffington Post 21 hours ago.
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As Profits Roll In, Aetna To Expand On Obamacare Exchange In 2015
Aetna said this morning it will expand its private health insurance products on government exchanges under the Affordable Care Act next year to the additional market of Georgia based on the company’s first-year successes. The Hartford-based health insurance giant, which raised its earnings guidance for the year to $6.45 to $6.60 [...]
Reported by Forbes.com 18 hours ago.
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The New Health Care: Why Health Insurance Plans With Narrow Networks Are Here to Stay
Regulators are addressing consumer complaints about too few doctors on their plans, but economic logic suggests small networks will endure.
Reported by NYTimes.com 20 hours ago.
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United States: Federal Courts Issue Conflicting Decisions On Affordable Care Act Subsidies - Ford & Harrison LLP
Two federal appeals courts issued conflicting decisions on the availability of subsidies for health insurance purchased by individuals on federal Exchanges.
Reported by Mondaq 20 hours ago.
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Origination clause challenge to health-care law is tossed by DC Circuit
An artist’s origination clause challenge to the Obama administration’s health-care law has failed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Iowa artist and part-time National Guardsman Matt Sissel had claimed the law’s tax penalty imposed on those who fail to buy health insurance raises revenue to support…
Reported by ABA Journal 18 hours ago.
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Stunning Setback to Obamacare
Obamacare has proven again to be the biggest legislative failure in history, with last week’s ruling that its subsidies are illegal. These subsidies induced some 5 million Americans to sign up for Obamacare, but are prohibited by law as held by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Halbig v. Burwell. This humiliation to the Obama Administration was a devastating setback to legislation already disfavored by a 59-40% margin among the public, according to the latest CNN poll. Twice as many Americans say they are being hurt rather than helped by Obamacare.
Officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obamacare is neither affordable nor protective of patients. It promised subsidies for millions of Americans to buy new health insurance and to pay costly premiums that have driven insurance company stock values to record highs.
People in households making between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty line (between $11,670 and $46,680 per year for one-person households) have been getting subsidies to buy insurance on health insurance exchanges. A staggering 90% of those who signed up for this Obamacare insurance did so in reliance on these subsidies, which the Court just ruled are illegal.
These health insurance exchanges are much more than marketplaces, like Travelocity or Expedia, to make it easier to shop for and buy health insurance. They are also the vehicle for dispensing subsidies and imposing penalties, while also building Big Brother-like databases about Americans.
The liberal central planners inside the D.C. Beltway thought the 50 States would comply with Obama’s demand that they set up these health insurance exchanges, at costs estimated to be as much as $100 million per exchange. As an incentive for States to set up these exchanges, the law provided substantial subsides to people who sign up for a State-established exchange.
The central government planners thought the subsidies would coerce States to establish their own health insurance exchanges, similar to how the federal government coerces States to obey D.C. commands in other fields such as education. But States balked after they saw how much control they would be giving to the federal government by establishing a State exchange, and how expensive they would end up being.
Nearly two years ago, noted patient advocate Twila Brase, R.N., explained why "a state-established exchange is a federal takeover center." State exchanges would be required to obey federal regulations, report annually to the federal Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and comply with a list of federally mandated Essential Health Benefits as dictated by the Secretary of HHS.
Her conclusion: "Just say no" because "refusing to build the state exchanges is key to stopping Obamacare." More than 2/3rds of the States – 36 of them – have done just that.
States do not work for Barack Obama, which he has been slow to figure out. Democrats were crushed in the landslide midterm elections after the passage of Obamacare in 2010, and a repeat performance looms large with the next midterm elections barely three months away.
Back in 2010, Obama was riding high and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded passage of Obamacare by declaring, "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it!" But now Democrats are angry at what the D.C. Circuit told them is really in the bill.
Perhaps Obama and his lieutenants should have read the bill before railroading it through Congress. The text of Obamacare expressly states that the subsidies for the purchase of health insurance on an exchange are available only for an "Exchange established by the State," and the Obama Administration broke the law by subsidizing the purchase of health insurance over federal rather than State exchanges.
