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Mental Illness Is On The Rise But Access To Care Keeps Dwindling

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More Americans than ever before are experiencing mental health problems, yet access to treatment for those issues is becoming more difficult to receive, a new study has found.

A new analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey shows that serious psychological distress, or SPD, defined as severe sadness and depressive symptoms that interfere with a person’s physical wellbeing, is on the rise just as resources for mental health treatment are declining. 

Researchers from NYU’s Langone Medical Center analyzed almost a decade’s worth of data and found that more than 8.3 million Americans ― or an estimated 3.4 percent of the adult population ― suffers from a serious mental health issue. The latest data is a departure from previous reports on the CDC’s survey, which estimated that fewer than 3 percent of American adults experienced serious psychological distress, according to the study’s authors.

The statistics were pulled from surveys collected between 2006 and 2014. The report included more than 200,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 64. Individuals were represented from all states and across all ethnic and socioeconomic groups, according to the study authors.

One of the more dismal discoveries from the report is that access to professional help for mental health issues is deteriorating. The study found the 9.5 percent of people surveyed in 2014 did not have health insurance that provided access to a psychiatrist or counselor, a rise from 9 percent in 2006.* *

Approximately 10.5 percent of people experienced delays in getting treatment due to insufficient mental health coverage ― a 1 percent increase from 2006. And almost 10 percent of individuals in 2014 could not afford to pay for necessary psychiatric medications, which went up from 8.7 percent in 2006.

The findings indicate there’s a growing problem when it comes to mental health services. This could especially affect smaller communities. A 2016 report published by Mental Health America found there’s a glaring shortage of mental health professionals in the United States, specifically in rural areas. Alabama, for example, has one worker per every 1,200 people. Nevada, another rural state, was ranked last in MHA’s report, largely in part because of the state’s lack of available mental health professionals.

What this means

There’s a clear need for more emphasis on mental health in primary care facilities and hospitals across the country, according to Judith Weissman, lead study investigator of the CDC data and a research manager in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center.

“Among people with any type of illness, people with SPD are the ones experiencing the most disparities in terms of utilizing health care,” Weissman told The Huffington Post. “It leaves people with SPD just spinning through the system and makes you wonder what’s going on. Why isn’t the health care system addressing people with mental illness?”


Why isn't the health care system addressing people with mental illness?

Weissman and her fellow researchers hypothesize that poor treatment or care rates could have to do with the limited number of mental health providers across the country.

“A lot of people with mental illness don’t have coverage, but even if they do and even if there was the ability to pay for it, the number of providers out there to treat it is limited,” Weissman said. “It’s just a huge disconnect between the number of illnesses that really affect this population and the number of people who are able to treat it.”

Weissman believes that the success of managing mental health in America won’t come unless the treatment gap is closed.

“Until we begin to provide the resources and the mental health care providers, as well as screening and treatment, we won’t curtail the tide of mental illness,” she said.

Attitudes about mental health are a powerful factor

Studies indicate that prejudicial outlooks on mental health often stand in the way of people getting the help they need. Weissman says that also is apparent in this analysis and, because of that, they found people may self-medicate with substances as a way to manage problems.

Addressing the stereotypes surrounding psychological health is vital to increasing the number of people who get care, she added. And increasing care availability means encouraging insurance providers, physicians and even other people in society to take mental health as seriously as physical illnesses.

One of the easiest ways to do this, Weissman says, is for primary care physicians to start implementing behavioral health checks into their practice. This could be done by the doctor themselves or, if it’s outside of their scope, having mental health specialists on site.

“Mental illness doesn’t have parity with physical illness,” she explained. “When a person goes in to get their blood pressure checked, they need to be screened for depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. Mental illness needs to be viewed as something as serious as having a stroke or cancer.”


Mental illness needs to be viewed as something as serious as having a stroke or cancer.

Above all, she stresses that people with mental health issues are not alone in their experience and that treatment does help with managing the condition. Anyone who feels like they’re experiencing chronic sadness, anxiety or other psychological health problems should talk to a physician about what they’re experiencing.

Because as complicated as getting treatment seems, as NYU’s recent data implies, there are still ways to get help and it’s worth it, Weissman said. (You can check out this list for a few free or low-cost resources as a place to start.)

“There’s a lot of hope,” she stressed. “When you feel like there’s no hope, just understand that’s the mental illness speaking. You can feel better.”

-- 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 2 days ago.

Trump's Five Worst Tax Secrets, Revealed

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Thousands of demonstrators marched on Saturday to demand that Donald Trump release his tax returns. But, barring an unexpected surprise – a W2 form issued by Vladimir Putin, for example, or a payment in kind from Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno – we already know Trump’s ugliest tax secrets. We will reveal those secrets …

… right after this break.

Most readers will recognize that reference to Rachel Maddow’s televised release of Trump’s 2005 tax return, where viewers were kept in suspense for a total of 84 minutes before learning that Trump paid an effective federal tax rate of 24 percent that year. That was considered an anticlimax. It even led some observers to speculate that Trump might have leaked the return himself, since many people had assumed that Trump hadn’t paid any federal taxes at all for years.

That gets us to Trump’s first terrible tax secret: *His tax return was not unusual*. Few wealthy individuals pay the official rate, which is currently 39.5 percent, even though the rich have never been richer at any point in this country’s history. A tax return released during Mitt Romney’s presidential run, for example, showed that Romney paid just over 14 percent in 2011 (and that year may have been chosen because others were even more embarrassing.)

The tax code has been heavily rewritten by lobbyists for wealthy individuals and corporations. The resulting loopholes make it very rare for any individual or corporation, no matter how prosperous, to pay anything close to the top rate.

Given their eagerness to avoid paying the official rate, you might think that rate is excessive. But the top marginal tax rate in this country is much lower than it’s been for most of the last century, despite today’s extreme concentration of wealth at the top:Eskow/OurFuture.org; Source: IRS.gov

Although the official rate is only slightly more than one-third of its highest levels, an entire industry has been formed to help the wealthy avoid paying it. (This story shines a light on one small corner of that industry.)  As James Kwak points out, Warren Buffett – a much more altruistic figure than Trump – takes advantage of today’s tax code on a much larger scale than Trump does.

Trump’s second terrible tax secret is one he shares with the entire Republican Party: Instead of being grateful toward the country that has allowed them to accumulate such wealth, *Trump and the GOP are willing to let people die for an additional tax cut*. They were willing to deprive millions of people of health insurance in order to repeal a 3.8 percent tax on investment income and a tax of less than one percent on high wages. (More detail here.)

