Exotic Dancers want rights and protection while on the job: Performers seek to unionize

Romans 1:22-24 “22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves

Important Takeaways:

  • Strippers bid to unionize in Los Angeles
  • Performers at a Los Angeles strip club took their first steps toward unionization Wednesday, becoming the latest US workers to seek collective bargaining power.
  • Dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar submitted a petition with the federal government, beginning a process that could see them represented by performers union Actors’ Equity, in what officials described as a first.
  • Equity already represents over 51,000 performers and stage managers across the United States, many of them in and around Los Angeles.
  • “These dancers reported consistent compensation issues — including significant wage theft — along with health and safety risks and violations.
  • “They want health insurance and other benefits, like workers’ compensation. They need protection from sexual harassment, discrimination and unjust terminations.”

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U.S. median income hit record high before coronavirus hit, Census says

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. median household income hit a record high in 2019 and the poverty rate fell, according to a government survey released on Tuesday that offered a snapshot of the economy before millions of American jobs were destroyed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. Census Bureau said real median household income jumped 6.8% from $64,324 in 2018 to $68,703 last year – the highest since the agency began tracking the data in 1967.

It also said the nation’s poverty rate fell last year to 10.5%, a 1.3-percentage-point drop. Another measure of poverty that adjusts for government aid programs for low-income Americans showed a drop to 11.7% last year from 12.8% in 2018.

At the same time, however, the number of people without health insurance for at least part of the year hit 29.6 million, up one million from the year before. The number of uninsured children also grew.

The report offered a look back at the state of the economy before the novel coronavirus outbreak hit the United States early this year, shuttering many businesses as the country sought to contain the pandemic.

Since then, more than 6.5 million people in the United States have contracted the highly contagious virus and more than 194,000 have died. Vast swaths of the economy were devastated and 22 million Americans were thrown out of work.

While activity is now rebounding, economists warn that the recovery may be uneven as federal stimulus money runs out with no signs of replenishment from Washington. A potential second wave of COVID-19 infections this autumn and winter as people move back indoors also looms large.

President Donald Trump, who had staked his re-election on economic gains before the outbreak, has downplayed impact of the virus and the risk of another wave, as he has urged states to fully re-open. He has also repeatedly touted gains on Wall Street – a narrow gauge of economic performance – and pledged to rebuild the economy if he wins a second term.

His Democratic rival in the Nov. 3 election, former Vice President Joe Biden, has said the gains since COVID-19 emerged have been uneven and have left many segments of the working population still reeling.

“Those at the top see things going up. But those in the middle and below see things getting worse. And we have leaders who bear false witness, want us to believe that our country isn’t gone off track,” Biden said on Monday.

A Reuters/Ispos poll in late August showed American’s support for Trump’s handling of the economy has slipped.

The income and poverty data for 2019, the last year of the economic expansion following the 2007-2009 Great Recession, “do not reflect the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic or the current recession,” Census’ Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division chief David Waddington told reporters on a conference call.

Census officials and private economists cautioned that the COVID-19 outbreak impacted data collection as the agency suspended in-person interviews earlier this year.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Tim Ahmann; additional reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy)

U.S. Supreme Court wrestles with Obamacare contraception case

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court justices grappled on Wednesday with whether President Donald Trump’s administration went too far in allowing employers to obtain broad religious and moral exemptions from an Obamacare requirement that health insurance that they provide employees covers women’s birth control.

At issue is a challenge by the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the administration’s 2018 rule that permits broad religious and moral exemptions to the contraception mandate of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, and expands accommodations already allowed.

The justices held their third day of arguments by teleconference of the week, a new format prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took part a day after being hospitalized to undergo treatment for a benign gall bladder condition.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, a potential pivotal vote, appeared frustrated that the long-running litigation, a version of which previously reached the Supreme Court in 2016, has not led to a compromise.

“Is it really the case that there is no way to resolve those differences?” Roberts asked.

