STANFORD UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT
June 12th, 2016
Palo Alto, California
Ken Burns
(AS DELIVERED)President Hennessy, members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty and staff, proud and relieved parents, calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings, ladies and gentlemen, graduating students of the Class of 2016, good morning. I am deeply honored and privileged that you have asked me here to say a few words at so momentous an occasion, that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day, especially one with such historical significance. One hundred and twenty-five years. Wow.

Thank you, too, for that generous introduction, President Hennessy. I always feel compelled, though, to inoculate myself against such praise by remembering that I have on my refrigerator at home an old and now faded cartoon, which shows two men standing in hell, the flames licking up around them. One guy says to the other, "Apparently my over 200 screen credits didn't mean a damn thing." They don't, of course; there is much more meaning in your accomplishments, which we memorialize today.

I am in the business of memorializing--of history. It is not always a popular subject on college campuses today, particularly when, at times, it may seem to some an anachronistic and irrelevant pursuit, particularly with the ferocious urgency this moment seems to exert on us. It is my job, however, to remind people--with story, memory, anecdote and feeling--of the power our past also exerts, to help us better understand what's going on now. It is my job to try to discern patterns and themes from history to enable us to interpret our dizzying, and sometimes dismaying, present. For nearly forty years now, I have diligently practiced and rigorously maintained a conscious neutrality in my work, avoiding the advocacy of many of my colleagues, trying to speak to all of my fellow citizens.

Over those decades of historical documentary filmmaking, I have also come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. History is a mysterious and malleable thing, constantly changing, not just as new information emerges, but as our own interests, emotions and inclinations change. Each generation rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past that gives its present new meaning, new possibility and new power. The question becomes for us now--for you especially--what will we choose as our inspiration? Which distant events and long dead figures will provide us with the greatest help, the most coherent context, and the wisdom to go forward?

This is in part an existential question. None of us gets out of here alive. An exception will not be made in your case and you'll live forever. You can't actually design your life. (If you want to make God laugh, the saying goes, tell her your plans.) The hard times and vicissitudes of life will ultimately visit everyone. You will also come to realize that you are less defined by the good things that happen to you, your moments of happiness and apparent control, than you are by those misfortunes and unexpected challenges that, in fact, shape you more definitively, and help to solidify your true character--the measure of any human value. You, especially, know that the conversation that comes out of tragedy and injustice needs to be encouraged, emphasis on courage. It is through those conversations that we make progress.

A mentor of mine, the journalist Tom Brokaw, recently said to me, "What we learn is more important than what we set out to do." It's tough out there, but so beautiful, too. And history--memory--can prepare you.

I have a searing memory of the summer of 1962, when I was almost nine, joining our family dinner on a hot, sweltering day in a tract house in a development in Newark, Delaware, and seeing my mother crying. She had just learned, and my brother and I had just been told, that she would be dead of cancer within six months. But that's not what was causing her tears. Our inadequate health insurance had practically bankrupted us, and our neighbors--equally struggling working people--had taken up a collection and presented my parents with six crisp twenty dollar bills--$120 in total--enough to keep us solvent for more than a month. In that moment, I understood something about community and courage, about constant struggle and little victories. That hot June evening was a victory. And I have spent my entire professional life trying to resurrect small moments within the larger sweep of American history, trying to find our better angels in the most difficult of circumstances, trying to wake the dead, to hear their stories.

But how do we keep that realization of our own inevitable mortality from paralyzing us with fear? And how do we also keep our usual denial of this fact from depriving our lives and our actions of real meaning, of real purpose? This is our great human challenge, your challenge. This is where history can help. The past often offers an illuminating and clear headed perspective from which to observe and reconcile the passions of the present moment, just when they threaten to overwhelm us. The history we know, the stories we tell ourselves, relieve that existential anxiety, allow us to live beyond our fleeting lifespans, and permit us to value and love and distinguish what is important. And the practice of history, both personal and professional, becomes a kind of conscience for us.

As a filmmaker, as a historian, as an American, I have been drawn continually to the life and example and words of Abraham Lincoln. He seems to get us better than we get ourselves. One hundred and fifty-eight years ago, in mid-June of 1858, Abraham Lincoln, running in what would be a failed bid for the United States Senate, at a time of bitter partisanship in our national politics, almost entirely over the issue of slavery, spoke to the Republican State Convention in the Illinois Statehouse in Springfield. His political party was brand new, born barely four years before with one single purpose in mind: to end the intolerable hypocrisy of chattel slavery that still existed in a country promoting certain unalienable rights to itself and the world.

He said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand.""A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Four and half years later, he was president, presiding over a country in the midst of the worst crisis in American history, our Civil War, giving his Annual Message to Congress, what we now call the State of the Union. The state of the Union was not good. His house was divided. But he also saw the larger picture. "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise--with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

And then he went on: "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union...In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

You are the latest generation he was metaphorically speaking about, and you are, whether you are yet aware of it or not, charged with saving our Union. The stakes are slightly different than the ones Lincoln faced--there is not yet armed rebellion--but they are just as high. And before you go out and try to live and shape the rest of your life, you are required now to rise, as Lincoln implored us, with the occasion.

You know, it is terribly fashionable these days to criticize the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save, to blame it for all the ills known to humankind, and, my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes. But you would be hard pressed to find--in all of human history--a greater force for good. From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of Rights; from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Land Grant College and Homestead Acts; from the transcontinental railroad and our national parks to child labor laws, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act; from the GI Bill and the interstate highway system to putting a man on the moon and the Affordable Care Act, the United States government has been the author of many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives. But if you tune in to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle, you are made painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and the chief culprit is our evil government.

Part of the reason this kind of criticism sticks is because we live in an age of social media where we are constantly assured that we are all independent free agents. But that free agency is essentially unconnected to real community, divorced from civic engagement, duped into believing in our own lonely primacy by a sophisticated media culture that requires you--no--desperately needs you--to live in an all-consuming disposable present, wearing the right blue jeans, driving the right car, carrying the right handbag, eating at all the right places, blissfully unaware of the historical tides that have brought us to this moment, blissfully uninterested in where those tides might take us.

Our spurious sovereignty is reinforced and perpetually underscored to our obvious and great comfort, but this kind of existence actually ingrains in us a stultifying sameness that rewards conformity (not courage), ignorance and anti-intellectualism (not critical thinking). This wouldn't be so bad if we were just wasting our own lives, but this year our political future depends on it. And there comes a time when I--and you--can no longer remain neutral, silent. We must speak up...and speak out.

For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified. So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn't seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn't seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and--they feel--powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that--as often happens on TV--a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can't. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.

As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient Proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again--all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.

We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or "balance," or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he's rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary "good behavior." It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.

And do not think that the tragedy in Orlando underscores his points. It does not. We must "disenthrall ourselves," as Abraham Lincoln said, from the culture of violence and guns. And then "we shall save our country."

This is not a liberal or conservative issue, a red state, blue state divide. This is an American issue. Many honorable people, including the last two Republican presidents, members of the party of Abraham Lincoln, have declined to support him. And I implore those "Vichy Republicans" who have endorsed him to please, please reconsider. We must remain committed to the kindness and community that are the hallmarks of civilization and reject the troubling, unfiltered Tourettes of his tribalism.

The next few months of your "commencement," that is to say, your future, will be critical to the survival of our Republic. "The occasion is piled high with difficulty." Let us pledge here today that we will not let this happen to the exquisite, yet deeply flawed, land we all love and cherish--and hope to leave intact to our posterity. Let us "nobly save," not "meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

Let me speak directly to the graduating class. Watch out. Here comes the advice.

Look. I am the father of four daughters. If someone tells you they've been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously. And listen to them! Maybe, some day, we will make the survivor's eloquent statement as important as Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Try not to make the other wrong, as I just did with that "presumptive" nominee. Be for something.

Be curious, not cool. Feed your soul, too. Every day.

Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all. Not just presidential candidates.

Don't confuse success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once told me that "careerism is death."

Do not descend too deeply into specialism either. Educate all of your parts. You will be healthier.

Free yourselves from the limitations of the binary world. It is just a tool. A means, not an end.