Trump’s third tax secret? The tax-driven attack on the Affordable Care Act is just the start. *His tax plan represents a massive tax giveaway to his billionaire friends and associates, and to corporations* that are also paying far less than the official tax rate. Americans for Tax Fairness has summarized the injustice behind Trump’s tax plan, including the fact that it would raise taxes on approximately 9 million families while lowering the top tax rate even more.

The Trump/GOP assault on the estate tax is a giveaway to America’s aristocracy. Trump’s even trying to eliminate the biggest tax he pays personally – the alternative minimum tax.

The fourth secret is this: *Trump and his party don’t believe in progressive taxation at all.* As we wrote recently, Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney recently suggested that he preferred to let the ultra-wealthy “keep their money” – an extremist and inaccurate framing that is well outside the mainstream of both Republican and Democratic thought over the last century. They especially dislike the idea of taxing billionaires to help people in need.

That’s pretty terrible.

The fifth and final secret is this: Trump and his billionaire friends are able to pay these low tax rates because rich people have far too much influence over our political system. In fact, as political scientists Martin Gilens and Lawrence Page found in a 2014 study, “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

In other words, the wealthy are de facto oligarchs who almost always get the policies they want.

In a response to their critics, Gilens and Page wrote, “The affluent are, not surprisingly, (even) better at blocking policies they dislike than achieving policy change they desire. When a policy is strongly opposed by the affluent … that policy is adopted only 4 percent of the time.”

That’s why today’s tax code is so excessively favorable to the wealthy and corporations. It’s very difficult to make changes that they dislike, and tax increases for the wealthy are certainly among the changes they dislike the most.

But that’s no reason to quit. Americans have overthrown oligarchies before, most notably at the end of the era Mark Twain described as “the Gilded Age.” (We are, by any reasonable definition, going through a second Gilded Age today.)

You don’t need Donald Trump’s tax returns to know that we need a more just tax system, one that calls upon the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share. What’s more, the fight for fair taxation is inseparable from the fight against oligarchical wealth. That’s more reason to keep fighting.

This weekend Donald Trump tweeted that “someone should look into who paid for” the “small” rallies demanding that he release his tax returns. The real question is, who pays for all the tax breaks that are given to people like Donald Trump?

The answer is, we all do.

-- 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 2 days ago.

The (Rich) Dog Not Barking: 'No More Tax Cuts For Me, Thanks, I'm Good'

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During the recent Republican attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, which fortunately went down in defeat, there was much talk about the 24 million people who would lose their health insurance if Trumpcare became the law of the land.

There was also talk of how the “savings” realized from removing those 24 million people from the insurance rolls would accrue to the wealthy, in the form of tax cuts.

But, unless I missed it, in all this discussion there was no talk ― none ― coming from the super-rich that such tax cuts were not necessary, were too much of a muchness, were in fact unseemly, given that 24 million people would have lost their insurance, only to benefit the already overflowing coffers of the rich.

Did anybody hear it from the rich: “No more tax cuts for me, thanks, I’m good”? (I didn’t think so.)

Nor did President Trump, putative tribune of the little guy, raise objections that the health care package going forward would hurt the little guy while further enriching the rich guy (“Whoops!”). But by now we know Trump doesn’t always read the documents passing before him.

What’s especially discouraging: Where was the show of heart among the super-rich ― the heartsick recognition ― -at the prospect of 24 million souls being shoved off the insurance rolls? That image was the perfect prompt to show some of what we’re not seeing among the rich these days: heart. Apparently for the rich, greed and the counting-house trump all else, including the suffering of their fellow Americans.

Granted, the rich are adept at “giving back” in charity drives and galas ― after the fact of accumulating their base wealth working the system to their gross advantage.

That system ― American turbo-capitalism ― has produced the biggest imbalance in income between rich and poor since 1928, the year before the Great Depression hit. “Starting in the mid- to late-1970s,” according to a Pew Research Center report, “the uppermost tier’s income share began rising dramatically, while that of the bottom 90 perccent started to fall.”

About this growing inequality, there has likewise been much talk. But, again, are we hearing cries from the rich that this inequality, and the suffering and insecurity it inflicts on so many, is intolerable, unendurable, cannot be allowed to continue, must be amended? (No.)

Sure, we occasionally hear from investor Warren Buffett, “Oracle of Omaha” and one of the world’s richest people, lamenting how he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. But nothing comes of this lamentation in terms of tax reform that would reduce that inequality. “Redistribution” is anathema to the rich.

There is a term for this type of grasping super-rich: “extractive elites.”

In their book Why Nations Fail, economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson trace how, in case after tragic case throughout history, extractive elites are the principal reason why great nations decline and fall. Specifically (to quote from my review), those nations fail when, through political control, “an elite extracts the economic assets ― natural or manufactured ― by means of monopoly, coerced labor, expropriation of land, and exemption from taxation.” Likewise Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz warns of the catastrophic price of income inequality.

With tax reform next on the Trump legislative agenda, the rich will get a do-over―- to compensate for their silence on the healthcare bill. Will one of their number step up to declare, “Enough with all the tax cuts!” and argue for a more equitable tax system? Will the rich meet this test, which at bottom is a moral test? Will the Republicans, their faithful Congressional minions?

(Per recent reports, Trump plans to revisit the health care bill before getting to tax reform, so once again the rich will get to reconsider the “losers” of Trumpcare. In this round Trump threatens to reduce the federal subsidies that enable poorer people to buy health insurance. Will this finally prompt the rich to say, “No way”?)

In the case of tax reform, there is time for the rich to show their heart. The last major tax reform bill, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, took two years to hash out and assemble. And no doubt Trump will find the issue more complicated than he imagined. Thus the rich have time to organize and lobby for a more equitable tax system. But of course, organizing prowess is the least of it; growing a heart is.

For years, this writer has advocated for a George Washington visionary to step forth from the Wall Street or corporate sector, one who combines business acumen with a humanitarian feel for his/her fellow citizens, who’d propose the reforms that would put a human face on American capitalism, who’d rebalance America’s great experiment of Capitalism and Democracy ― to bolster the democracy that is faltering and temper the capitalism that is turbo-charged (and, by the way, bolster the USA brand). This visionary risks being called a traitor to his/her class, but also a savior of the nation.

