- Furious over EEOC attack on wellness programs, CEOs threaten to suspend their support for ObamaCare [Reuters] Had it been common knowledge that CEOs covertly support ObamaCare, then? And isn’t the EEOC formally an independent agency not answerable to White House directives?
- If more editors handled situations this way, readers would think better of the press: Annalee Newitz of io9 offers “apology and analysis” for running tendentious, ill-reported article attacking animal-based research;
- Success of personal injury litigation is reshaping nursing home business in some states [WSJ]
- “With the Advent of Mandatory Paid Sick Leave in California, Here are a Few Sick Leave Excuses” [Coyote, related Massachusetts]
- Really, it’s not a shock-scandal that rules for human-subjects research might be written by actual scientists [Zachary Schrag, IRB Blog]
- In combating diseases of poverty, you’d think economic growth would top the list of remedies [Bryan Caplan]
- Judge slices $9 billion punitive Actos award against Takeda and Lilly by 99% [Bloomberg, earlier]
- “Grubergate, the Mini-Series” [Michael Cannon; more from Cannon on Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari in King v. Burwell ObamaCare case]
Search Results for ‘obama home care’
Regulating consumers by way of regulating producers
An observation from John Goodman via David Henderson:
Almost all government restrictions on our freedom are indirect. They are imposed on us by way of some business. In fact, laws that directly restrict the freedom of the individual are rare and almost always controversial….
But the vast majority of government encroachments on your freedom of action come about through laws that constrain an employer or a seller – without much controversy. …
After proceeding through examples from workplace safety regulation, liquor control, medical device regulation, occupational licensure, and other areas, Goodman adds:
Let’s take one more example from the health care field. The Obama administration is about to impose new regulations affecting home health care workers. They must receive minimum wages and overtime pay. But as far as I can tell, this rule applies only to workers who are employed by agencies and not to workers who are directly hired by an elderly or disabled patient. No matter how they are employed, the economic effects will be the same – a blow to the seniors and people with disabilities. In one case the effects would be visible; in the other they would be invisible. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that if there were no agencies in home health care, there would be no new regulations.
The growth of the firm may be inevitable, desirable, or both for separate reasons, but it also makes regulation more feasible by generating an entity more suitable for bearing the regulatory harness. Incidentally, is blocking the Obama home health carer overtime regulations a high priority for the incoming Republican Congress, and if not, why not?
Medical roundup
- More on effort to blame federal budget cuts for Ebola [Chris Edwards chart at Cato; Nick Gillespie, Reason; Michael Tanner, earlier] How Firestone, rare multinational firm with a large presence in Liberia, fought the disease [NPR] More: Heck of a job, Nicole: administration already has Ebola czar [Mollie Hemingway]
- Train wreck postponed: “Administration Delays Home-Care Worker Minimum-Wage, Overtime Protections” [Kaiser Health News, earlier here, here, etc.; California will not delay]
- “Should it be OK to fire employee for using medical marijuana?” [Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle/syndicated, and thanks for quote; Jacob Sullum on Colorado “any lawful activity” statute]
- Venture capital interest dwindles in cardiac and orthopedic medical device sectors amid concerns over regulatory hassle, tax, reimbursement problems [WSJ (also Avalon), Arnold Kling]
- Billing code for “repeat doctor visit after being sucked into jet engine” probably little-used [Lowering the Bar, and surprise sequel]
- British ambulance workers’ strike will hit scheduled patient visits rather than emergencies, so that’s okay [BBC]
- Does Takings Clause, in combination with unconstitutional-conditions doctrine, require feds to compensate hospitals for EMTALA emergency-treatment mandate? [Haavi Morreim, Regulation, PDF] EMTALA, disability discrimination, and claimed “dumping” of psychiatric patients [Alison Somin on Gail Heriot dissent]
September 12 roundup
- ObamaCare, Common Core, EPA policy all raise specter of federal commandeering of state governments [Richard Epstein and Mario Loyola, The Atlantic] Vocally supporting Common Core, William Bennett provides new reasons to be queasy about it [Neal McCluskey, Cato]
- Mom lets six-year-old play within sight of his own front door. Then Child Protective Services arrives [Haiku of the Day]
- Study finds no evidence California cellphone ban reduced accidents [The Newspaper]
- Or maybe if you’ve been in good health for 13 years it’s okay to let the grievance slide: pols, union leaders urge unimpaired WTC rescuers to enroll for possible future compensation [AP/WCBS]
- “Thomson Reuters Thinks Not Responding To Their Email Means You’ve Freely Licensed All Your Content” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
- New frontiers in urban expropriation: San Francisco imposes crushing new “relocation assistance” burden on rental owners [Pacific Legal Foundation]
- A lesson in standing up for individual liberty, and not being discouraged by setbacks [my Cato Institute piece on Lillian Gobitis Klose’s flag-pledge case, Donald Boudreaux/Cafe Hayek]
Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup
- Boston’s North End, the home-as-one’s-castle doctrine, and how we got the Fourth Amendment [Ted Widmer, Globe]