Roberts wondered if the administration’s approach was too broad by providing exemptions even to entities that had not complained about the adequacy of previous accommodations devised under Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer appeared to favor a similar approach.

“I don’t understand why this can’t be worked out,” Breyer said.

The contraceptive mandate under the law, which was signed by Obama in 2010 and has faced Republican efforts to repeal it ever since, requires that employer-provided health insurance include coverage for birth control with no co-payment. Previously, many employer-provided insurance policies did not offer this coverage.

Ginsburg, at 87 the court’s oldest member, participated in the argument from Baltimore after being hospitalized for non-surgical treatment for an infection arising from a gallstone in her cystic duct.

‘NO HASSLE’

Sometimes sounding hesitant and at other times sounding firm, Ginsburg asked three rounds of questions starting with a query to Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who was arguing for the administration. Ginsburg told Francisco that Trump’s administration had “tossed entirely to the wind what Congress considered to be essential, that women be provided this service, with no hassle and no cost to them.”

The administration has asked the court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, to reverse a nationwide injunction issued by a lower court blocking the rule.

Both of Trump’s appointees, conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, asked questions indicating sympathy toward the administration’s view that it has broad leeway under Obamacare to decide the scope of exemptions.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s questions, like those posed by Ginsburg, indicated they are leaning toward the states.

The administration is joined in the litigation by the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic order of nuns that is one of the groups seeking an exemption for its employees. Under a separate court ruling, the group already has an exemption to the mandate.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who ordinarily remains silent during arguments, again asked questions as he has done each day this week under the new format.

Rules implemented under Obama exempted religious entities from the mandate and a further accommodation was created for religiously affiliated nonprofit employers, which some groups including the Little Sisters of the Poor objected to as not going far enough.

The blocked Trump rule would allow any nonprofit or for-profit employer, including publicly traded companies, to seek an exemption on religious grounds. A moral objection can be made by nonprofits and companies that are not publicly traded. The Trump administration exemption also would be available for religiously affiliated universities that provide health insurance to students.

The legal question is whether Trump’s administration had the legal authority to expand the exemption under both the Obamacare law itself and another federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allows people to press religious claims against the federal government.

The justices addressed the question of religious accommodations to the Obamacare contraception mandate once before. In 2016, they sidestepped a decision on previous rules issued under Obama, sending the dispute back to lower courts.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

Trump doubles down on Obamacare fight, asks court to overturn law

FILE PHOTO - A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Ysidro, San Diego, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has stepped up its attack on the Obamacare health care law, telling a federal appeals court it agrees with a Texas judge’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional and should be struck down.

The Justice Department in a two-sentence letter to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit filed on Monday said it backed the December ruling by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth that found the Affordable Care Act violated the U.S. Constitution because it required people to buy health insurance.

O’Connor ruled on a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 20 Republican-led states including Texas, Alabama and Florida, that said a Trump-backed change to the U.S. tax code made the law unconstitutional.

The 2010 law, seen as the signature domestic achievement of Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, has been a flash point of American politics since it passed, with Republicans including Trump repeatedly attempting to overturn it.

Democrats made defending the law a powerful messaging tool in the run-up to the November elections when polls showed that eight in 10 Americans wanted to defend the law’s most popular benefits including protections for insurance coverage for people with preexisting conditions. The strategy paid off and Democrats won a broad 38-seat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Joseph Hunt and other federal officials wrote in the Monday letter. They said they would file a more extensive legal briefing later.

Obamacare survived a 2012 legal challenge at the Supreme Court when a majority of justices ruled the individual mandate aspect of the program was a tax that Congress had the authority to impose.

In December, O’Connor ruled that after Trump signed a $1.5 trillion tax bill passed by Congress last year that eliminated the penalties, the individual mandate could no longer be considered constitutional.

A group of 17 mostly Democratic-led states including California and New York on Monday argued that the law was constitutional.

“The individual plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge the resulting law because they suffer no legal harm from the existence of a provision that offers them a lawful choice between buying insurance or doing nothing,” they wrote in court papers.