Donald Trump is not that George Washington visionary, he is not a savior, but if he were pushed by his rich cohorts in a saving direction....

With America in trouble, perhaps decline, if our extractive elites stopped extracting and started shouldering their fair share of the tax burden, we might see a reversal of fortune.

Illustration: “The ‘Brains’” by Thomas Nast, 1871.

Carla Seaquist’s latest book is titled “Can America Save Itself from Decline?: Politics, Culture, Morality.” An earlier book is titled “Manufacturing Hope: Post-9/11 Notes on Politics, Culture, Torture, and the American Character.” Also a playwright, she published “Two Plays of Life and Death” and is at work on a play titled “Prodigal.”

-- 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 1 day ago.

How Trump Insurance Changes Could Affect Coverage Next Year

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A much tighter sign-up deadline and coverage delays will be waiting for some health insurance customers now that President Donald Trump's administration has finished a plan designed to stabilize shaky insurance markets.Shoppers will have a shorter time period to choose a... Reported by Newsmax 2 days ago.

Isle of Wight supervisor wants county employees to pay more for health insurance

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Isle of Wight County Supervisor Dick Grice said Monday that county employees should pay a higher percentage of their health insurance costs.

The county's health insurance rates for employees under its Anthem "Local Choice" plan are increasing by 6.5 percent in the coming fiscal year. Roughly 5... Reported by dailypress.com 1 day ago.

The Sacramento Labor Law Lawyers at Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik File a Class Action Lawsuit Against Health Net of California Alleging Unpaid Overtime Wages

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The class action lawsuit alleges the insurance company violated various California Labor Code provisions by failing to pay its California employees the proper amount of overtime wages.

Sacramento, California (PRWEB) April 17, 2017

The Sacramento employment law lawyers at Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik filed a class action complaint alleging that Health Net of California failed to pay their California hourly employees the correct amount of overtime wages and allegedly failed to provide their California employees with meal and rest periods as required by California law. The Health Net of California class action lawsuit, Case No. 34-2017-00210560, is currently pending in the Sacramento County Superior Court for the State of California. A copy of the Complaint can be read here.

According to the lawsuit filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, Health Net of California allegedly paid their hourly employees non-discretionary incentive wages. The class action lawsuit further alleges the incentive wages earned by health insurance company's employees should have been included in the employees' hourly rates for the purposes of paying their employees the correct overtime pay during their employment with the company. As a result of the allegedly illegal overtime calculations conducted by Health Net of California, the class action complaint alleges other hourly employees working for the company in California were also not correctly paid all their overtime wages. The Complaint seeks an unspecified amount of backpay for Health Net's California hourly employees.

Additionally, the lawsuit also seeks payment relating to alleged missed meal and rest breaks because allegedly Health Net of California did not have a policy to provide their hourly employees thirty (30) minute uninterrupted meal breaks prior to their fifth (5th) hour of work.

If you would like to know more about the Health Net of California lawsuit, please contact Attorney Nicholas J. De Blouw today by calling (800) 568-8020.

Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik is an employment law firm with offices located in San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside and Chicago that dedicates its practice to helping employees, investors and consumers fight back against unfair business practices, including violations of the California Labor Code and Fair Labor Standards Act. If you need help in collecting unpaid overtime wages, unpaid commissions, being wrongfully terminated from work, and other employment law claims, contact one of their attorneys today by clicking here.

***THIS IS AN ATTORNEY ADVERTISEMENT*** Reported by PRWeb 2 days ago.

Two Cheers for the Deep State

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(Photo: AP/Susan Walsh)

President Trump, accompanied by the Easter Bunny, salutes the woman who sang the National Anthem at the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 17, 2017.

This article originally appeared at The Huffington Post.

A funny thing happened to Donald Trump in recent weeks. He had an encounter with reality—and reality won. 

It is one thing to dwell in your own reality during the campaign and to persuade your true believers that real is fake and fake is real. But when you actually try to govern, there is a reality to reality, and it pushes back.

It turns out that the budget, and the Syrian civil war, and North Korean nuclear ambitions, and relations with China, and with Mexico, and with the EU are, like health insurance … complicated.

As Trump put it so well, who knew? Evidently, everyone knew but Trump.

And it turns out that the United States can’t just insult China willy-nilly, because maybe we need China’s help to contain North Korea. It turns out that there is a direct connection between the Syrian civil war, the refugee crisis, and the looming collapse of the EU.

It isn’t that NATO got real about the refugee crisis, or Russian aspirations in the Baltics and in Ukraine, because Trump made a few disparaging comments. The NATO alliance was there all along. Who knew?

Trump also discovered that he could not govern by whim and by decree. The Constitution held.

He realized he could not defy court orders on immigration. He could not compel Republicans in Congress to support him by threatening the likes of Representative Mark Meadows, head of the Freedom Caucus: “I’m coming after you.” Meadows had his own electoral base over which Trump had no leverage. Who knew?

And he discovered that if he puts forth a budget completely disconnected from reality, even Republicans are going to push back. It was Republicans who pronounced the Trump budget “dead on arrival.”

Steve Bannon was basically right about the deep state—otherwise known as the U.S. Constitution and the permanent establishment.

Once Michael Flynn self-destructed, leaders like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis also began injecting an overdue dose of reality into the Trump presidency.

The defense establishment is part of the Deep State. So are the courts. So is the reality of separation of powers.

Likewise the fact that the FBI and the CIA, whatever their other missteps, are not about to become Trump’s private secret police. They are part of the deep state, too

Of course, even if we are spared a Trump dictatorship or an impulsive Trump nuclear war, Trump will do immense damage by having appointed cabinet figures such as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and HHS Secretary Tom Price. They are not quite white-nationalist; they are just corporate far right. But that’s damaging enough. And he will do immense damage by appointing far-right judges.

And while financial industry figures such as chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin are reining in Trump’s nuttier impulses on the economy, they are of course both from Goldman Sachs. And the permanent lock that Goldman has on the Treasury Department and on catastrophic financialization of the economy is also part of the deep state.

So, the good news/bad news net-net looks something like this:

*Good news*: Reality and the deep state stop Trump well short of fascism.

*Bad news*: We have, instead, a conventional, far-right Republican presidency, led by a stunningly incompetent sociopath.

*Good news*: The Republican Party keeps fragmenting—into Tea Party and Main Street factions on domestic policy, Putin-apologist and Putin-abhoring factions on foreign policy, and white nationalist factions and Wall Street globalist factions on economics. That can only weaken Trump.

