Protecting the Middle Class News

Kiersten-Care: Using the Health Care Tax Credit to Take Care of Employees

Ed. Note: This was originally published on Healthcare.gov

Kiersten Firquain founded Bistro Kids in Kansas City, KS, seven years ago to provide locally sourced organic “kid-friendly” food to as many students as possible. While her chefs were cooking up healthy food for youngsters, she wanted to do something for her employees’ health. The health care law tax credit for small businesses, she says, made it possible to offer them health insurance.

“We talked to our chefs and employees and asked, ‘What’s something you would like from Bistro Kids?’ And one of the things that kept coming up was insurance,” Kiersten says.

Bistro Kids qualified for about $1,500 per year in tax credits under the health care law, the Affordable Care Act, which made a huge difference to a small business like hers. For one of her chefs, Kiersten says, health insurance means a $5 co-pay for a prescription instead of a $250 cost, which her chef would not have been able to afford.

Watch Kiersten's story here:

Reforming Unemployment Insurance to Protect Jobs and Incomes for American Workers

In his inaugural address, President Obama praised workers who “would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job.”  But in most states, our unemployment insurance (UI) system discourages reducing hours in this way. A worker who is laid off has access to UI benefits that temporarily cover part of lost wages, but a worker whose hours are reduced has no such access, creating an incentive for layoffs while leaving workers who face an involuntary reduction in their hours with no protection or support. Today the Department of Labor is issuing guidance on new legislation that will help to address these problems. This guidance is part of a series of important UI reforms designed to contribute to job creation and job placement that the President proposed in the American Jobs Act, were signed into law in February and are now being implemented. 

Programs in some states that allow workers whose hours have been cut to claim pro-rated UI benefits—so-called short-time compensation or work sharing programs—help to keep workers on the job.   President Obama has long advocated the expansion of work sharing to help employers and their workers. It’s an idea that has been supported by economists across the political spectrum. The President’s proposal to expand the number of states with work-sharing programs, and increase employer awareness of the benefits of work sharing, was included in both his FY 2012 and 2013 Budgets, and in last September’s American Jobs Act. That proposal was signed into law on a bipartisan basis as part of the February extension of the payroll tax cut, and is being implemented today through guidance released by the Labor Department. 

Congress Says No to Equal Pay

Equal pay for women is about more than just fairness. Women are breadwinners in more than 50 percent of American households, and if they're making less than men do for the same work, families have to get with less money for childcare and tuition and rent, and small businesses have fewer customers. Everybody suffers. 

President Obama supports passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, a comprehensive and commonsense bill that updates and strengthens the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially equal work. Following Congress's failure to act on this bill today, the President released the following statement:

This afternoon, Senate Republicans refused to allow an up-or-down vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act, a commonsense piece of legislation that would strengthen the Equal Pay Act and give women more tools to fight pay discrimination. It is incredibly disappointing that in this make-or-break moment for the middle class, Senate Republicans put partisan politics ahead of American women and their families. Despite the progress that has been made over the years, women continue to earn substantially less than men for performing the same work. My Administration will continue to fight for a woman’s right for equal pay for equal work, as we rebuild our economy so that hard work pays off, responsibility is rewarded, and every American gets a fair shot to succeed.

 

Learn more about wage inequality and its effects on American families here

Insurance Rebates on the Way

Consumers across the country are starting to hear the good news about their health insurance costs. 

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the new health care law, health insurers generally have to spend at least 80 percent of your premium dollars on health care and quality, not administrative overhead.  This minimum percentage is called a medical loss ratio.  If your insurer doesn’t meet or exceed this standard, they must rebate you the difference.

The rule encourages insurers to give you better value for your premium dollar and holds them accountable if they don’t. Last week, insurers were required to report the refunds that will go to consumers and small businesses later this summer and we have already started to see the effects:

• BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has announced that it will pay $8.6 million to about 73,000 individual policyholders in August because they spent less than 80 percent of premiums on health care. 
• In Arizona, more than $36 million in refunds will go to both consumers and small businesses. One insurer in the state, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, alone will pay out an estimated $8.7 million to more than 77,000 individual policyholders, and another $3.2 million to more than 3,700 small businesses. United Healthcare's Golden Rule Insurance will refund nearly $8.7 million to more than 30,000 additional Arizona policyholders.
• Two insurers in California will pay out more than $50 million in rebates to nearly 1 million customers statewide.

This is just one way the new health care law is helping American families and businesses get a fair deal when it comes to their health care. Learn more at www.WhiteHouse.gov/healthreform.

Equal Pay for Equal Work?

It's 2012, but did you know that women are still paid less than men?