About 11.8 million consumers nationwide enrolled in 2018 Obamacare exchange plans, according to the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

About 11.8 million consumers nationwide enrolled in 2018 Obamacare exchange plans, according to the U.S. government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Bill Trott)

Maryland judge to weigh Obamacare case

FILE PHOTO: A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Ysidro, San Diego, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

By Sarah N. Lynch

(Reuters) – Days after a judge in Texas declared that the Obamacare healthcare law is unconstitutional, Maryland’s Democratic attorney general on Wednesday will pursue his request that another judge rule the opposite way.

The lawsuit brought by Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh also seeks to challenge President Donald Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, another bone of partisan contention.

Frosh is asking U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Baltimore to declare that the 2010 health law, known as the Affordable Care Act, is lawful in a bid to counter attempts by the Trump administration to undermine it.

Hollander will weigh the Whitaker claim along with the government’s motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that Maryland does not have legal standing to bring the case.

On Friday, a judge in Texas ruled that the entire healthcare law was unconstitutional following revisions to the tax code by the Republican-controlled Congress last year, which removed the tax penalty for failing to buy health insurance. Trump, who has worked for years to undermine Obamacare, on Twitter called the Texas judge’s decision “a great ruling for our country.”

The Texas judge ruled in favor of 20 states, including Texas.

The original lawsuit by the 20 states prompted Maryland to sue the federal government over then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ refusal to defend the portions of the Obamacare law being challenged in Texas.

Trump forced Sessions out of office in early November and named Whitaker to replace him as acting attorney general.

In response to that, Maryland asked Judge Hollander to issue an injunction barring Whitaker from serving, saying his appointment violated both the Constitution and a federal law that governs the line of succession at the Justice Department.

Then on Dec. 7, Trump nominated William Barr to become attorney general on a permanent basis. He would replace Whitaker, pending Senate review, likely in early 2019.

Maryland has asked Hollander to issue a declaratory judgment upholding Obamacare’s constitutionality.

If Hollander rules on whether Obamacare is constitutional, her decision could potentially be at odds with the decision in Texas. That could create a conflict among lower courts of the sort the U.S. Supreme Court often likes to tackle.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and James Dalgleish)

Obamacare 2018 enrollment clouded by uncertainty

A man looks over the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) signup page on the HealthCare.gov website in New York in this October 2, 2013 photo illustration.

By Yasmeen Abutaleb

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As Americans begin signing up for Obamacare health insurance plans on Wednesday, experts expect reduced participation as a bitter political debate clouds the program’s future.

Republicans in Congress have repeatedly failed to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, which they have said drives up costs for consumers and interferes with personal medical decisions. Democrats have warned that repeal would leave millions of Americans without health coverage.

President Donald Trump promised to kill the law in his 2016 election campaign, and he has taken executive and administrative actions to undermine it.

“The market’s going to be extremely confusing. There’s going to be entire complexity of choice,” said David Anderson, a health policy researcher at Duke University.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, estimated this week that 2018 enrollment would have held steady from 2017, with 12.2 million people either signing up for or being automatically re-enrolled in individual health coverage under the Affordable Care Act had there not been administration efforts to undercut it.

The Trump administration has cut the 2018 enrollment period in half to six weeks from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15 for states using the federal Healthcare.gov website. Enrollment previously ran until Jan. 31, and many consumers often signed up in the last two weeks, according to state officials and organizations that help people choose insurance.

Senate Republicans and Democrats are working on legislation to stabilize Obamacare markets in the short term. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that four million fewer people will sign up for Obamacare private insurance than previously forecast due to Trump administration policies.

Still, CBO expects total enrollment to reach 11 million in 2018, up from the around 10 million who obtained and paid for coverage in 2017.

The administration has cut off billions of dollars in subsidies that insurers use to discount out-of-pocket medical costs for low-income Americans, slashed Obamacare advertising and cut funding to groups that help people enroll in health insurance. Several insurers have exited Obamacare markets due to concerns over subsidies and other Trump actions.

The Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that premiums for the most popular Obamacare plans would rise 37 percent in 2018. Americans eligible for Obamacare tax credits to buy insurance may pay less for coverage, but costs would increase for middle-class consumers who do not get subsidies.

“It’s been such a flood of information. A lot of the population thinks the Affordable Care Act has already been put under,” said Daniel Polsky, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. “The strange premium increases are going to be very confusing for consumers.”

The Trump administration is now planning changes for 2019. Last week, it proposed a rule giving states more flexibility over the benefits that must be covered by insurance. Under Obamacare, all insurers have to cover a set of 10 benefits, such as maternity and newborn care and prescription drugs.

(This version of the story corrects reference to CBO estimate on enrollment in paragraphs 7-8, clarifies estimate from think tank in paragraph 5)

 

(Reporting By Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Michele Gershberg)

 

Iowa pulls request to opt out of Obamacare requirements

Iowa pulls request to opt out of Obamacare requirements

By Susan Cornwell

(Reuters) – Iowa on Monday withdrew a request to waive some Obamacare rules to help shore up its struggling healthcare insurance market, marking a setback in efforts by Republican-governed states to sidestep requirements of the Obama-era law.

With open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act – better known as Obamacare – set to start in just over a week, the state announced it would no longer wait to hear if federal officials would approve its request aimed at cutting individual healthcare insurance premiums and widening coverage.

The withdrawal prompted a leading U.S. Senate Republican to urge Congress to approve a bipartisan fix to Obamacare, which President Donald Trump has vowed to scrap.

Iowa was viewed as a test case by some for other states that submitted similar, if far less-reaching, waivers and of how the Trump administration would respond to such requests.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said the law had not been flexible enough to accommodate the state’s request.

“Ultimately, Obamacare is an inflexible law that Congress must repeal and replace,” the governor said in a statement, adding that premiums under Obamacare had increased by 110 percent for Iowans since 2013.

Iowa sought the waiver after its individual healthcare marketplace shrank to only one insurer for next year, Minnesota-based Medica.

Some of the state’s requests were similar to provisions included in Republican repeal and replace bills this year. For instance, the waiver sought to replace Obamacare’s income-based tax credits with flat age-based credits and eliminate insurer payments that Trump cut off earlier this month.

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said the move by Iowa demonstrated the need for repairs to Obamacare that he and Democratic Senator Patty Murray have proposed aimed at stabilizing insurance markets. It would also provide states more flexibility in reshaping some parts of Obamacare.

Trump has sent mixed signals over whether he would support the bipartisan fix. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday that he was willing to bring up the proposal for a vote but needed to know where Trump stood.

Alexander said the bipartisan repair proposal would allow the federal government to approve Iowa’s waiver.

Alexander told reporters that the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan scorekeeper, would soon announce its analysis of the bipartisan repair legislation, possibly on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell,; additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Amanda Becker in Washington; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Obamacare repeal must move quickly, says Senate’s McConnell

Activists participate in a rally to protect the Affordable Care Act outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., September 19, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate’s top Republican on Tuesday urged quick action on a bill to repeal Obamacare but stopped short of promising to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote, as the clock ticks down on the latest attempt to kill the 2010 healthcare law.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Republican leader, called the legislation drafted by senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy “an intriguing idea and one that has a great deal of support.”

Lawmakers should act because “our opportunity to do so may well pass us by if we don’t act soon,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

The bill has revived a fight that many in Washington thought was over when an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill flopped in the Senate in July, humiliating McConnell and President Donald Trump.

The latest measure has less than two weeks before procedural rules in the Senate make it much more difficult for the Republicans to do away with Obamacare.

The bill proposes replacing Obamacare with a system that would give states money in block grants to run their own healthcare programs and let them opt out of some Obamacare rules. Critics say it would bring deep cuts to the Medicaid program for the poor and higher insurance premiums for older people.