*Bad news*: Despite Trump’s faux populism, the Wall Street lock on the political economy has never been stronger. One face of fascism is political dictatorship; the other is a corporate state.

*Good news and bad news*: Nothing that Trump is likely to do will change the economic situation of the downtrodden middle- and working-class Americans who voted for Trump out of disgust with the status quo.

Whether Trump’s failure to improve that reality leads to a progressive form of populism or to deeper frustration and white nationalism depends on whether Democrats rise to the occasion—whether they can shed the Wall Street captivity that pervaded both the Clinton and Obama presidencies, and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Reported by The American Prospect 2 days ago.

UnitedHealth crushes earnings in its first quarter since dumping most of its Obamacare business (UNH)

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UnitedHealth crushes earnings in its first quarter since dumping most of its Obamacare business (UNH) UnitedHealth Group posted stronger than expected earnings on Tuesday in the first quarter without the bulk of its Affordable Care Act compatible individual health insurance business.

The insurance giant earned $2.37 per share, higher than the $2.17 expected by analysts. Additionally, the company also generated $48.7 billion in revenue, higher than the $48.3 billion that analysts were anticipating.

UnitedHealth also raised its guidance for both profit and revenue for the year. The insurer now sees full year EPS of $9.65 to $9.85 per share, higher than the expected $9.51 per share.

This was also the first quarter that UnitedHealth rolled back its ACA exchange-based plans, which the company said slowed revenue growth and the number of lives covered.

"UnitedHealthcare’s withdrawal from ACA Individual markets, combined with the 2017 health insurance tax deferral, reduced consolidated first quarter 2017 revenues by approximately $1.6 billion and lowered the revenue growth rate by 4.1 percent," said the release from UnitedHealth.

Additionally, the company said that it dropped 765,000 people through the ACA market, partially offsetting the addition of 1.5 million customers through other lines of business.

Following the release, UnitedHealth's stock was up 2.25% in pre-market trading to $170.95 as of 6:35 a.m. ET.

*SEE ALSO: Here's how many insurers ditched each state's Obamacare exchanges in 2017*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's why some Hong Kong skyscrapers have gaping holes Reported by Business Insider 1 day ago.

UnitedHealth tops 1Q expectations, raises 2017 forecast

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The nation's largest health insurer now expects adjusted 2017 earnings of between $9.65 and $9.85 per share after predicting $9.30 to $9.60 per share last fall. Health insurance is UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s main business, but it also runs an Optum segment that provides pharmacy benefits management and technology services and also operates clinics and doctor's offices. Reported by SeattlePI.com 1 day ago.

NY Fed survey: Rising health, benefits costs worry employers

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The rising cost of employee health insurance and other benefits is the biggest problem facing factories across New York State and service businesses in the metropolitan area, according to two new polls by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Reported by Newsday 1 day ago.

EU citizens in UK face health insurance hurdle

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Students and the financially ‘self-sufficient’ risk falling foul of European rules Reported by FT.com 13 hours ago.

The problem with internet in America is a lack of competition — but a radical idea could solve it

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The problem with internet in America is a lack of competition — but a radical idea could solve it When the net-neutrality debate hit its peak in the fall of 2014, Ted Cruz wrote a bad tweet:



"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014


The Republican senator was torched for this, for many justified reasons. The net-neutrality laws that would be passed in 2015 — which prevent ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing certain traffic for financial gain — have not let the Fed determine how much you pay for internet service, and banning internet providers like Comcast and Verizon from slowing down websites for profit has never been the same as mandating citizens to buy private health insurance. Cruz’s rationale was wrong.

But with the GOP in control of Washington, and with current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai intent on erasing those net-neutrality laws from the books, Cruz hasn’t softened his stance whatsoever. In a FCC oversight hearing last month, he used the phrase yet again as part of a wider call to repeal the net-neutrality laws.

And you know what? The notion of the net-neutrality laws being like Obamacare isn’t that crazy. It wasn’t crazy the first time, either. But Cruz won’t agree with the reason why.

*SEE ALSO: Trump’s new FCC boss could have a lasting effect on the internet — here’s what to watch out for*

It is very easy to agree with net-neutrality advocates. Conceptually, saying you support net neutrality is like saying you support not murdering people. A Comcast or Verizon squeezing a YouTube — or, more significantly, the next YouTube — for cash, or giving certain traffic preferential treatment, is a potentially disastrous consolidation of power. 

This is why, when you pitch net neutrality purely as a concept, both liberals and conservatives tend to say they support it. 

The dangers advocates warn of aren't totally hypothetical: Comcast did try to slow down Netflix, and AT&T does use its status as an ISP to give it services an advantage. It’s important to prevent the current powers from abusing their positions, just as it is in any industry.The big questions we need to look at, however, are why ISPs are so eager to do that (beyond saying “they’re bad lol”), and how we get to a point where we aren’t having a political war over this issue every four years.

Pai says he objects to the current net-neutrality laws because they classify ISPs as Title II public utilities. The major ISPs have persistently said the enhanced oversight that comes with that will slow their incentive to invest in upgrading their networks. We took our own look at if that’s been true thus far, though, and couldn’t find a definite trend.Regardless, the larger point is that ISPs need to be incentivized to expand and improve their networks in the first place, because we are only going to increase our dependence on, and usage of, the internet as time goes on.

The current net-neutrality laws dance around that. That they prevent ISPs from discriminating against certain traffic is great, but they effectively accept that the current ISPs are pseudo-monopolies, then ask them to not to make things any worse. They ensure competition on the internet, but they merely hope to expand more diverse access to the internet itself.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider Reported by Business Insider 1 day ago.

Trump Officials Offer Scant Assurance to Health Insurers

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Trump administration officials offered little reassurance to health-insurance executives Tuesday on the future of payments for low-income customers, saying the insurers should take up the matter with Congress if they hope for a clearer commitment. Reported by Wall Street Journal 7 hours ago.

Measures could increase — or shrink — health-insurance competition in Colorado

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A pair of bills that Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne is pushing through the Colorado House of Representatives could increase the number of health insurers serving rural and Medicaid markets in this state — or they could leave the state’s workforce and smaller-government employees throughout Colorado dependent largely on one insurance provider, Kaiser Permanente Colorado. The two measures, both of which received their initial committee approvals last week, are part of a larger package of health care bills… Reported by bizjournals 20 hours ago.