On average, full-time working women earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, a wage gap that exists regardless of personal choices like education or occupation. Over the course of her career, a woman with a college degree will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a man who does the same work.  

This substantial gap is more than a statistic -- it has real life consequences. When women, who make up nearly half the workforce, bring home less money each day, it means they have less for the everyday needs of their families, and over a lifetime of work, far less savings for retirement.

President Obama supports passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Congress puts to a vote on June 5. This comprehensive and commonsense bill updates and strengthens the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially equal work.  

We’ve created some ecards that you can send via email or share on social media with reasons equal pay for equal work is essential. Pick your favorite, or send them all!

My First Job: Gene Sperling

Summer Jobs+ is a call to action for businesses, non-profits, and government to work together to provide pathways to employment for young people in the summer of 2012. It's about helping people find their first jobs.

Today Gene Sperling is the Director of the National Economic Council. In the video below, he talks about his first job as a ball boy. He swept the court and cleaned up after the players, which he thought was "way cool." More importantly, he learned what makes you stand out as a great employee.  

Watch Gene Sperling talk about his first job:

Guaranteeing Value for Your Premium Dollars

Ed note: this post was originally published on the blog at healthcare.gov

When we pay for health insurance, we want to know that most of what we are paying for is for health care, not advertising, executive bonuses or overhead. It’s pretty simple: we want to get a good value for our premium dollars.

Thanks to a new rule (the “80/20 rule”) in the Affordable Care Act, you can be sure that insurance companies are spending generally at least 80 cents of every dollar you pay in premiums on your health care or activities that improve health care quality. If the insurance company fails to meet this standard, or the “medical loss ratio”, in any year, they have to pay you a rebate.

Insurance companies that didn’t meet the standard for coverage provided in 2011 are required to provide these rebates no later than August 1 of this year, and to make sure you know what you are owed, insurance companies that owe rebates will also send a letter telling you how much you’ll receive. You can see what that letter will look like here. According to early estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation, insurance companies will provide 15.8 million Americans with $1.3 billion in rebates.

Today, we’re also finalizing a notice for insurance companies to send you if they meet or exceed the standard. If your insurance company is providing fair value for your premium dollars, you should know that too. You’ll be able to see your plan’s medical loss ratio on HealthCare.gov starting this summer. 

If you don’t get a rebate, that means your plan may have lowered prices or improved your coverage already.  For example, one insurer in West Virginia improved its medical loss ratio by lowering premiums by an average of $2,500 for 4,200 small businesses, cutting their premiums to give consumers welcome cost relief.  This is one of the ways the 80/20 rule is bringing value to consumers for their health care dollars.

Fighting Fraud and Making Medicare Stronger

Fighting Medicare fraud has long been a top priority for President Obama. Today, we are releasing a new infographic that describes how the Affordable Care Act – the new health care law – is helping the Obama Administration crack down on Medicare fraud and make Medicare stronger. The new infographic shows how the law increases penalties for criminals who commit fraud and provides new enforcement tools to stop fraud and save taxpayers money. 

We are committed to using these new tools to fight Medicare and other health care fraud, and we are getting results:  The Administration’s anti-fraud efforts recovered $4.1 billion in taxpayer dollars last year, the second year recoveries hit this record-breaking level. Total recoveries over the last three years were $10.7 billion. Prosecutions are way up, too: the number of individuals charged with fraud increased from 797 in fiscal year 2008 to 1,430 in fiscal year 2011 – a more than 75 percent increase.

Just last week, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice announced “a nationwide takedown by Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in seven cities has resulted in charges against 107 individuals, including doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in Medicare fraud schemes involving approximately $452 million in false billing.”  And on Monday, the Departments announced that, as a part of their Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team initiative, they had resolved an investigation into a pharmaceutical company’s unlawful promotion of a prescription drug.  The Justice Department reported that, “the resolution – the second largest payment by a drug company – includes a criminal fine and forfeiture totaling $700 million and civil settlements with the federal government and the states totaling $800 million.” 

President Obama: College Is the Best Investment You Can Make

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on interest rates on student loans at the University of Colorado Coors Event Center in Boulder, Colo., April 24, 2012. (Official White House Photo by by Chuck Kennedy)

If Congress doesn't act, more than 7.4 million students with federal student loans will see their interest rates double on July 1 of this year. President Obama believes that this is unacceptable: Higher education cannot be a luxury in this country. It’s an economic imperative that every family must be able to afford. 

On Tuesday, the President visited universities in Colorado and North Carolina to talk with students about the importance of keeping interest rates on student loans low so that more Americans can get a fair shot at an affordable college education that will provide the skills they need to find a good job, and a clear path to middle class. President Obama also paid a visit to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which was taping at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he "slow jammed" the news, explaining, "Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people."