The D.C. Circuit admirably upheld the law as it was passed, and properly rejected attempts by the Obama Administration to rewrite it now. The Court admitted that "our ruling will likely have significant consequences both for millions of individuals receiving tax credits through federal Exchanges and for health insurance markets more broadly," but confined its ruling to interpreting the law rather than rewriting it as Obama seeks now.
Adding to the chaos, on the very same day as this defeat of Obamacare in the D.C. Circuit, another federal appellate court upheld it. That is like one umpire calling a pitch as a "ball" after another umpire had declared it a "strike."
Chief Justice John Roberts testified during his confirmation hearings that a judge should limit himself to the role of an umpire, calling the balls and strikes without changing the rules of the game. It is refreshing that a panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit did exactly that in applying the law as it was written, not rewriting it as Obama now wishes he had written it.
Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and author of 20 books. She is the co-author, with George Neumayr, of the New York Times Best-Seller titled "No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom." She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@eagleforum.org. To find out more about Phyllis Schlafly and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Website at www.creators.com Reported by Breitbart 17 hours ago.
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Emails show White House adviser intervened on ObamaCare ‘bailout’ after industry appeals
Newly released emails show a key White House adviser intervened on behalf of the health insurance industry after an executive repeatedly warned that massive premium hikes were coming unless the administration expanded an ObamaCare program that Republicans call an industry "bailout."
Reported by FOXNews.com 16 hours ago.
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SafeUseNow Selected to Showcase at TEDMED Hive 2014
SafeUseNow to demonstrate how its predictive analytics can be used to identify and help mitigate prescription drug abuse risk
ENCINITAS, Calif. (PRWEB) July 29, 2014
July 29, 2014 - What if you could stop prescription drug abuse directly at the source? That’s the big public health question being addressed by SafeUseNow, an innovative prescription drug abuse risk program developed by Principled Strategies. SafeUseNow has been selected from hundreds of applicants worldwide to be part of The Hive at the annual TEDMED Conference, September 10-12 in San Francisco, CA. The Hive is a community of exceptional startups and entrepreneurs powering healthcare transformation and shaping the future of medicine.
TEDMED, an affiliate of the TED organization, is a global community dedicated to unlocking imagination in service of health and medicine. The conference takes place simultaneously in Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA via a unified, digitally linked program. TEDMED features demonstrations of the best new ideas accelerating healthcare in The Hive – an immersive social environment dedicated to exploring and showcasing transformative startups and the inspiring entrepreneurs who power them.
SafeUseNow will participate in The Hive at the TEDMED San Francisco conference. Its clinically validated solution utilizes advanced data analytics and predictive modeling to identify combinations of prescribers, patients and pharmacies at risk of contributing to the prescription drug abuse problem. This actionable information enables healthcare stakeholders, including health insurance plans, self-insured companies, hospitals, pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to teach prescribers how to treat their patients more safely and effectively. SafeUseNow also allows customers to proactively monitor prescribing patterns for early detection of changes in prescribing trends and behavior.
“Our selection to The Hive at TEDMED San Francisco is an incredible honor,” said Patrick J. Burns, president of Principled Strategies. “We’re thrilled to demonstrate SafeUseNow alongside other healthcare technology companies with cutting edge solutions. Our presence at TEDMED will enable thousands of leading scientists, doctors, researchers and policy experts from around the world to experience first-hand how our solution is uniquely positioned to actively combat our national prescription drug abuse epidemic.”
"TEDMED is delighted to welcome SafeUseNow to The Hive, where our our multi-disciplinary, global community will experience a broad landscape of tomorrow's most exciting innovations in health and medicine," said TEDMED COO and Partner Shirley Bergin.
"In The Hive," continued Ms. Bergin, "the leaders from Safe Use Now will be part of an informal, immersive social environment where the entire TEDMED community can actively participate in the future of health and medicine in a hands-on way. Equally important, all Hive participants will help drive TEDMED's ongoing conversation about the best ways to accelerate medical progress and create a healthier life for our planet's 7 billion people."
Since the 1990s, prescription drug abuse has significantly increased in the United States, making the need for an effective identification and intervention solution critical. Until the development of SafeUseNow, a lack of actionable information about prescription drug abuse risk, despite the creation of state-sponsored prescription drug monitoring programs, made it difficult to combat the problem.
For further information about TEDMED and a profile of SafeUseNow, visit http://www.tedmed.com/event/the-hive#startup-item-283572.