Seek out--and have--mentors. Listen to them. The late theatrical director Tyrone Guthrie once said, "We are looking for ideas large enough to be afraid of again." Embrace those new ideas. Bite off more than you can chew.

Travel. Do not get stuck in one place. Visit our national parks. Their sheer majesty may remind you of your own "atomic insignificance," as one observer noted, but in the inscrutable ways of Nature, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard.

Insist on heroes. And be one.

Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all--not the car, not the TV, not the smartphone.

Make babies. One of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry--I mean really worry--about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating. I promise. Ask your parents.

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means simply, "God in us."

Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Convince your government, as Lincoln knew, that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land. Governments always forget that.

Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country--they just make our country worth defending.

Believe, as Arthur Miller told me in an interview for my very first film on the Brooklyn Bridge, "believe, that maybe you too could add something that would last and be beautiful."

And vote. You indelibly underscore your citizenship--and our connection with each other--when you do.

Good luck. And Godspeed.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 12 hours ago.

**  This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog. **

 

Have you ever wondered why politicians make some immigration illegal and then turn a blind eye to illegal immigration wherever it is happening … for decades? What about why they talk so much about building walls to keep out the vast hoards, rather than simply arresting the much smaller number of people who hire illegal immigrants. Surely drying up the jobs that are available to illegal immigrants would be much more economical than building a thousand-mile wall. This article will tell you why we make some immigration illegal and then turn a blind eye to it.

Have you also wondered why politician make it illegal for millions of people to enter the country and then eventually support naturalizing those people who broke the laws these very politicians made? This article will answer that, too.

First, I’ll state that immigration is largely about economics; and by that I do not simply mean that people are coming to the U.S. to gain economic opportunity, though, of course, they are. Nor do I simply mean immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans, though, of course, they are.

There is an elephant in the room that no one is talking about, and it’s not just a GOP elephant. Immigration economics has a dark underbelly that neither party ever talks about. Since immigration reform is one of the major planks of the Republican’s top candidate for the presidency, there is no time like the present to talk about the elephant.

 

-Neither party wants to end illegal immigration nor make all immigration legal-

 

The fact is both parties have created an immigration dance that they love. First, they both turn a blind eye toward illegal immigration. That, in turn, causes the number of illegal aliens to grow quickly as word travels that “they won’t really do anything about it. Eventually, a large subculture of illegal immigrants becomes a serious social problem that demands political resolution because citizens of the country start getting worked up over the social conflicts they are feeling and the jobs they see going to illegal immigrants.

The next step of the dance is the tricky one. We saw it happen in Reagan’s day. Both parties compromise in order to fix the problem without fixing it. They fix it by creating amnesty, which they always say is not amnesty because the citizens don’t like amnesty. They don’t fix it in in that they promise all the citizens who are angry about illegal immigration they will only let these illegal aliens in the door because turning them away would create a humanitarian crisis because the number has grown so large.Then they will batten the gates much tighter and never let it happen again. Only … they never do batten the gates at all, and so it happens all over again. Never mind that the number of illegal immigrants only grew to the point of becoming a humanitarian crisis because those same politicians turned a blind eye to illegal immigration for years.

This article will also answer why that continues on a rinse-and-repeat basis. By the end of the article you may think, “Wow, he is really jaded about politicians,” or you might thing, “Wow, that makes total sense from an economic standpoint, and it really, really stinks.” You’d be right either way.

Illegal aliens are our bread and butter, and we eat them for lunch. More particularly, politicians know what side their bread is buttered on. They get paid to provide cheap labor for rich people. Let’s break it down to some obvious facts.

 

-The economics of Illegal immigration-

 

The answer to all these questions is really pretty simple:  Illegal immigrants provide the closest thing the U.S. has to a peasant class. It is important that politicians make them illegal so that they will be true peasants (people with nor native rights nor any say in the laws that govern them). It’s important that politicians turn a blind eye to them so that we  will have peasants here … where we want them. It doesn’t accomplish anything toward creating a class of surfs to do work for the rich if we keep them out of the country. But, if they have rights as citizens, they will not remain surfs. We’ll have a peasant revolt.

The wealthy business owners have wanted a peasant class ever since they could no longer have a slave class. A peasant class is the next best thing. Often, they have lusted for such laborers overseas, and they have gotten politicians into office who made it possible for them exploit an offshore peasant class with sweat shops.

However, there are many jobs that cannot go overseas. They have to be done by more expensive American workers. If only we had a resident peasant class to do the work that American workers don’t want to do because it doesn’t pay enough.

The Bush dynasty opened the doors to outsourcing as many jobs to lower-wage workers outside the country as possible in order to help wealthy stock holders amass more wealth, but there wasn’t anything either Bush could do about those jobs that have to be done inside the country … such as cleaning hotels and bussing dishes at restaurants or picking tomatoes grown domestically…. or was there?

For those jobs, they needed to insource the outsourcing. In other words, they need to find ways to get peasant labor into the country. You know, the kind of labor that doesn’t expect health insurance and doesn’t cry about working conditions and most of all, works cheap.

Strong immigration laws make that possible. When someone is illegal they are willing to work without benefits and with fewer rights and for less money because they have to stay under the radar. They are afraid of standing up for their rights. Heck, they hardly have rights to stand up for; but if they did stand up, they’d be deported instantly. (Those are the ones who particularly get to be sent home and made a show of so the p0liticians can convince the citizens that they are trying to uphold the laws.)

Making some people’s presence in the country illegal while turning a blind eye to their being here assures a peasant class of workers. It’s as simple as that: Illegal immigrants are willing to work at subsistence levels because that is what they come from. They don’t need a wage that makes an American living. They have no say in what the government does to them or with them because, like peasants, they have no vote;  but also because they have to keep their heads low. The fact that they have almost no status in society at all assures they will remain cheap.

*As always, if you want to know why things happen, follow the money.*

If you think I’m being cynical and that the government is not intentionally letting illegal aliens in to take jobs at low wages, then ask yourself this simple question: What would happen if, instead of trying to arrest and return home millions of illegal aliens, the government just started arresting and jailing the thousands people who have hired them … starting with just the top one-hundred? The jobs would dry up before you even made it through the top one hundred.

That’s what would happen, and you know it. People will hire illegal aliens if there is only a financial penalty if you get caught and if they’re pretty sure the government will keep turning a blind eye to the situation; but start putting those employers in jail, and all employers will quickly be checking the ID and green cards of their migrant workers to make sure they have a legal right to work here.

As soon as the jobs dried up, illegal immigrants who could get no work would find their plight worse here than in their home country, and they would return home of their own free will … unless, of course, you put them on welfare because you’re softhearted, but also softheaded about the costs … and you feel it is the United State’s obligation to save the entire world from poverty and to make your kids and grandkids pay for your benevolence by financing the welfare with national debt.

You see, you really don’t have to round up millions of people hiding in bushes. You have to round up only hundreds of big employers whose whereabouts are easily known by their big houses. Notice that does not happen. Not ever. You really don’t have to build a wall either. Notice the wall has been talked about for thirty years and still isn’t finished.

Big business wants cheap labor, and politicians protect their benefactors. The cheapest labor is that which is illegal but knowingly allowed to happen anyway. The justification for turning a blind eye is always, “Americans don’t want these jobs.” If your head is dumber than a turnip and stuck equally deep in the dirt, then you have long accepted that as truth. Actually, it’s just that it sounded reasonable, so you didn’t think it through. If you were dumber than a turnip you wouldn’t be reading this economics blog.

To think it through, ask yourself why Americans don’t want those jobs. Is it because they’re dirty jobs? That’s the party line. And that may be a small part if it, but cleaning hotels isn’t that bad. Washing and bussing dishes isn’t that bad. Picking tomatoes isn’t that bad.

Before you say, “Hold on; it’s bad enough,” let me agree that none of it is desirable work to be sure. I mean, I don’t want to go do it. However, American citizens line up to do a lot worse jobs … such as cleaning out and repairing sewer lines. So, why will an American worker clean out a sewer line but not pick a pretty tomato?