Hitachi and Hirotsu Bio Science to Collaborate in Research for the Practical Application of Cancer Screening Using Nematodes

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For the early detection of cancer by through automation of large-scale screening

TOKYO, Apr 19, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501) and Hirotsu Bio Science Inc. (HirotsuBio) today announced that they have entered an agreement to collaborate on research for the practical application of cancer screening using nematodes. The two companies will conduct collaborative research to realize the practical application of HirotsuBio's "N-NOSE" cancer screening method using nematodes by automating the test process employing the new technology developed by Hitachi to automate the analysis of cancer tests using nematodes. This research will enable the large-scale testing required for future clinical assessment and thus, contribute to the early detection of cancer.

http://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_HitachiHirotsuBioScience.jpg

Currently, cancer-related expenses including indirect costs have reached approximately 10 trillion yen per year in Japan, and become a significant burden on society. Thus, there is a need to not only improve the precision of conventional cancer detection and diagnosis technology, but also for a simple but highly precise new screening method for early detection.

HirotsuBio, a venture company from Kyushu University, is aiming to develop a practical application of their newly developed cancer screening method, N-NOSE, based on chemotaxis(1) exhibited by nematodes. Nematodes were found to migrate towards the urine of cancer patients and move away from that of healthy people. N-NOSE has the advantage of being a testing method which can detect various types of cancer early and accurately(2) as well as uses urine, an inexpensive and easily sampled specimen. A large-scale clinical assessment is under plan in collaboration with medical institutions for the practical use of N-NOSE.

Hitachi on the other hand, has collaborated with Hitachi Health Insurance Society (Hitachi-Kenpo) to develop automated analysis technology using nematodes in cancer screening. This technology automatically performs a series processes for chemotaxis assays; from collecting and cleansing the nematodes, placing the nematodes and urine sample on a chemotaxis plate, to observing the chemotactic migration of the nematodes. During the observation process, images of the plate are captured to derive the number of nematodes from the brightness of the image. This method realized the quantitative analysis of nematode reaction and the automatic evaluation of chemotaxis assay results without conducting conventional visual counting. Further, continuous imaging allows the degree of migration to be measured. As the results of cancer screening using nematodes may be affected by factors such as the state of the nematodes, by using the degree of migration as a quality control standard, it is possible to quantitatively assess the quality of all test samples. Hitachi applied this technology to develop an automated analysis equipment prototype for cancer screening using nematodes. When urine samples provided by women who participated in Hitachi-Kenpo medical check-ups, and those purchased from overseas biobanks were tested using the prototype, an equivalent level of accuracy in identifying cancer patients was found compared to tests conducted manually by medical technicians.

This agreement for collaborative research will allow Hitachi and HirotsuBio to combine their respective strengths to establish automation technology for large-scale cancer screening using nematodes and contribute to the early detection of cancer.

(1) Chemotaxis: movement towards or away from a chemical stimulus by cells or microorganisms
(2) The latest clinical result from HirotsuBio: Specificity in detecting cancer in patients is 93.8%.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer society's challenges with our talented team and proven experience in global markets. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal 2014 (ended March 31, 2015) totaled 9,761 billion yen ($81.3 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes power & infrastructure systems, information & telecommunication systems, construction machinery, high functional materials & components, automotive systems, healthcare and others. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at www.hitachi.com.
Contact:
Hitachi Ltd
Corporate Communications
Tel: +81-3-3258-1111
Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.jcnnewswire.com Reported by ACN Newswire 16 hours ago.

Addressing Pre-Existing Conditions And Encouraging Continuous Coverage – Analysis

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By Edmund Haislmaier*

Americans are understandably concerned that they have access to health insurance and not be turned away because of a pre-existing medical condition. However, to sustain a health insurance market that can meet the needs of all Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions, health insurance rules must be crafted in a way that encourages individuals not only to get, but also to maintain coverage.

Unfortunately, the drafters of Obamacare took the wrong approach by writing their ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions in a way that removed an important incentive for people to keep health insurance coverage during periods when they do not need medical care. Yet insurance cannot function if people can buy it only when they expect to file claims. Under such circumstances, premium revenues will be insufficient to offset claims costs—exactly what has happened under Obamacare.

Thus, a key element in stabilizing the individual health insurance market and repairing the damage caused by Obamacare is for Congress to set better rules around the prohibition on plans imposing pre-existing condition exclusions. The rules that Congress set for employer group coverage under a 1996 law, the bipartisan Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), provide the model for how Congress can correct Obamacare’s mistake.

*The Importance of Continuous Coverage*

Health insurance is commonly understood as pooling risks across a group of people—that is, the premiums paid by the healthy offset the claims incurred by the sick. Another, though often unrecognized essential component of health insurance is that it also spreads risks over time. In other words, if an individual regularly pays premiums year after year, in the long run, most (or possibly all) of his claims costs will be covered by the premiums that he himself has paid.

All forms of insurance spread risks both over groups and over time to varying degrees, depending on the risk being insured. Life insurance offers the clearest example of how time can be an important factor in insurance calculations. Because all life insurance policyholders will eventually die, life insurance relies more on spreading risk over time than do other forms of insurance.

In the case of health insurance, it is important to have incentives for individuals to maintain continuous coverage, because the more claims costs that insurers can spread over time, the smaller the share that they will need to spread across enrollees. The result is a more stable market with more stable premiums.

The implication for policymakers is that they need to focus less on getting people to obtain coverage and more on getting them to keep paying for coverage when they do not immediately need medical care. If people have incentives to keep paying premiums when they are healthy, those same incentives will also encourage them to buy coverage in the first place.

*How Obamacare Detracted from Continuous Coverage*

Understanding the importance of the concept of continuous coverage is key to recognizing one of Obamacare’s biggest mistakes and how Congress can now correct it.

Obamacare failed to link the prohibition on health plans applying pre-existing condition exclusions directly to a requirement that individuals maintain continuous coverage. Thus, it destabilized the market by enabling (and even encouraging) individuals to pay for coverage only when they expected to incur claims. The resulting imbalance between premiums and claims costs is one of the two biggest causes of escalating premiums under Obamacare.1

The architects of Obamacare thought that they could avoid those adverse effects by instead offering subsidies to lower-income individuals and imposing a mandate on all Americans to buy coverage. However, as is now clear from the experience with Obamacare, that approach failed in practice.