About SafeUseNow
SafeUseNow is a risk identification and intervention program developed by Principled Strategies, a healthcare consultancy with expertise in predictive analytics, optimization, and risk analysis. The SafeUseNow advantage is 17 predictive risk factors discovered in a multi-year study of physician prescribing, pharmacy dispensing, and patient utilization of controlled substance drugs. SafeUseNow is an actionable solution for systematically and efficiently combating the misuse, abuse, addiction and diversion of controlled substance drugs.
To learn more, visit http://www.safeusenow.com and follow @safeusenow on Twitter.
### Reported by PRWeb 17 hours ago.
ENCINITAS, Calif. (PRWEB) July 29, 2014
July 29, 2014 - What if you could stop prescription drug abuse directly at the source? That’s the big public health question being addressed by SafeUseNow, an innovative prescription drug abuse risk program developed by Principled Strategies. SafeUseNow has been selected from hundreds of applicants worldwide to be part of The Hive at the annual TEDMED Conference, September 10-12 in San Francisco, CA. The Hive is a community of exceptional startups and entrepreneurs powering healthcare transformation and shaping the future of medicine.
TEDMED, an affiliate of the TED organization, is a global community dedicated to unlocking imagination in service of health and medicine. The conference takes place simultaneously in Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA via a unified, digitally linked program. TEDMED features demonstrations of the best new ideas accelerating healthcare in The Hive – an immersive social environment dedicated to exploring and showcasing transformative startups and the inspiring entrepreneurs who power them.
SafeUseNow will participate in The Hive at the TEDMED San Francisco conference. Its clinically validated solution utilizes advanced data analytics and predictive modeling to identify combinations of prescribers, patients and pharmacies at risk of contributing to the prescription drug abuse problem. This actionable information enables healthcare stakeholders, including health insurance plans, self-insured companies, hospitals, pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to teach prescribers how to treat their patients more safely and effectively. SafeUseNow also allows customers to proactively monitor prescribing patterns for early detection of changes in prescribing trends and behavior.
“Our selection to The Hive at TEDMED San Francisco is an incredible honor,” said Patrick J. Burns, president of Principled Strategies. “We’re thrilled to demonstrate SafeUseNow alongside other healthcare technology companies with cutting edge solutions. Our presence at TEDMED will enable thousands of leading scientists, doctors, researchers and policy experts from around the world to experience first-hand how our solution is uniquely positioned to actively combat our national prescription drug abuse epidemic.”
"TEDMED is delighted to welcome SafeUseNow to The Hive, where our our multi-disciplinary, global community will experience a broad landscape of tomorrow's most exciting innovations in health and medicine," said TEDMED COO and Partner Shirley Bergin.
"In The Hive," continued Ms. Bergin, "the leaders from Safe Use Now will be part of an informal, immersive social environment where the entire TEDMED community can actively participate in the future of health and medicine in a hands-on way. Equally important, all Hive participants will help drive TEDMED's ongoing conversation about the best ways to accelerate medical progress and create a healthier life for our planet's 7 billion people."
Since the 1990s, prescription drug abuse has significantly increased in the United States, making the need for an effective identification and intervention solution critical. Until the development of SafeUseNow, a lack of actionable information about prescription drug abuse risk, despite the creation of state-sponsored prescription drug monitoring programs, made it difficult to combat the problem.
For further information about TEDMED and a profile of SafeUseNow, visit http://www.tedmed.com/event/the-hive#startup-item-283572.
About SafeUseNow
SafeUseNow is a risk identification and intervention program developed by Principled Strategies, a healthcare consultancy with expertise in predictive analytics, optimization, and risk analysis. The SafeUseNow advantage is 17 predictive risk factors discovered in a multi-year study of physician prescribing, pharmacy dispensing, and patient utilization of controlled substance drugs. SafeUseNow is an actionable solution for systematically and efficiently combating the misuse, abuse, addiction and diversion of controlled substance drugs.
To learn more, visit http://www.safeusenow.com and follow @safeusenow on Twitter.