The answer, again, is pretty straight forward when you think it through: the guy who cleans out your sewer line is a plumber, and he makes a whole lot more money per hour to do that work than he could doing those other jobs. If he could make the same amount doing dishes, don’t you think he’d rather be inside cleaning dishes than outside in the mud cleaning sewer pipes? Bending over the tomato plants will also work just as well for sporting that plump plumber derrière.

Americans don’t want certain jobs because wages for those particular jobs have been suppressed for decades by the availability of cheap, illegal immigrant labor. If there had been a ready pool of people willing to take those jobs at bottom wages, then the wages would have had no choice but to rise over the decades to a level that would attract workers. The dishes have to be washed for the grand hotels to stay in business, and there is a wage at which Americans will line up for the job.

That’s just market dynamics, but that wages sink to whatever the lowest common denominator will accept is also just market dynamics.

Now we come to the point where immigration economics really kicks in. The dirty secret is that it is not just the politicians who want the cheap labor and not just big business owners. *American citizens want a peasant class, too.* That’s why the politicians get away with it.

Americans want cheap tomatoes and cheaper dinners out. (Well, many of them; not all.) We all know that, if the pickers and the dish washers made more money, we’d have to pay more for the food we eat in and more for the food we eat out. We’d have less to spend on video games and larger televisions. That’s also just a market dynamic. You’re going to pay more for a lot of things if illegal aliens don’t do the jobs for less.

So, from the bottom to the top, illegal immigration is all about the economic benefits of having a peasant class to do the dirty work in order to afford all the citizens a little better lifestyle.

But if establishing some people as an illegal class that many citizens turn a blind eye to is something many Americans want, why do politicians eventually always come around to talking about making more immigration legal?

 

-The economics and politics of immigration reform-

 

The rub in all of this is that the peasant class eventually gets large enough to stage a peasant revolt. That’s when the federal government starts to talk once again about amnesty — the politically correct term for which is “immigration reform.”

Naturally, the politicians do all they can to avoid the term “amnesty” because all previous amnesties left a bad taste in Joe and Jolene Citizen’s mouths because the government promised not to let illegals in again and then did so anyway. (And Americans are ambivalent about having a peasant class; they want the cheap tomatoes but they don’t want their own jobs taken, or they feel bad about seeing people work so cheaply, and guilt kicks in.)

In the guilt cycle, we atone for our sins and then go back to repeating them. So, the politicians atone for guilt by granting citizenship and then keep letting lots more illegals in to maintain the peasant worker class. (And Joe and Jolene really don’t think too much about this because they like those cheap tomatoes. If you think about it too much, the guilt kicks in, and its hard to enjoy the cheap tomato.)

Bear in mind, they have to be illegal to remain a peasant class because that’s what forces them to keep their heads down. Just letting in more legalized labor would not do as much to hold the price down.

Sooner or later, however, you have to give that growing peasant class citizenship. What you forgot about when building up the peasant labor pool is that those people also suffer from this thing we call the “human condition.” So, they start to expect citizenship because they are tired of seeing everyone else around them have more rights and more money than they do. At first, they were glad to come here just for the economic benefit, but now they reach for a higher brass ring. We all rise to a plateau and then feel we could be happy with just thirty percent more.

If you don’t grant a path to citizenship eventually for all your indentured servants, you face a peasant revolt. Their shear numbers give them power. So, the gates finally open under pressure to allow citizenship for the vast bulk of those who are here illegally. And then they shut again, and all eyes turn blind again in order to develop a new peasant class. We are currently at the peasant revolt point where we have to deal with this.

Of course, President Obama has been intimating openly for seven years now that he will open those gates to citizenship. Naturally that has attracted hoards of people to migrate to the U.S. illegally in hopes that they will make it through the gates of the city before they close again. This has made the problem grow fast enough that the time for resolving a peasant revolt is happening during Obama’s own shift as president. That’s advantageous because, if he can be the one who gets the hoards in the door, they will probably all become good Democrats to bestow their blessed new votes upon him and his.

Most good citizen Democrats will support open-door policies toward mass immigration because it is the soft-hearted thing to do. So, he won’t find much resistance from his own party.

At the same time, many Republicans in Congress will support it because the revolt is happening. There is no getting around it. Republicans know that even legalimmigrants are willing to work for less than native citizens because of the situations they came out of; so it’s good for big business. Still helps keep down the cost of labor, even if not as much as illegal immigration does.

There is no will on either side of the aisle to do anything real to stop illegal immigration for good. That’s why the Republicans capitulated overnight in granting money for immigration reform without a word … once the last elections were over. The last thing they would want to do is talk about this elephant in the room and expose the real underpinnings of illegal immigration.

At the same time, they created funding for more border security for political cover. That’s all smoke and mirrors to appease the concerns of rank and file Republicans who are tired of being unemployed. You know now that it was smoke and mirrors because you can see that, after a couple of years, it has done nothing to stem the problem.

The real solution — if everybody wanted one — is obvious, and I already completely covered it in just one sentence. Jail the employers, and the problem goes away on its own. It’s not about bolting the gates at the border. Illegal immigrants are not coming here because they love the culture; they are coming here for economic opportunity because the peasant class here is a lot better off than the peasant class at home. You can’t blame them. I don’t. Bad as the wages and benefits may be, they’re much better than what they had.

So, that’s how the game is played and why Republican politicians are ready to allow amnesty without calling it that and while making a lot of noise about spending money to bar the gates. That’s why they’ll continue to turn a blind eye toward the employers who hire illegal aliens.

It would be a simple thing to create a law that awards jail time based on the number of illegal aliens hired and to start auditing companies now. It’s not that hard for auditors to see if all employees have the right proof of citizenship, and it’s not hard as the person doing the hiring to make sure that all employees have the right documentation and to prove it with facsimiles. You do need good quality documentation that’s hard to counterfeit, but that’s doable, and no system has to be perfect in order to be much better than what we have.

You won’t hear that talked about by any politician — not even Donald Trump, who is still stuck on the wall.

 

-What is the cost of immigration economics?-

 

The New York Times just published an article about some of the costs of immigration that I find to be far worse than paying more for my tomatoes. Frankly, I’ve been coming across these kinds of articles a lot lately. This one talks about the Islamization of England through attempted control of its public schools by Islamic immigrants. It is stunning how far they have gone in turning some schools into a Muslim cultural institution.

I read a lot of major European newspapers, and I’ve been seeing this all over Europe for a couple of years. It’s a high social cost.

Articles in The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Jerusalem Post, and numerous other major news sites show me a pattern happening in countries that have been too liberal in their immigration policies. Britain, Germany, France, Norway and Sweden, to name a few are all starting to see internal revolt from their native citizens against immigration because certain immigrants truly do not like the culture they are moving into. They seek to turn the country into what they are used to.

I think the resulting homogenization of cultures that happens when immigrants try to turn their new land into their old land is also a great loss of diversity and interest.

Here’s an article on Germany that describes the problem there. Germany has the second-most liberal immigration policy in the world. Guess which nation has the most liberal immigration policy in the world? The U.S.

 

-My own experience of immigration in my neck of the woods-

 

I feel strongly that mmigration in the U.S. needs to be slowed way down. Liberals are creating huge culture clashes by not giving people time to get used to each other’s ways, and they’re creating overpopulation and environmental harm.

I see this happening all around me. The county I live in is experiencing gridlock for the first time in its existence. Almost all population growth has been from immigration. The county has nearly doubled in size in two decades. While it is about as far from Latin American as you can get, billboards and signs are now starting to use Spanish with no English.

Prior to to the last two decades, population growth and immigration in this county were gradual. Rapid population growth is resulting in tighter and tighter building regulations to avoid the problems of overdevelopment; so how is such immigration good for the people who live here? Why are we better off with more gridlock? (Simple. It sells more real estate, so again it’s all about money.)

To me it is not about where the people come from, it’s about the shear number of people. Why do I want them? I wouldn’t want this level of immigration even if they all came from merry old England where my ancestors came from. We have enough people, thanks, and far too few good paying jobs.