*How Congress Can Address Pre-existing Conditions and Encourage Continuous Coverage*

Not only can Congress correct those Obamacare mistakes, but it already has the template for how to do so: the earlier HIPAA rules that limited the application of pre-existing condition exclusions in employer group coverage.2 Established 15 years before Obamacare, those rules applied to the 90 percent of Americans with private health insurance covered by employer group plans.

The HIPAA rules specified that pre-existing condition exclusions could not be applied to an individual enrolling in an employer plan if the individual had at least 12 months of prior coverage with no gap in coverage longer than 63 days.3

Furthermore, the HIPAA group market rules set reasonable and fair parameters for individuals who lacked sufficient prior coverage. They specified that a pre-existing condition exclusion could not be applied for more than 12 months and that if the individual had periods of coverage during the prior 12 months, the length of the pre-existing condition exclusion period had to be further reduced to give the individual credit for that partial coverage.

Thus, under the HIPAA group market rules, pre-existing-condition exclusions could be applied—and only on a limited basis—only to those who were without prior coverage or who waited until they needed medical care to enroll in their employer’s plan.

The HIPAA rules offered a fair approach and struck a reasonable balance between the individual’s need to get or change coverage and the insurer’s need to have enrollees consistently paying premiums over time. Under those rules, individuals who get and maintain coverage are rewarded, while individuals who wait until they are sick to get coverage risk having to pay for their own care for a limited time.

The problem with HIPAA was that it did not apply the same kind of rules to the individual (non-group) market. Thus, an individual could have purchased non-group health insurance for many years but still face pre-existing condition exclusions when he needed or wanted to enroll in another plan. Therefore, responsible people with individual market coverage were effectively not being given credit for having done the right thing in buying and maintaining coverage. This structure was not only unfair, but also contrary to the objectives of encouraging people to buy coverage before they need it and keep paying premiums when they are healthy.

The obvious, modest, and sensible reform is for Congress to restore the HIPAA rules that governed the employer group market before the enactment of Obamacare and in the process also apply a similar set of rules to the individual health insurance market.

*Continuous Coverage Provisions of the American Health Care Act*

Rather than restoring the HIPAA group market rules and expanding them to the individual market, the American Health Care Act (AHCA) under consideration in the House of Representatives leaves in place the Obamacare rules but adds a provision for insurers to impose a one-year, 30 percent premium surcharge on applicants with fewer than 12 months of prior coverage.

That particular remedy is likely to be inadequate. The concern shared by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation,4 as well as by insurance industry experts, is that the premium surcharge approach in the AHCA might prove to be an insufficient inducement for healthier individuals to maintain coverage. The most effective solution would be for Congress instead to reinstate and extend the HIPAA rules that explicitly link the prohibition on applying pre-existing condition exclusions to a requirement that individuals maintain continuous coverage.

*Conclusion*

Americans are concerned about individuals with pre-existing conditions being denied health insurance—and understandably so. To ensure that individuals with pre-existing conditions are able to get coverage and at the same time maintain the stability in the market needed to make that coverage accessible, policymakers should link the ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions to a requirement of continuous coverage. Having the right parameters in place is essential both to ensuring that insurance markets can function and to avoiding the premium escalation experienced under Obamacare. This approach is compassionate, is fair, and encourages people to do the right thing.

As Members of Congress debate repealing and replacing Obamacare, they should learn from the failures of that law in crafting a better set of health care policies. One important step in that crafting is the establishment of a fairer and more reasonable set of rules for limiting health plans’ application of pre-existing condition exclusions. Setting the right rules around the prohibition on plans applying pre-existing condition exclusions will not only stabilize insurance markets, but also provide a firmer foundation for future reforms of other aspects of health care policy.

*About the author:
*Edmund F. Haislmaier *is a Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Health Policy Studies, of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation.

*Source:*
This article was published by The Heritage Foundation.

*Notes:*
[1] The other big driver of higher premiums is the law’s benefit mandates. See Edmund F. Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski, “Responding to King v. Burwell: Congress’s First Step Should Be to Remove Costly Mandates Driving Up Premiums,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 4400, May 4, 2015, http://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/responding-king-v-burwell-congresss-first-step-should-be-remove-costly.

[2] Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, P.L. 104-191.

[3] The HIPAA rules also specified that pre-existing condition exclusions could not be applied to newborn or adopted dependents; that a pre-existing condition exclusion could be applied only with respect to a condition for which the individual was treated within the prior 12 months; and that only actual treatment—not a diagnosis or genetic test—could be the basis for a pre-existing condition exclusion. For a more comprehensive discussion of these and other insurance market provisions of HIPAA, see Edmund F. Haislmaier, “Saving the American Dream: The U.S. Needs Commonsense Health Insurance Reforms,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2703, June 22, 2012, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/06/saving-the-american-dream-the-us-needs-commonsense-health-insurance-reforms.

[4]Congressional Budget Office, “American Health Care Act: Budget Reconciliation Recommendations of the House Committees on Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce, March 9, 2017,” Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate, March 13, 2017, p. 12, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/costestimate/americanhealthcareact.pdf (accessed April 12, 2017). Reported by Eurasia Review 14 hours ago.

RAM Technologies Releases New Report “IT Insights for Health Plans On Optimizing Consumer Engagement”

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Content sharing program provides health plans with the information they need to excel in the new era of healthcare.

Fort Washington, Pennsylvania (PRWEB) April 19, 2017

RAM Technologies, Inc., the perennial leader in the development of enterprise software for healthcare payers, is pleased to announce the availability of a new report as part of the “Sharing Knowledge to Improve Healthcare Administration” (SKIHA) program. This month, members of the SKIHA program (free registration) are granted complimentary access to the RAM report, IT Insights for Health Plans On Optimizing Consumer Engagement.

From millennials, new to the world of health insurance, to seniors actively vying to get the most from their Medicare benefits, health plan members are actively searching for the transparency and access they need to make informed healthcare decisions. This report takes a look at how health plans, through personalized messaging and delivery vehicles, can engage these consumers and influence their behavior.

“Engaging health plan members and incentivizing healthy behaviors is integral to an organization’s long-term success,” stated Robert A. Tulio, President of RAM Technologies, Inc. “The right strategy combined with the right technology has the power to not only improve consumer engagement but also bend the cost curve for a health plan’s most costly members.”

To read the entire report (IT Insights for Health Plans On Optimizing Consumer Engagement) join the SKIHA program today click here.