- NYT sniffs at Origination Clause as basis for ObamaCare challenge, but many framers of Constitution saw it as vital [Trevor Burrus, Forbes; Ilya Shapiro; four years ago on another Origination Clause episode]
- Justice Scalia, concurring in Schuette, knocks the fabled Carolene Products footnote down a peg [Michael Schearer]
- SCOTUS lets stand New Jersey’s very extreme gun control law. Was it serious about reviving the Second Amendment? [Ilya Shapiro]
- Didn’t link this earlier: Kenneth Anderson discusses his excellent Cato Supreme Court Review article on Kiobel, the Alien Tort case [Opinio Juris]
- Kurt Lash guestblogs on 14th Amendment privileges and immunities clause [Volokh Conspiracy]
- Supreme Court reviving law/equity distinction? (Hope so.) [Samuel Bray, SSRN via Solum]
Supreme Court roundup
- Court will hear case of mariner charged with Sarbanes-Oxley records-destruction violation for discarding undersized fish [Jonathan Adler, Eugene Volokh, Daniel Fisher]
- SCOTUS goes 9-0 for wider patent fee shifting in Octane Fitness v. ICON and Highmark v. Allcare Health Management System Inc. [Ars Technica, ABA Journal, earlier]
- Constitutional principle that Washington must not give some states preference over others could face test in New Jersey NCAA/gambling case [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Supreme Court grants certiorari in Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens, a class action procedure case on CAFA removal [Donald Falk, Mayer Brown Class Defense Blog]
- “Supreme Court’s Daimler decision makes it a good year for general jurisdiction clarity” [Mark Moller, WLF, earlier] Decision calls into question “the jurisdictional basis for this country’s litigation hellholes” [Beck]
- How liberals learned to love restrictive standing doctrine [Eugene Kontorovich, more]
- “California Shouldn’t Be Able to Impose Regulations on Businesses Outside of California” [Ilya Shapiro on cert petition in Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Corey (fuel standards)]
Politics roundup
- Criminalizing Wisconsin politics: judge declines to throw out counter-suit against home-raiding, computer-seizing “John Doe” probe [Journal Sentinel, ruling, Wisconsin Watchdog, Steve Forbes, earlier]
- Defense of career agency employees’ leaking to Congress and the press to resist political appointee leadership [Amanda Leiter, SSRN]
- Hurricane and mass tort lawyer Steve Mostyn emerges as big political benefactor [David Yates, Chamber-backed SE Texas Record] More: Hello, Mr. President!
- Gotham press chooses up sides on Attorney General Eric Schneiderman [Jack Shafer]
- Florida Supreme Court among nation’s most politicized, so there’s a certain amount of karma at work here [FCIR]
- Wow: Braley campaign says he knew “he was being videotaped at the private fundraiser” [DMR via Jason Pye, United Liberty, earlier] Nothing discouraged, he’ll keynote New York trial lawyers’ event [Legal NewsLine]
- Pennsylvania legislator named in abortive sting appears down to his last few friends [PennLive]
Overtime scheme more dangerous to economy than minimum wage hike
So says Coyote, and I agree with him (earlier here).
…companies will quickly restructure their work processes to make sure no one works overtime. And since their new hires are working just a straight 40 hours (with mandatory unpaid lunch break time in CA), they will likely pay less. If I am paying $40,000 a year for someone who will work extra hours for me, I am not going to pay that amount to someone just punching a time clock. And the whole psychological relationship is changed – a salaried person is someone on the management team. A person punching a timeclock may not be treated the same way. …
…for those who think schools assign too much homework, this could well be the end of homework. The most dangerous possible thing with hourly workers is to give them the ability to assign themselves unlimited overtime. Teachers could do this at home with grading papers. If I were a school, I would ban teachers from doing any grading or schoolwork prep at home — after all, it’s hourly and probably overtime and they could work unlimited hours at home and how would you get it under control? The only way to manage it would be to ban it entirely.
He marches through some of the implications, all bad, for employee travel (why allow it except for the direst company needs if every hour on the road is going to be paid at time and a half?), ObamaCare incentives, and the erosion of a minimum pay guarantee for those whose salary now provides one. (On the homework issue, incidentally, teachers are exempt under current FLSA rules; grading papers at home would only be dangerous assuming a change in those rules.)
Overtime for live-in health companions, cont’d
Caleb Brown interviews me for a Cato podcast on the Administration’s new home-companion overtime rules, which could drive many elderly and disabled persons into nursing homes. Earlier here and here.
September 23 roundup
- Drunk driver leaves road, hits power pole, Washington high court allows suit against property owner to proceed [Lowman v. Wilbur, PDF]
- State attorneys general pressure clothing maker to drop t-shirts with drug names [ABA Journal, related earlier]
- More transparency needed in Child Protective Services [Reason TV] One lawyer’s critique of CPS [Laurel Dietz, Straight (Vancouver)]
- While aspiring to nudge us into more farsighted financial practices, government has trouble staying out of dumb bond deals itself [Coyote, and more (Detroit)]
- You can care about safety but still think some speed limits are set too low [Canadian video on Jalopnik]
- Trial lawyers aim to extend to Indiana their Idaho victory over “Baseball Rule” on spectator liability [NWIT, earlier here, here, here, etc.]
- New “fair-housing” assessment and planning process propels federal government into social engineering [IBD editorial via AEI Ideas, HUD]