Nevertheless, the group of Latino immigrants is different than all others — much different. Have you noticed television programming is becoming increasingly dominated by Spanish all over the nation. That’s never happened with any other language in this county, and yet this country was made from immigrants from all over the world. All other people accepted the language and culture they moved into and made it their own and became a part of it.

This pressure to Latinize our own culture in order to accommodate is not because the people are different than other immigrants. They’re just as nice as any other group of people. What’s different is the volume. Latin American immigrants provided such a major portion of the carefully engineered peasant population that they have become such a large group they don’t have to make those changes. They are large enough to demand others change to accommodate them. This is the cost of creating a large peasant population.

Lest anyone mistake me in an oversensitive manner to thinking I’m calling them peasants because they are Latin, I want to place a reminder here that race has nothing to do with it. They are peasants because they are part of an illegal population made up of all races that exists intentionally to provide cheap labor for the United States. They exist because politicians intentionally turn a blind eye to them but keep them illegal so they have to hold their heads down.

Big businesses love cheap labor. Big real estate developers love population growth. The locals aren’t having babies fast enough, so immigration means a lot more construction of everything and cheap labor to do the construction so the developers make more money all around.

I have seen vast acres of beautiful, fertile agricultural land and entire forested mountainsides turn into housing developments entirely bought up by immigrants. In this case, Russian and Indian. In my area, its has turned a beautiful rural county into a sprawling suburb. It’s certainly not an environmental positive, but Democrats love it, too.

 

-The cultural cost of mass migration-

 

The current European immigration crisis has become a political inferno because Islamic immigrants try to change the cultures they move into. Just so this discussion is not about Islam, let’s imagine that it was Jewish mass migration into the United States. In my opinion, if Jews moved to this nation and wanted to speak Hebrew at home and to practise all the rules of Judaism, no one should have a problem with that; but if many Jews moved here and because they had the power of numbers, insisted that government documents be written in Hebrew, we should all have a major problem with that. If they insisted Torah be fought in public schools we should have a problem with that. If they went further an insisted that Torah law become the law of the land, we should have a very big problem with that.

That, however, has not happened with Jewish immigration, but in some European countries Muslim immigrants are demanding public school classes teach their religion and that government institutes Sharia law. Read the New York Times article above. It will open your eyes about a pattern that is recurring in a number of Western nations.

I certainly would not move to France and expect the French to speak English to me or to write government documents in English for me. Yet, people are moving to France from Islamic nations and demanding that courts start recognizing Sharia or that the country create special courts for Muslims.

Culture clashes like this are unavoidable when immigrants are brought in from one culture in huge numbers. If we do not slow immigration to a level where migrants can assimilate with the culture the culture of the country they are moving into, then we will certainly create more and more internal conflicts that will begin to boil over.

What may seem like a liberal dose of love toward immigrants will prove to be naiveté about human interactions. You have to allow time for people to adjust to each other. When you force people together as Obama has done (doubling the immigration rate) or as Merkel has done in Germany, you continually spawns greater conflict. People do not adjust to each other just because they are forced to.

We are going to see a lot more racial and nationalistic conflict in Western countries because of the huge increase in legal immigration and the blind eye turned toward illegal immigration along with the amnesty that is coming.

 

-One of my problems is that I love different cultures so much-

 

I like to see lots of difference in culture. Viva la difference. I don’t like homogeneity. And that’s why people need to assimilate when they move into a country, rather than try to transform it into something more like their own culture and country.

Each country’s culture has its own beauty, and we are losing that all over the world rapidly due to globalization. People in those cultures are feeling that loss. And it’s not inevitable. It’s something politicians are forcing.

Before you throw the race card at me, you need to know this is written by a guy who thinks interracial children are the most beautiful children on earth, who loves the different looks of different races for all the exotic variety of beauty race gives to this world, who loves accents and who loves to travel and who hopes that nations will have distinctive cultures when he travels to them. Since I was a child I was brought up to love all people of all races and to believe that each race is a different kind of flower in God’s flower garden. The world teams with creative diversity, and that’s beautiful.

But I’d like Norway to be Norwegian in culture and England, English and Germany, German and Morocco, Moroccan. I don’t want an homogenized world. I want a world with different nations and cultures that respect each other and get along, and that is not what we are getting with mass migration. We are getting a lot more racial conflict from people who seem to have an agenda of forcing others together.

I don’t  think crashing people together like neutrons in a particle accelerator is going to create any chemistry other than a great big bang. People who want to migrate to another country should not go with any intention of changing that nation’s culture, which particularly includes language. Go to appreciate and mix with the culture that is there and become a part of it. If you don’t like that culture as it is, just don’t go!

I also don’t think that overpopulation is a good thing. Bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrants into a state like Florida or California that is, in my opinion, already overpopulated makes now sense. Flooding them into rural areas also makes no sense, as it completely destroys the rural nature of those areas.

I don’t see that we need more people or that we have a duty to take them. But I DO see that it serves the interest of real estate developers and of businesses that want cheap labor and of politicians that think they can bolster the vote for their party if they give thousands of migrant workers citizenship so they can vote.

What you see in all the fury around Donald Trump’s rallies is the anger that comes from forcing people together in mass finally starting to express itself. And you’re going to see a lot more of it! The cost in civil unrest is going to become quite high as a result of people who think they know how to do good by forcing others together.

The most liberal nations of the world are destroying their own cultures and creating racial and nationalistic strife because many of their citizens value their culture and many of the immigrants do not. In Europe you can see that immigrants treat the culture they are moving into with contempt. Violent crime has surged. While some politicians may be advocating rapid immigration out of a sense that they are doing good (acting benevolent toward underprivileged or persecuted people) and others are doing it just to add voters or bring in cheap labor for their Wall Street benefactors, the cost is going to be great.

Just know that what you are seeing on both sides of Trump rallies is just the tip of the flame unless politicians start backing down from forcing immigration in their already overpopulated nations. Reported by Zero Hedge 4 hours ago.

Millions of consumers paying the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year without financial help from government subsidies Reported by ABCNews.com 1 hour ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who pay the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year, with no financial help from government subsidies. President Barack Obama's health law provides income-based subsidies for consumers who buy individual policies on HealthCare.gov and state insurance markets. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas is seeking an average premium increase of nearly 60 percent for 2017, and Smith says his monthly bill of about $350 is already about as much as a car payment. [...] he's had to drive to a neighboring county for medical care because he couldn't get an appointment close to home. Scarola, who's in the midst of a career transition from advertising to interior design, isn't happy that her insurer dropped the hospital network she's interested in. Back in 2010, the Obama administration used public anger about premium increases as leverage to win passage of the health law. Many people respond to premium hikes by switching to skimpier coverage, yet that leads to bigger medical bills if they need treatment. Reported by SeattlePI.com 44 minutes ago.

Zipari announces new client Canopy Health Insurance, creating a new model for insurance companies that reduces operational costs while improving customer experience by using a single vendor for all consumer-oriented technology.

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) June 13, 2016

Insurance software startup, Zipari, announced that it has been selected as the technology partner for Canopy Health Insurance. Canopy Health Insurance, a new consumer-oriented health plan focusing on individual enrollment, has retained Zipari for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service center software, billing and enrollment software, and all consumer-facing technology including online shopping, provider portal and prescription portal. This partnership creates a new model for insurance companies that reduces operational costs while improving customer experience by using a single vendor for all consumer-oriented technology. The elimination of the traditional enrollment and billing Third-Party Administrator (TPA) streamlines operations while enabling carriers to have a holistic view of the customer.

“Canopy is going to market with a focus on millennials, requiring a much different approach to brand, marketing and customer service than traditional health plans,” said Zipari’s CEO and Co-Founder, Mark Nathan. “We are delighted to work with Canopy to ensure that communication between the customer and carrier is central to all of Canopy’s services”.

Canopy Health Insurance’s Chief Marketing Officer Tracy Faigin said, “The partnership between Canopy and Zipari provides an ideal way to leverage each other’s strengths, and creates a new and streamlined model for running a health plan. Zipari’s one-of-a-kind Consumer Experience Platform and CRM solution built specifically for insurance provides Canopy with a complete enrollment and billing solution as well as rich 360 degree views of our prospects and members”.