About the Program
The SKIHA program (Sharing Knowledge to Improve Healthcare Administration) is an open platform that shares industry analysis and research to help the payer community prepare for the future. This free-flow exchange of ideas provides the information health plans need to improve operations, increase productivity and reduce costs. Each and every month the SKIHA program makes available special content that provides unique insight and in-depth industry knowledge to those in the position to enact real change.

About RAM Technologies, Inc.
RAM Technologies is the leading provider of enterprise claims processing software and claims adjudication software for health plans. For over 36 years RAM Technologies has led the way in the creation of Medicaid software solutions, Medicare software solutions and software for dual eligible processing (the Medicare-Medicaid Financial Alignment Initiative). RAM Technologies has been recognized on Inc. Magazine’s List of Fastest Growing Private Companies and the Philadelphia Business Journal’s List of Top Software Developers for their advancements in the creation of comprehensive claims management software for Medicare and Medicaid administration. To learn more about RAM Technologies’ healthcare claims processing and managed care software solutions call (877) 654-8810 or visit ramtechinc.com. Reported by PRWeb 13 hours ago.

New AIS Health Research Indicates Growth and Potential Opportunities in Medicaid Sector

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Preliminary results from AIS Health’s upcoming AIS’s Directory of Health Plans: 2017 find that Medicaid enrollment has increased significantly over the past year and is the fastest growing health insurance sector, which indicate new opportunities for health insurers.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) April 19, 2017

AIS Health researchers conducting the 2017 research cycle for AIS’s Directory of Health Plans are seeing significant trends in the Medicaid sector that indicate potential new opportunities for health insurers.

Medicaid enrollment has increased significantly over the past year and is the fastest growing health insurance sector, according to preliminary results from the upcoming AIS’s Directory of Health Plans: 2017. In examining data from the first 20 states to respond to AIS’s annual survey, researchers are discerning some prominent trends that could bode well for insurers in this sector:· The Medicaid population is growing, with an average increase of 7.5% over a year ago among the 20 states.
· Members are being shifted from state fee-for-service (FFS) coverage to managed Medicaid plans. While FFS membership is down by 4%, HMO membership has increased by 10%. In some states that have both FFS and managed programs, enrollment is up in both programs due to increased eligibility.
· Regardless of political leanings, Medicaid programs across the country are being overhauled to become more efficient, and these efforts typically involve some opportunities for the managed care industry, whether in traditional HMO contracts or in management services.

Medicaid expansion is one explanation for increases in a few states, however many Medicaid expansion programs have been in force for several years, and many states count significantly more eligibles even without expansion. There continue to be new initiatives in the works in several states. Some states that once rejected Medicaid expansion have revisited it, or are developing their own strategies to get a handle on Medicaid costs.

For a rundown of the Medicaid changes experienced in 20 states over the last year, visit https://aishealthdata.com/dashboard/dhp/demo/dhp, and click on “Medicaid Enrollment Trends Could Herald New Opportunities for Health Plans” in the newsfeed.

AIS’s Directory of Health Plans is the most comprehensive resource available on the U.S. health plan market, with enrollment data and contact information for all health plans operating in the United States. By maintaining impeccable research standards and strict methodology through 14 annual editions, the Directory offers true year-over-year comparisons and extremely accurate and sensitive insight into developing trends. AIS Health’s independent researchers calculate their results about the Medicaid sector from 2017 enrollment data provided by Medicaid agencies.

Available in various formats, AIS’s Directory of Health Plans: 2017 will be available in May for subscribers to the online version, and printed book and USB versions will ship in June. For more information, and to reserve AIS’s Directory of Health Plans: 2017, visit https://aishealth.com/marketplace/gdhp14-preorder. For more information on the online version, visit https://aishealthdata.com/dhp.

About AIS Health    
AIS Health is a publishing and information company that has served the health care industry for more than 30 years. AIS Health’s mission is to provide objective and relevant business and strategic information for health care executives, by developing highly targeted news, data and analysis for managers at health insurance companies, pharmaceutical organizations, providers, purchasers and other health care industry stakeholders. AIS Health, which maintains journalistic independence from its parent company, MMIT, is committed to integrity in reporting and bringing transparency to health industry data. Learn more at http://AISHealth.com and http://AISHealthData.com. Reported by PRWeb 9 hours ago.

'Dangerous path': Medicare 'seriously threatened' by private health insurance

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Government under pressure to tackle cost, complexity and poor coverage of private insurance. Reported by Brisbane Times 6 hours ago.

IBM revenue has fallen for 20 quarters — but it used to run its business very differently (IBM)

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IBM revenue has fallen for 20 quarters — but it used to run its business very differently (IBM) IBM shares fell sharply Wednesday after the company reported its 20th quarter of declining revenue, and earnings that were worse than analysts expected. Profits have been eroding for years as competition and the internet displaced the hardware services segments that were once its core businesses. In recent years, it's spent a lot of its money buying back its own shares, a practice some say runs counter to innovation.

But IBM used to run its business very differently. In its heyday, profits were just one of its priorities, and for much of the 20th century, that was a formula for success. 

It sounds like a corporate fairy tale. Imagine for a moment an employer that takes care of you from cradle to grave, a company that hosts lavish carnivals for your family, a place where workers feel intensely loyal because they are treated so well. That company was IBM.

"In the middle of the 20th century, it was the most famous, the most admired, the most widely respected company in the world," says Quinn Mills, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School and the author of "The IBM Lesson" and other books about the company's history and culture.

Listen to an audio version of this story: 

By the late 1960s, IBM had become a leader in how companies treated workers and thought of their roles in society.

Its culture was called "cradle to grave," meaning that if you got in, the company would take care of you. Around the country there were even country clubs and golf courses where workers at all levels could play for virtually nothing.

I visited the former IBM country club in Poughkeepsie last year. It's called Casperkill now. IBM sold it more than a decade ago, and you can still find retired IBMers grumbling about the changes.

"I used to play for nothing," Ron Dedrick says from the seat of his golf cart. He's a retired programmer who started in 1966. "Now it costs me like $3,000 a year."

The ending of fringe benefits like the golf course are symbols of a larger transition both at IBM and at most American corporations in recent decades. At IBM, they meant a change to one of the company's three core values outlined by its founder, Thomas Watson Sr., and his son Thomas Watson Jr., who together ran the company for much of the first half of the 20th century.