### Reported by PRWeb 17 hours ago.
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Bold New Book, Raising Supaman, Dispels Myths About African American Fathers
Insightful book, Raising Supaman, addresses common misconceptions about African American fathers and encourages all fathers to improve their parenting skills. Authored by tenacious entrepreneur Nathaniel A. Turner, the book is a valuable instruction manual for fathers who want to help their children dream, excel and succeed.
Carmel, Ind. (PRWEB) July 29, 2014
In a time when the African American community is often associated with negative statistics, a thought-provoking new book, Raising Supaman, dismisses many of the common misconceptions that people have about African American fathers and fathers in general.
“Raising Supaman provides readers with practical advice, proven methods and strategic instructions for assisting any parent or caregiver with helping a child dream and create a process to make those dreams a reality,” said author Nathaniel A. Turner, J.D.
So far, Raising Supaman—which was released in March—has received favorable responses from the public. The book earned a 5 star review from About.com and has been well received by various radio and news outlets.
Raising Supaman is a testament to the exemplary, hands-on parenting of Nathaniel, an African American father who overcame the challenges of growing up in the inner city in Gary, Ind. to become a successful entrepreneur with a dual master’s degree and a doctorate degree. And despite growing up without having a strong relationship with his father, Nathaniel resolved to focus on being an intentional, present and purposeful father to his son, Naeem.
Nathaniel has translated his experiences and insight into a number of products to assist other parents, including his new book, a blog, a YouTube video, a parenting course and mentoring curriculum. The Raising Supaman Academy and parenting apps are also under development. “Fatherhood is the best job in the world, but it is also the most challenging job I have ever had,” he said. “To that end, I believe the experiences that I have had combined with the wealth of parenting information that I have accumulated may serve as an instructional manual for those hoping to give their children the best they have to give.”
That’s what Nathaniel did when raising Naeem, whom he affectionately refers to as “Supaman.” Nathaniel did his best to foster a positive environment that would enable his son to fulfill his full potential. Consequently, Naeem is an amazing young man who has created an impressive resume throughout his life. Naeem, who works as a web designer and IT consultant, is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and English. He recently authored a book entitled What Are We Gonna Do Today?, which will be released in August. The book seeks to encourage increased parental engagement and inspire early readers. This fall, Naeem will be attending Santa Clara University, where he will study computer science and engineering.
Naeem, 19, is a statistical anomaly who:
•began high school as a seventh grader and became a member of the National Honor Society as a freshman
•ranked among the top 1 percent in national academic measurements and was accepted in more than 20 of the nation’s top colleges and universities
•became an accomplished athlete who played soccer on three continents, including in two of Brazil's top professional academies
•founded The Social JustUS League, which assists those who are underserved and underrepresented
•conducted an annual teen for jeans campaign and delivered care packages to the homeless
•traveled to San Francisco using his own money to learn about building sustainable institutions to care for the homeless (The Civic Week Project)
“I want to change the world,” Nathaniel said. “I want every child to have what my son had—the childhood experiences and accompanying tools that will give them a chance to dream and see their dreams be realized.”
Nathaniel maintains that America’s most fundamental societal problem is not schools, guns or drugs; it’s inept and unprepared parents. Children cannot pick their parents, he says, but parents have the wonderful opportunity to give children a chance to do better and be more than one could ever imagine. “The societal change that is needed in American communities, particularly urban neighborhoods, can’t be achieved through government legislation,” he said. “It can only be achieved by training parents to appreciate and honor the role of parents above and beyond any vocational title or position.”
Raising Supaman is a very timely book that every father should read, regardless of their race, socio-economic status or geographic location. For more information, call 317-706-6768 or visit http://www.raisingsupaman.com.
About Nathaniel A. Turner
Nathaniel A Turner, J.D., is a successful entrepreneur, who has worked as a self-employed financial planner for 17 years. Prior to starting his own business, Turner Senior Advisors, he worked for a financial planning firm, a CPA firm and the IRS. He has earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in accounting, theology, history and law and has taught courses at Indiana Wesleyan University and DePauw University. Nathaniel also has garnered a variety of honors, including Fraud Referral and Employee Recognition awards from the IRS, as well as Outstanding College Students of America and Outstanding Young Men of America. In addition to being a consummate father and professional, Nathaniel holds several licenses from the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a life and health insurance license and a preaching license from the African Methodist Episcopal Church. A self-described eclectic and modern renaissance, Nathaniel is a vegetarian who resides in Carmel, Ind.