Ms. Faigin continued “Zipari’s solutions give Canopy a distinct competitive advantage to understand healthcare consumers and engage with them more effectively. We’re excited to use this platform to provide our customers a high level of customer service and personal interaction that simplifies the entire health insurance experience.”

Zipari’s offering includes the most comprehensive suite of consumer experience software products for both the individual and group marketplaces. The unique Consumer Experience Platform provides the analytics and intelligence to capture user behavior from consumer-facing software, and enable insurers to have a complete view of their members within Zipari’s CRM Application. The result is superior customer service from the website to mobile to the call center.

About Zipari
Based in Brooklyn, New York, Zipari, is a technology startup that develops solutions for carriers to engage with consumers in new and innovative ways. Powered by consumer analytics, Zipari’s insurance-specific Consumer Experience Platform and CRM Applications provide carriers with real-time insights into consumer behavior at every touch-point, allowing them to provide a seamless customer experience.

About Canopy
Canopy Health Insurance is built from the ground up specifically for today’s health insurance environment–focused on individual consumers and designed to be efficient, different and connected through innovative and best-of-breed technology and services. The leadership team consists of experienced executives in the managed care, technology, and consumer marketing. Visit covermecanopy.com to learn more.

# # # Reported by PRWeb 54 seconds ago.

Seniors in New Hampshire planning ahead for senior care should first understand the daily costs of nursing homes in their area and review the most important factors indicating quality of care.

Chicago, Illinois (PRWEB) June 13, 2016

New Hampshire seniors needing a long-term stay in a nursing home in their state will pay roughly $106,945 per year, the average annual cost based on the daily rates of 80 nursing homes in New Hampshire.

Seniors in the Granite State who require nursing home care can now view the most recent ratings and costs of nursing homes in their area by using the interactive Caregiverlist® Nursing Home Directory. This month’s update of the New Hampshire Caregiverlist® Index shows that the average cost of a nursing home in New Hampshire is $293 per day (based on both private and semi-private rooms), or about $8,912 per month. Of the 80 total New Hampshire nursing homes, just over half receive a score of at 4 or 5 stars, while only 4 nursing homes garnered a 1-star rating. New nursing homes will also receive only a 1-star until they have had a chance to be rated.

Caregiverlist® Rating Criteria National Averages for New Hampshire Nursing Homes

June 2016 National Averages Weighting for Rating

2 hours, 28 minutes: C.N.A. Hours per Resident per Day 40%
15.7%: Long-stay Residents with Increasing Activities of Daily Living Needs 20%
1.0% Short-term Residents with Pressure Sores (Bed Sores) 20%
Overall Medicare Star-Rating Score 20%

Caregiverlist® New Hampshire Nursing Home Rating and Cost Index

Average Cost Varies by State
Total Number of Nursing Homes: 80
Average Single Price: $301
Average Double Price: $285
Average Rating: 3.1

Star Rating Snapshot:
5-Star        9
4-Star        32
3-Star        29
2-Star        6
1-Star        4

The Caregiverlist® rating combines 4 criteria to calculate an overall star-rating with a 5-star rating as the highest and a 1-star rating as the lowest score, as rated against the results for the total number of nursing homes.

The New Hampshire nursing home with the highest Caregiverlist® rating is Cheshire County Home in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, which scores 4.6 out of 5 stars. The nursing home's daily room cost is $311, which is slightly higher than the state's average rate for single rooms. The nursing home with the second highest Caregiverlist® rating is Coos County Nursing Home in Berlin, NH. It earns a Caregiverlist® rating of 4.4 and the daily room cost is $265, 12.13% lower than the average single price of $301.

New Hampshire seniors and their families must be aware that nursing homes have become an extension of a hospital stay. Oftentimes Medicare health insurance will authorize a hospital discharge directly to a nursing home for rehabilitation, and covers up to 100 days of "skilled nursing" care . This means researching the right nursing home ahead of time will ease the transition should a medical emergency occur. Medicaid may pay for low-income qualifying seniors for an ongoing stay in a nursing home.

Costs of senior care are always a factor when choosing the right senior care option. Low-income seniors in New Hampshire may qualify for Medicaid, with the financial qualification of no more than $2,000 in assets for individuals and a $3,000 limit for couples. Medicaid will pay for long-term care in a nursing home for as long as the senior qualifies for needing care, even if this means multiple years of care until death. Visit the Caregiverlist® New Hampshire Medicaid Eligibility Requirements for for more information.

New Hampshire seniors should review the ratings and costs of nursing homes in their area and then visit the nursing homes which meet their budget parameters. Ratings for nursing homes are only a starting point and while the Caregiverlist® Index calculates a custom rating based on the most important criteria for quality, Medicare will only begin auditing the nursing home’s submitted information for C.N.A. staffing next year. Right now all of the information for the nursing home ratings is self-reported.

About Caregiverlist®
Caregiverlist.com® is the premier service connecting seniors and professional caregivers with the most reliable senior care options, highest quality ratings and outstanding careers nationwide. Founded by senior care professionals, Caregiverlist® delivers the efficiencies of the internet to senior care companies by providing online job applications, caregiver training, background checks and industry news. Seniors and caregivers can access senior service information “by state,” view nursing home costs and star-ratings and learn about all senior care options and quality standards. For more information, please visit http://www.caregiverlist.com. Reported by PRWeb 1 day ago.

Dr. Docherty will address the transformation of population health and its link to advancing patient care

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (PRWEB) June 13, 2016

WHAT:
As the healthcare industry tackles more advanced and complex priorities and challenges, organizations and health professionals are turning to technology and data to enable better patient care and outcomes. Dr. John P. Docherty, senior vice president and medical director of ODH, Inc., a leading provider of behavioral health analytics solutions, will share his insights during the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute & Expo event on how risk adjusted-based registries showing separate behavioral health and physical health risk allow advancements in population health management beyond the traditional gap-in-care disease registry models. In the session titled “Advancing Population Health Management,” Dr. Docherty will discuss how a new multifunctional enterprise system for the transformation of population health management can dramatically advance patient care and provider network management.

WHEN & WHERE:
Session: Advancing Population Health Management at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute & Expo
Friday, June 17, 2016, 9:30-10:15 a.m. PT
Wynn Hotel, Room Petrus 2
3131 Las Vegas Blvd S, Las Vegas, NV 89109
More information:http://www.ahip.org/events/instituteexpo/

WHO:
John P. Docherty, M.D., is the senior vice president and medical director of ODH, Inc., a provider of data analytics solutions for the behavioral health field. In this role, he is responsible for the scientific development and policy oversight of ODH’s flagship product, Mentrics, the leading edge healthcare data analytics platform designed to transform the management of behavioral healthcare systems. Dr. Docherty is widely recognized as an expert in mental healthcare, medical management and entrepreneurial innovation. He has authored more than 150 scientific articles, as well as numerous abstracts, guidelines and presentations, and been a reviewer for professional publications such as the American Journal of Psychiatry, Archives of General Psychiatry and Clinical Schizophrenia & Related Psychoses.

About ODH, Inc.
ODH, Inc. is an innovative behavioral health technology solution company that leverages technology and clinical expertise to transform the management and economics of behavioral healthcare. ODH’s team of experts have decades of experience in the behavioral health, medical, clinical, pharmacy, business and data analytics and information technology fields, and is uniquely qualified to support the transformation of the management of behavioral healthcare. ODH is a subsidiary of Otsuka America, Inc. and part of the Otsuka Group of companies, an $11.9 billion global organization. Otsuka aspires to create new products for better health worldwide. For additional information on ODH, Inc., visit http://www.ODHSolutions.com. Reported by PRWeb 21 hours ago.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriation made by Law... Article I Section 9 of the United States Constitution

A federal court judge, Rosemary Collyer, has recently ruled in favor of the House of Representatives in a lawsuit which challenged the Obama administration's funding of subsidies for insurers who were providing health care policies on the exchanges. John Boehner pushed for the lawsuit when he was Speaker of the House; he felt it was an overreach by the Obama administration which was paying the subsidies to insurance companies without the appropriate funding passed by Congress. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this funding would have cost about $130 billion from 2017 through 2026.