“Graham-Cassidy would be devastating for individuals with pre-existing conditions,” the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, said in a statement.

McConnell stopped short of promising to bring the legislation to the Senate floor. But he said Republican lawmakers would continue to discuss it. He has been meeting with lawmakers to assess whether the bill has the votes to pass.

The proposal is the latest salvo in a long-running Republican war on Obamacare, and Graham and Cassidy say they are close to securing the votes needed for passage.

If approved, it would replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known informally as Obamacare, which Republicans have long seen as government overreach into the healthcare business.

Several Republicans – the same ones whose votes blocked repeal of Obamacare in July – are still undecided on the latest bill and time is running out.

A special parliamentary procedure that would allow the bill to move forward with only 51 votes will expire at the end of the month. After that, it would need 60 votes, like most Senate legislation. Republicans have a 52-vote Senate majority.

The Senate Finance Committee said it will hold a hearing on the bill next week.

If the Senate can pass the bill, “the hope would be that the House would take it up and pass it and the president sign it,” said John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans were “grossly irresponsible” to consider legislation before even getting a full assessment of its impacts from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Amanda Becker; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)

Anthem to leave Ohio’s Obamacare insurance market in 2018

FILE PHOTO: A sign at the office building of health insurer Anthem is seen in Los Angeles, California February 5, 2015. REUTERS/Gus Ruelas/File Photo

By Caroline Humer

(Reuters) – Anthem Inc, which has urged Republican lawmakers to commit to paying government subsidies for the Obamacare individual health insurance system, on Tuesday announced it would exit most of the Ohio market next year.

The high-profile health insurer, which sells Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in 14 states including New York and California, for months has said that uncertainty over the payments used to make insurance more affordable could cause it to exit markets next year.

Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish two weeks ago reiterated that the company was reviewing its participation in the individual markets that are a key piece of the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare.

Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump have promised to repeal and replace the law, but have disagreed over the details, creating uncertainty at a time when insurers must submit plans and premium rates for 2018.

In addition, Republicans are trying to cut off these Obamacare subsidy payments in court proceedings and President Donald Trump has made conflicting statements about continuing paying them.

Insurance departments across the country have reported that insurers have submitted premium rate increases of up to 50 percent and 60 percent or even higher for 2018.

Anthem attributed the Ohio decision to volatility and uncertainty about whether the government would continue to provide cost-sharing subsidies. It said it would continue to sell Obamacare compliant plans outside of the exchange in Pike County, Ohio as well as other individual plans that were grandfathered when the law went into effect.

Anthem is the only insurer selling health insurance exchange products in all 88 Ohio counties in 2017 and the only insurer in 20 counties, according to Ohio Department of Insurance spokesman Chris Brock.

In 2018, the move would leave about 10,500 people in at least 18 counties with no insurer.

“Congressional action is needed to restore stability,” Brock said. The insurance department is looking for options for those affected, he said.

Other large health insurers have also pulled out for 2018, including Aetna Inc and Humana Inc, leaving other areas facing the possibility of no insurer.

Anthem’s decision was made as rate filings were due to the state and after discussions with the insurance department.

“States can beg and plead, but much of this is out of their hands,” said Larry Levitt, health economist at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Anthem shares rose $1.19, or 0.64 percent, to $187.88 in early afternoon trading.

(Reporting by Caroline Humer in New York; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Andrew Hay)

Trump meets insurers, promises catastrophic year for Obamacare

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price (C) and Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini (R) listen to U.S. President Donald Trump speak during a meeting with health insurance company CEOs at the White House in Washington, U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump told several chief executives of large insurance companies on Monday that 2017 will be a “catastrophic” year for the Affordable Care Act as he seeks to make good on a campaign promise to repeal the measure.

The Republican president told the insurers they must all work together to save Americans from the law known as Obamacare and try to bring down health care prices. He said he hoped to work with Democrats on a health care plan to repeal the law, which provided coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Doina Chiacu)