### Reported by PRWeb 15 hours ago.
Carmel, Ind. (PRWEB) July 29, 2014
In a time when the African American community is often associated with negative statistics, a thought-provoking new book, Raising Supaman, dismisses many of the common misconceptions that people have about African American fathers and fathers in general.
“Raising Supaman provides readers with practical advice, proven methods and strategic instructions for assisting any parent or caregiver with helping a child dream and create a process to make those dreams a reality,” said author Nathaniel A. Turner, J.D.
So far, Raising Supaman—which was released in March—has received favorable responses from the public. The book earned a 5 star review from About.com and has been well received by various radio and news outlets.
Raising Supaman is a testament to the exemplary, hands-on parenting of Nathaniel, an African American father who overcame the challenges of growing up in the inner city in Gary, Ind. to become a successful entrepreneur with a dual master’s degree and a doctorate degree. And despite growing up without having a strong relationship with his father, Nathaniel resolved to focus on being an intentional, present and purposeful father to his son, Naeem.
Nathaniel has translated his experiences and insight into a number of products to assist other parents, including his new book, a blog, a YouTube video, a parenting course and mentoring curriculum. The Raising Supaman Academy and parenting apps are also under development. “Fatherhood is the best job in the world, but it is also the most challenging job I have ever had,” he said. “To that end, I believe the experiences that I have had combined with the wealth of parenting information that I have accumulated may serve as an instructional manual for those hoping to give their children the best they have to give.”
That’s what Nathaniel did when raising Naeem, whom he affectionately refers to as “Supaman.” Nathaniel did his best to foster a positive environment that would enable his son to fulfill his full potential. Consequently, Naeem is an amazing young man who has created an impressive resume throughout his life. Naeem, who works as a web designer and IT consultant, is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and English. He recently authored a book entitled What Are We Gonna Do Today?, which will be released in August. The book seeks to encourage increased parental engagement and inspire early readers. This fall, Naeem will be attending Santa Clara University, where he will study computer science and engineering.
Naeem, 19, is a statistical anomaly who:
•began high school as a seventh grader and became a member of the National Honor Society as a freshman
•ranked among the top 1 percent in national academic measurements and was accepted in more than 20 of the nation’s top colleges and universities
•became an accomplished athlete who played soccer on three continents, including in two of Brazil's top professional academies
•founded The Social JustUS League, which assists those who are underserved and underrepresented
•conducted an annual teen for jeans campaign and delivered care packages to the homeless
•traveled to San Francisco using his own money to learn about building sustainable institutions to care for the homeless (The Civic Week Project)
“I want to change the world,” Nathaniel said. “I want every child to have what my son had—the childhood experiences and accompanying tools that will give them a chance to dream and see their dreams be realized.”
Nathaniel maintains that America’s most fundamental societal problem is not schools, guns or drugs; it’s inept and unprepared parents. Children cannot pick their parents, he says, but parents have the wonderful opportunity to give children a chance to do better and be more than one could ever imagine. “The societal change that is needed in American communities, particularly urban neighborhoods, can’t be achieved through government legislation,” he said. “It can only be achieved by training parents to appreciate and honor the role of parents above and beyond any vocational title or position.”
Raising Supaman is a very timely book that every father should read, regardless of their race, socio-economic status or geographic location. For more information, call 317-706-6768 or visit http://www.raisingsupaman.com.
About Nathaniel A. Turner
Nathaniel A Turner, J.D., is a successful entrepreneur, who has worked as a self-employed financial planner for 17 years. Prior to starting his own business, Turner Senior Advisors, he worked for a financial planning firm, a CPA firm and the IRS. He has earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in accounting, theology, history and law and has taught courses at Indiana Wesleyan University and DePauw University. Nathaniel also has garnered a variety of honors, including Fraud Referral and Employee Recognition awards from the IRS, as well as Outstanding College Students of America and Outstanding Young Men of America. In addition to being a consummate father and professional, Nathaniel holds several licenses from the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a life and health insurance license and a preaching license from the African Methodist Episcopal Church. A self-described eclectic and modern renaissance, Nathaniel is a vegetarian who resides in Carmel, Ind.
### Reported by PRWeb 15 hours ago.
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