This case was also argued on a "standing" basis. Judge Collyer held that the Congress was injured when the administration paid the subsidies. The "power of the purse" is a practical way for the Congress to exercise its check of the Administration. Without this power, they would be harmed; thus standing was affirmed.

One of the linchpins of our Constitutional republic is the separation of powers. Article I of the Constitution gives the sole power of spending to Congress. This "power of the purse" was meant to be a critical check against tyranny. If the President were to have the power to legislate (designate how money from the Treasury would be spent) along with the power to enforce the laws, then he could essentially ignore Congress altogether. He would have the power of a dictator, not a president. This is one of the things the Constitution was meant to prevent.

The Obama administration had argued that they were trying to faithfully implement the law and the funds they were using were in another section of the law dealing with subsidies to reduce the cost of health care insurance.

Under Section 1401 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the insurance companies that were participating in the exchanges were required to provide discounts to eligible lower income people who were purchasing health insurance. Under Section 1402 of the law, no money had been allocated for the insurance companies themselves although they had been promised subsidy support. This is not the first time that Congress had promised financial support but failed to allocate the necessary funds needed for the support. In fact, this seems to be a common occurrence; see "unfunded mandates".

Even without the money from Congress, the administration decided to pay these subsidies anyway. The insurance companies were losing billions of dollars and they were threatening to leave Obamacare if this support was not forthcoming.

In a way, President Obama challenged the Congress to file this suit when he taunted them with his statement that "I've got a pen and I've got a phone." He seemed willing to challenge the concept of the "separation of powers" and provide the money from a different section of the ACA which Congress had only allocated for tax credits for some eligible people who were purchasing policies on the various state exchanges. There was no explicit funding of the subsidies for insurers in this section.

In her decision, Judge Collyer wrote that the "Affordable Care Act unambiguously appropriates money for Section 1401 premium tax credits but not for Section 1402 reimbursements to insurers." The Obama administration had argued that this appropriation could be "inferred" but that claim was rejected by the judge. Laws must be very specific when they relate to appropriations coming out of the United States Treasury.

Under Judge Collyer's ruling, Health and Human Services (HHS) has been enjoined from paying subsidies to the insurers but she stayed the order pending the expected appeal of the Obama administration. It is foreseeable that the insurance carriers will not wait for a final decision as their costs are rising significantly. They will either raise their rates or they will leave the exchanges altogether. In fact, this is already happening.

Judge Collyer recognized that she may be overruled on appeal. However, without the payments from the government, the insurance companies would be be facing significant financial losses.

Several carriers have already predicted they will need double digit increases on their premiums for 2017. These premium increases will be on top of premium increases that went into effect in 2016. With these increases, more people, especially the healthy ones, will be inclined to go without insurance and pay the penalty instead. Without the participation of these healthy people to off-set the costs of the older and sicker patients who will be using the insurance, the insurance providers may not make it. No company can remain viable if they are likely to lose money on a continuous basis.

If the decision is upheld on appeal, then it is foreseeable that many insurance companies will have to raise their premiums, increase the deductibles of the policies, and/or withdraw from providing policies under the exchanges. In either case, the ACA will be significantly affected as many people will choose to opt out and pay the penalty (tax) instead of paying higher premiums for lesser policies. In light of "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" people will be inclined to hold off on buying health insurance until they need it; there is really no penalty for waiting so long as the penalty is less than the costs of the policies being offered.

If the ACA is put in jeopardy with this decision, the republicans will be under a lot of pressure to get a viable alternative in place. If a democrat wins the presidency, a movement to a single party payer will likely occur.

Could the appellate court overturn the decision? Of course it can. The DC Circuit, which has historically sided with the Obama administration, is likely to do the same for this case. They can hold that the money appropriated under Section 1401 can be used to pay for the subsidies.

It would not be too much of a stretch to predict that the Supreme Court will also disagree with Judge Collyer. After all, in two previous Supreme Court decisions, Justice Roberts upheld Obamacare; first by equating federal and state exchanges. In the second case, Justice Roberts held that the penalty for not buying health insurance was allowed under the taxing power of the Constitution. Four justices felt this power was allowed under the Commerce Clause but Justice Robert's was not willing to affirm on this basis.

The Supreme Court may have the final say as it often does. The Supreme Court is not last because it is right; it is right because it is last. There must be finality in the law or the litigation could go on forever.

Darryl Weiman's website is www.medicalmalpracticeandthelaw.com

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 18 hours ago.

Senior Quest, a full-service licensed home care agency, serving northern New Jersey, has recently moved to Oradell, NJ. The company began providing geriatric care management in 2011 and has since expanded to include a full-range of home care services to seniors living at home and in institutional settings.

Oradell, NJ (PRWEB) June 13, 2016

Senior Quest, a full-service licensed home care agency, serving northern New Jersey, has recently moved to Oradell, NJ. The company began providing geriatric care management in 2011 and has since expanded to include a full-range of home care services to seniors living at home and in institutional settings.

Silva Avedis, founder of Senior Quest, is a certified geriatric social worker whose diverse background spans over 30 years and includes hospital-based discharge planning, private case management, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation programming, as well as admissions coordination and social work services in a geriatric care facility. “My experience in different settings and my personal conviction that every stage of life is precious, guides me in my work every day,” Ms. Avedis explains.

Long before Senior Quest was conceived, Avedis was making home visits to elderly clients and their families in an effort to help them find a way to manage their needs and keep them in a safe environment. “As people age they often face a need for assistance and have to rely on others in a way that they never had to before. It is natural to resist that,” Avedis explains. “Often it helps everyone concerned, seniors and their loved ones alike, to get a professional’s opinion on how best to navigate the situation they are facing.” With the founding of Senior Quest and the expansion of its services, clients receive this personalized assessment followed by the professional care needed to maintain their independence for as long as possible.

Senior Quest takes the guesswork out of where to go to find the recommended help once this assessment is complete. The company has taken great care to build connections with certified home health aides that are both competent and compassionate. An involved nursing staff provides quality assurance on every level by routinely assessing, evaluating and overseeing patient care, and a physician, who makes house calls, provides just what is needed to those who are homebound.

Located at 700 Kinderkamack Road in Suite 305, Senior Quest provides round-the-clock services every day of the year. Those in need of services are encouraged to call 201.523.9966 or visit http://www.seniorquestnj.com to learn more.

###
Senior Quest helps aging adults and their loved ones find solutions to the changes life brings by providing personalized geriatric care management services and employing certified home health aides to assist with activities of daily living. Whether it is a living situation that is no longer working; daily chores that have become overwhelming; legal and financial management that needs oversight; or assistance in understanding how to get qualified benefits from private health insurance policies and Medicare, Senior Quest is focused on finding solutions that are right for each individual and satisfying each client’s specific needs. Follow on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Senior-Quest-inc-330147173678659/ Reported by PRWeb 18 hours ago.

CareSource is switching the local provider for its insurance product. The Dayton-based company signed a new partnership with Kettering Health Network for the local members of its health insurance product, CareSource Just4Me. There are about 7,000 members in the Dayton service area and about 400 have used or been assigned to Premier Health in the past 12 months. Those members will begin accessing the Kettering network immediately, the company said in a statement. This move does not affect the local… Reported by bizjournals 17 hours ago.

Patch Branford, CT -- New law seeks to determine if health insurance companies are unfairly denying coverage for mental health and addiction services. Reported by Patch 16 hours ago.

Patch Guilford, CT -- New law seeks to determine if health insurance companies are unfairly denying coverage for mental health and addiction services. Reported by Patch 16 hours ago.

Patch Madison, CT -- New law seeks to determine if health insurance companies are unfairly denying coverage for mental health and addiction services. Reported by Patch 15 hours ago.

*Co-authored by Dina DeCarlo. Dina is an Economics major at Siena College.*The 2016 presidential candidates have offered a variety of plans to deal with rising economic insecurity. Bernie Sanders' platform includes a higher minimum wage--a living wage--of $15 per hour. Hillary Clinton's platform includes lower taxes on middle class families. Donald Trump, who is frequently inconsistent in his plans, argues that more isolationist economic policies will benefit workers.