The best known of those values was what they called "respect for the individual," and with it came one of the most astonishing policies in American business. For more than seven decades, IBM never laid off workers. If business changed, workers might be retrained and forced to adapt. There was the possibility of being moved across the country or overseas, giving IBM the internal tag "I've Been Moved."

But as long as you did your job, if you worked for IBM, you had job security. Thomas Watson said it was good for business.

"He believed people worked better when they were secure, not insecure," Mills says. Watson "believed people would make a full commitment to the company if they knew they could count on the company to make a full commitment to them."

And it's true. IBMers interviewed for this story who worked there starting in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s are still intensely loyal, even when they criticize some of the changes in recent years. Many say they would do anything for the company back then.

**Changing norms**

Most companies weren't as generous as IBM. It was the most extreme example of a big-business norm in the middle of the 20th century, one quite different from today's.

"Most corporate executives in this period, when prosperity was widely shared, thought we could make a profit, and we can take care of the workers, and we want to make great products for the customers, and we want to be fair to our suppliers, and we want to be good citizens to the community," says Richard Sylla, an economic historian at the New York University Stern School of Business.

We think in terms of profits, but people continue to rank first.

Thomas Watson Jr. absolutely believed that. As the son of IBM's founder and its postwar CEO, he gave a series of speeches in the 1960s outlining the IBM values that he and his father developed.

"As businessmen," he said, "we think in terms of profits, but people continue to rank first."

Before we get to how and why that changed, let's review the history of the corporation.

**A brief history**

In the late 1800s, the coast-to-coast railroad network linked US states, creating the world's first mass market. That allowed companies to build large, efficient, centralized factories, and with them, came the first tycoons.

"The corporations that were most efficient, like Rockefeller in oil and Carnegie in steel, grew to become very large corporations," Sylla says. "Hundreds of millions of dollars. So then America had big business, and that continued into the 20th century."

At their simplest level, corporations allow a group of people to put their money together to do things they couldn't do alone. They can grow by reinvesting their profits, and issuing stocks and bonds, growing much faster than if they had to raise and use their own cash.

Corporations brought us electricity, automobiles, and radio, and then the public started pouring cash into the stock market. And you probably know what happens next.

The stock market crashes, and that leads to the Great Depression and then the New Deal, and that brought modern financial regulations. For the first time, companies had to reveal a lot of information to investors, quarter by quarter and year by year.

"Wall Street hated it at the time," Sylla says. "But not long after World War II, they realized it was probably the best thing that ever happened to them because the public — because of New Deal regulations — had a new confidence in Wall Street, and it boomed in the 1950s and '60s."

**'The world to themselves'**

After World War II, American companies "pretty much had the world to themselves," Sylla says. Most of their rivals in Europe and Japan were rebuilding amid the war's destruction, so big companies were raking in cash and didn't have any issue being generous.

"When we compare that time to today, we find everyone seemed to share in the prosperity, from the corporate executives right down to the assembly-line workers," Sylla says.

There was a lot of work to be done, so companies paid well, and with IBM in the lead, started to offer benefits like pensions and health insurance.

Meanwhile, unions and Washington grew stronger.

"The notion was there were three sources of power in society: government, business, and labor," Mills, the Harvard professor emeritus, says. "Those three elements of society would work together to manage the economy, society, et cetera."

So by this period, those forces led more companies to look like IBM.

For IBM, Watson Jr. was making big bets, shifting the company from mechanical tabulating devices to a new thing called a computer. The System/360 was its first major mainframe.

Watson's strategy paid off. Hundreds of thousands of IBMers brought us into the modern computer age, leasing and servicing those room-size mainframes to companies around the world.

But while IBM powered ahead, the rest of corporate America ran into problems in the 1970s.

Spending on the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty led to inflation. That made it more expensive for American companies to do business at the moment Japan and Germany were ready to compete.

"Corporations were kind of squeezed," Sylla says. "So American corporations began to rethink their whole models."

And that rethinking led companies to focus almost entirely on the bottom line.

As Sylla puts it, companies began to forget about the workers.

"Build your factory in Mexico or someplace else where labor is cheaper" became the thinking, he says.

In the 1980s, IBM's management tried to protect the mainframe business against new competition from PCs. It didn't work. By the early '90s, IBM was running out of cash. There was talk of splitting the company into pieces. Then IBM hired its first outsider to lead the company, Louis Gerstner, who came from RJR Nabisco.

*'It's no longer respect for the individual'*

Sylla says this was the moment "IBM got a big dose of shareholder value," the focus that has transformed American business over the past 40 years.

One morning early on in Gerstner's tenure, Thomas Watson Jr. joined the new CEO in the back of the car that drove him to the office. Gerstner says Watson told him to take whatever steps were necessary to get the company back on track.

But in many ways, the steps Gerstner took were a repudiation of the values Watson outlined in the 1960s. In one speech, Gerstner said what IBM needed was "a series of very tough-minded, market-driven strategies"— strategies that delivered performance in the marketplace and shareholder value.

Then in 1993, IBM did the unthinkable: It laid people off. Sixty-thousand workers had to go.

It was basically look to the left, look to the right. Some of you won't be here.

Even for workers who knew the company was in bad shape, it was tough. "It was basically look to the left, look to the right. Some of you won't be here," says Marcy Holle, an IBM communications manager at the time. "That's when my heart went through the floor."

Holle soon became busy strategizing how to tell workers, and the public, what was happening at one of the most iconic American brands. But around the office, that IBM dedication was fraying.

"Productivity decreased because people were looking for jobs, talking in the hallways about who they thought would get laid off," she says.

Many credit Gerstner with saving IBM and keeping it together. (Gerstner declined to be interviewed for this story.) To get there, Gerstner said, in effect, that IBM needed to look more like its peers. That meant cutting back on pensions and perks, like those golf courses, where Ron Dedrick plays.

"So many things have changed," Dedrick says now. His wife actually still works at IBM.

"In the past, you got rewarded for good work."

In more recent years, critics contend that IBM has moved into the financial-engineering business, failing to grow revenue but still generating profits with financial strategies such as buying back its stock.

IBM declined to make its current CEO, Ginni Rometty, available for an interview.

Workers like Robert Ochoa, who retired last year, say the company is not the same.

"It's no longer respect for the individual," Ochoa says. "It's respect for the stockholders."

"The Price of Profits," our series with Marketplace, looks at what happens when profits become a company’s product. For more, visit priceofprofits.org.

Join the conversation about this story » Reported by Business Insider 5 hours ago.
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