But these candidates have been silent on another issue that affects economic security--the ability to retire. The current generation of retirees will likely be the first to experience a lower retirement stand of living than their parents. Social Security, the main federal program that deals with retirement, keeps millions out of poverty, though some argue it isn't doing enough for those who need it. Despite claims to the contrary, Social Security is not going bankrupt. Simple policy fixes, such as raising the cap on taxable income, could allow for long-term program solvency.

Beyond equity concerns of ensuring that people have enough income to retire, why else should we be concerned with retirement policy? The answer is that when firms provide pensions for their workers, the entire economy benefits in the form of lower inflation and higher productivity.

Many firms used their bargaining power advantage afforded by elevated unemployment rates during the Great Recession, to reduce the generosity and scope of their pension programs, intensifying a trend that has been occurring since the 1980s. IBM, for example, shifted to a lump-sum payment plan to help in reducing retirement-plan expenses. During the decade leading to its bankruptcy, Hostess re-directed capital from pension funding to operating expenses.

This fraying of employment relations can be captured by a concept known as the social bargain. The social bargain is the implicit contract between firms and workers that includes non-wage compensation such as pensions, health insurance, and profit sharing plans. A strong social bargain suggests that employers will provide more than just wages to their employees, who are viewed as partners in the production process. A weak social bargain implies that firms view their workers as basic inputs to the production process, whose cost should be minimized.

Our research indicates that a strong social bargain has large benefits for the macroeconomy, namely lower inflation rates. When firms provide pensions to their workers, workers are willing to tradeoff wage gains today in exchange for future retirement income, reducing inflation. Workers gain because they get retirement security. Firms benefit because they can lower short-run labor costs and retain the most productive employees by offering a comprehensive benefits package.

Despite these benefits, individual employers are likely to further decrease the provision of social bargain programs to their employees, despite these programs benefitting the economy. Why? First, the weak labor market has depressed labor's bargaining power, allowing for firms to pare back both wages and benefits. Second, expectations of future cost pressures and competition will force firms to allocate resources away from employee compensation and toward lower prices or cost-reducing technology. Third, firms generally resist transferring increases in profits to employees. Finally, since low inflation can be considered a public good, individual firms will have the incentive to free ride on the willingness of others to provide pensions, while not themselves being excluded from enjoying the benefits lower inflation rates.

A weak social bargain has not always been the case. From the 1940s until the 1970s, the social bargain grew and the ability to retire was democratized--it was no longer a luxury for the rich. Strong unions were able to win defined benefit plans for its members, which provided retirement security. With the decline of union power and an overall shift in labor relations came defined contribution plans. These plans do not guarantee a fixed retirement income, as defined benefit programs do, but rather offer contributions from the firm to a worker's market-based retirement investment portfolio. In other words, defined contributions plans shift the risk of saving enough for retirement from the firm to the worker.

Since firms won't unilaterally increase pension provision and since Social Security provides only basic retirement income, what can be done to restore retirement security? Guaranteed Retired Accounts (GRAs)--an expanded form of Social Security--would replace private pensions with an expanded and modernized version of Social Security that could provide greater retirement security and greater labor market flexibility.

Similar to Social Security, GRAs would be mandatory through individual contributions of 5% of earnings deducted though payroll taxes. The system would be managed by the Social Security Administration and would take the $80 billion in annual tax subsidies for IRAs and redistribute it so that each individual would receive a $600 tax credit to offset their payroll contributions. GRAs would guarantee a minimum 3% real rate of return by investing in low cost, low risk assets like Treasury Bills. Upon retirement, but not before, workers would be able to withdraw their savings as an inflation-indexed annuity, eliminating the risk of withdrawing funds too rapidly. This system could increase retirement income from 40% of one's previous employment income to 71%.

The risk of not saving enough for retirement, working for firms that do not contribute to an individual's IRA, financial market volatility, outliving one's savings, inflation risk, and early withdraw risk are eliminated with GRAs because they can take advantage of pooling workers' savings. Since the government would manage GRAs, they would be portable across firms, workers could shift employers without incurring penalties or administrative costs.

GRAs can also be an effective automatic stabilizer because they would permit workers to retire and supplement their incomes during recessions. This would also increase productivity as elderly workers could exit the labor force and be replaced by younger, more productive workers with an updated skill set. Given the current weak labor market, this could lead to high levels of unemployment and unemployment duration for young workers, leading to both short and long-term economic costs. Also, elderly workers who lose their job and search for one during weak labor markets might find themselves unable to successfully switch industries due to the heightened pace of technological change.

Social Security is one of the most effective anti-poverty program in the United States. GRAs would improve upon this. To ensure that retirement does not again become a luxury for the wealthy, policy makers must rethink their approach to pension provision because retirement insecurity is a threat to a healthy economy.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 15 hours ago.

Mercy Health’s “significant losses” related to its exit from the health insurance business prompted Moody’s Investor Services to downgrade the bonds of the Cincinnati-based hospital system. “The outlook is negative,” Moody’s stated in downgrading $1.6 billion in debt to A2 and A2/VMIG from the previous A1 and A1/VMIG. I reported in March that HealthSpan Partners, an insurance company and medical provider affiliated with Mercy Health, will cease to exist at the end of this year. Cleveland-based… Reported by bizjournals 15 hours ago.

If you’ve ever had to jump through hoops to get a prescription covered by your health insurance, you have some firsthand knowledge of drug formularies. Reported by ajc.com 14 hours ago.

BeniComp chosen as employee health and wellness programs presenter for 2016 HR Florida conference in Orlando, FL August 29th through 31st.

TAMPA, FL (PRWEB) June 14, 2016

BeniComp Insurance Company, a supplemental group health insurance company that offers national employee wellness solutions, today announced it was chosen as a presenter for the 2016 HR Florida Conference and Exposition, an affiliate of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). BeniComp's Business Development Executive, Kristy Dalechek, will serve as the presenter on behalf of the company.

"This year's presentation examines why wellness in the workplace doesn't work, why we need it to work, and what to do about it," says Dalechek. "In an industry that makes up over one-sixth of the GDP, it's important that our country's companies know there are solutions to managing healthcare costs."

The conference will be held August 29th through 31st at the Hilton Bonnet Creek. Dakechek will be speaking at 1:00pm on August 30th and will also host an exhibit in the expo.

For more information about the Florida state SHRM conference, visit http://www.hrflorida.org.

ABOUT BENICOMP INSURANCE COMPANY
Founded in 1962, BeniComp later expanded its services to include BeniComp Advantage, a supplemental health insurance product that identifies health risks early and aims to proactively improve health in America. Offering employee wellness solutions nationwide, BeniComp's patent-pending policy has received numerous awards for innovation and best practices. BeniComp has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Employee Benefit News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Medscape, and other publications for its innovative approach to providing solutions. For more information about BeniComp, visit http://www.benicomp.com. Reported by PRWeb 3 hours ago.

The Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission has awarded $7.6 Million to six hospitals in Montgomery County that have joined forces to address common challenges affecting the health of the community. The Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership includes Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center, Holy Cross Hospital, Holy Cross Germantown Hospital, MedStar Montgomery Medical Center, Suburban Hospital, and Washington Adventist Hospital and will be managed by the Primary Care Coalition.

Silver Spring, Maryland (PRWEB) June 14, 2016

The Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) has awarded $7.6 million to the Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership—a collaborative effort among the six hospitals operating in Montgomery County and a network of community based organizations—to implement or expand initiatives that will improve the health status of those most at risk of avoidable hospital use. The target population includes Medicare seniors, the medically frail, those with severe behavioral health conditions, and those without eligibility for health insurance.

The members of the Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership are Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center, Holy Cross Hospital, Holy Cross Germantown Hospital, MedStar Montgomery Medical Center, Suburban Hospital and Washington Adventist Hospital. In partnership with the hospitals, local nonprofit organizations will implement the majority of the community-based programs. These non-profits include The Coordinating Center, Cornerstone Montgomery, and the Primary Care Coalition (PCC). The PCC will also be the management entity for the Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership.

“In addition to the core implementation partners, the Regional Partnership is integrating a broad alliance of community partners who will be instrumental in its success,” said Leslie Graham, PCC’s president and CEO. “These include local government, senior housing organizations, physicians and other medical providers, and supportive and social services providers.”

The Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership formed over the past year in response to newly available data showing that, among individuals with more than one hospitalization in a year, over one-third admit to multiple hospitals. These individuals can benefit from health improvement initiatives that take a coordinated approach to building community capacity to address their needs and reduce health risks.

“The hospitals participating in the Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership recognized that they face several common challenges,” said Annice Cody, president of the Holy Cross Health Network. “This unified effort to share programs among four separate hospital systems is unprecedented and moves our community into a new era in terms of addressing population health.”

The Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership is pleased to receive this funding from HSCRC to implement and expand programs that reduce health care costs in the region by reaching out to and serving the medically frail and most vulnerable. The partnership’s programs have the goal of reducing unnecessary hospital use by connecting people to services in the community that can help keep them healthy.

The partnership’s programs and initiatives will serve people who live in Maryland and are served by the six Montgomery County hospitals, an area which comprises most of Montgomery County and parts of Prince George’s County, Maryland. This region is aging rapidly compared to Maryland as a whole and is home to the most ethnically diverse population in the state.

The largest program, Wellness and Independence for Seniors at Home (WISH), will stabilize the health of older adults at risk of a health crisis requiring hospitalization. Other undertakings include efforts to improve transitions from hospital-to-home to prevent avoidable readmissions; connect uninsured people to specialty care follow-ups after being discharged from a hospital to reduce likelihood of re-hospitalization; and, invest in community-based resources for people with severe mental illness.

“Hospitals and health providers today are focusing more on keeping people and communities healthy, instead of only treating them when they are sick,” said Patrick Garrett, M.D., senior vice president of Physician Integration/Innovation for Adventist HealthCare. “This focus on wellness and prevention helps treat the whole person in mind, body, and spirit.”

The Maryland HSCRC will fund the Nexus Montgomery Regional Partnership through a rate increase to the six hospitals in Montgomery County. The HSCRC awarded these funds because the planned initiatives will help the state as a whole contain health care costs, in line with its agreement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The four programs to be implemented share the aim of improving health and quality of life for individuals while creating savings in the health care system.

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Adventist HealthCare, an integrated, health-care delivery organization based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is one of the largest employers in its state. The mission of Adventist HealthCare is to demonstrate God’s care by improving the health of people and communities through a ministry of physical, mental and spiritual healing. The Adventist HealthCare family of services includes Shady Grove Medical Center, Washington Adventist Hospital, Behavioral Health & Wellness Services, Physical Health & Rehabilitation, Home Care Services and The Lourie Center for Children’s Social & Emotional Wellness.

Cornerstone Montgomery is an independent, nonsectarian, nonprofit 501(c)3 organization with the capacity to serve more than 2,200 adults and transition aged youth. We specialize in the provision of comprehensive, community- and evidence-based mental health and co-occurring mental health and substance use disorder treatments and interventions.

Holy Cross Health, founded in 1963 by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, is a comprehensive Catholic health care delivery system that includes two hospitals and a network of community health centers in Montgomery County, Maryland. Holy Cross Hospital, the largest hospital in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, is located on the Kevin J. Sexton Campus of Holy Cross Health in Silver Spring. Holy Cross Germantown Hospital is the first hospital in the nation located on the campus of a community college. Holy Cross Health Network provides primary care at health centers located in Silver Spring, Aspen Hill, Gaithersburg, and Germantown and community education throughout Montgomery County.

MedStar Montgomery Medical Center is a 138-bed not-for-profit hospital serving the greater Baltimore and Washington metropolitan areas. A proud member of MedStar Health, MedStar Montgomery is committed to delivering the latest in modern medicine and medical technology.

Suburban Hospital, a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine, has served Montgomery County and the surrounding area for close to 75 years. The hospital is the designated trauma center for Montgomery County and has centers of excellence in cardiac, orthopedic, ENT, and neurosurgery, as well as oncology. Suburban also has a research affiliation with the neighboring National Institutes of Health.

The Coordinating Center is a non-profit organization that has 33 years of experience in delivering community-based care coordination to people with disabilities and the most complex medical and social needs in Maryland. Coordinating services for more than 10,000 people across the state through innovative programs, The Center moves people from institutions, nursing facilities and hospitals to homes in the community of their choice while reducing costs to the system and the citizens of Maryland.

The Primary Care Coalition works with clinics, hospitals, health care providers, and other community partners to coordinate health services for low-income, uninsured residents of Montgomery County, Maryland and the National Capital Area. Our vision is a community in which all residents will have the opportunity to live healthy lives. PCC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Reported by PRWeb 3 hours ago.

ez1095 software has just implemented several test scenarios for efiling forms to the IRS for prior approval. . Download and setup software for 30 days at http://www.halfpricesoft.com.

New York, NY (PRWEB) June 14, 2016

ez1095 software from Halfpricesoft.com is adhering to the the new Affordable Care Act law, in that the IRS requires now software developers to pass all eight test scenarios when generating efile for 1094 and 1094 ACA forms. Transmitters and Issuers must successfully submit only one of the eight test submissions, with the associated scenarios.

Halfpricesoft.com developers have implemented test scenarios for customers’ convenience and prepared all data ready for them to pass the test scenarios. Simply follow the step by step guide and download the database file from Halfpricesoft.com and enter the TCC to generate the XML files. There is no need to modify the data, and customers should not use their company data in this step!

“The latest ez1095 ACA software has implemented test scenarios for efiling 1094 and 1095 forms.” said Dr. Ge, the founder of Halfpricesoft.com.

Priced from just $195 per installation, ($295 for efile version) ez1095 supports unlimited company accounts on the same machine at no additional cost.

Customers that need to efile form 1095 and 1094 can download and try out this ACA software from Halfpricsoft.com before purchasing with no obligation by visiting http://www.halfpricesoft.com/aca-1095/form-1095-software-free-download.asp

The main features include but are not limited to :· Peace of mind offered with new test scenario for efiling 1094 and 1095 ACA forms
· Print ACA Form 1095-C, 1094-C, 1095-B and 1094-B on white paper for recipients and IRS with inkjet or laser printer.
· PDF print 1095-C and 1095-B recipient copies
· Efile version available at additional cost.
· Support unlimited companies.
· Support unlimited number of recipients.
· Print unlimited number of 1095 and 1094 forms.
· Fast data import feature
· Print Form 1095 C: Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage Insurance
· Print Form 1094 C: Transmittal of Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage Information Returns
· Print Form 1095-B: Health Coverage
· Print Form 1094-B: Transmittal of Health Coverage Information Return

ez1095 software is compatible Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP and other Windows systems. Designed with simplicity in mind, ez1095 software is easy to use and flexible. ez1095 software’s graphical interface leads customers step-by-step through setting up company, adding employees, add forms and print forms. Customers can also click form level help links to get more details regarding the software.

To learn more about ez1095 ACA software, customers can visit http://www.halfpricesoft.com/aca-1095/aca-1095-software.asp

About halfpricesoft.com
Founded in 2003, Halfpricesoft.com has established itself as a leader in meeting the software needs of small businesses around the world with its payroll software, employee attendance tracking software, check printing software, W2 software, 1099 software and barcode generating software. It continues to grow with its philosophy that small business owners need affordable, user friendly, super simple, and totally risk-free software Reported by PRWeb 1 hour ago.

OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A.M. Best has revised the outlooks to negative from stable and affirmed the financial strength ratings (FSR) of A- (Excellent) and the issuer credit ratings (ICR) of “a-” of Highmark Inc. (Highmark), Highmark Choice Company, HM Health Insurance Company and Highmark West Virginia Inc. (Parkersburg, WV). Concurrently, A.M. Best has affirmed the issue ratings of “bbb+” on Highmark’s existing senior notes. Additionally, A.M. Best has affirmed the FSRs of A- (Excellen Reported by Business Wire 2 days ago.