Jonathan Kantrowitz

President Obama has warned that the unemployment rate may continue to rise. He has good reason to so warn, even if the economy is improving. That’s because of how the official unemployment rate is calculated. It omits discouraged workers and part-time workers who would rather be working full-time. So if discouraged workers become encouraged by an improving economy, and once again seek work in large numbers, the officlal employment rate may well rise. Here are some details:

The unemployment rate is the measure that typically makes the headlines. In August it rose to 9.7% – a 26-year high. The June rate was 9.5%, and the July rate 9.4%. The increase is problematic.

“Unemployed” means wanting a job, being available for work and having looked for a job within the last four weeks. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), some 14.9 million people were unemployed during August.

During August, some 2.3 million people were categorized as “marginally attached” to the labor force. This group consists primarily of those who want jobs, are available to work and have searched for jobs within the last 12 months (but not the last four weeks).

Finally, during August there were 9.3 million people who wanted to work full time but were only able to work part time. Either they could not find full-time employment or their hours had been cut.

In total, during August there were more than 26 million people who were either unemployed, marginally attached to the labor force or working part time but wanting to work full time. That is a lot of people and it equates to a lot of pain, fear and frequently a lot of anger. It also equates to lower tax revenues, greater government unemployment and other benefit costs and a large budget deficit.
Another closely watched measure of unemployment is the change in “payroll employment.” The good news is that the number of payroll jobs lost during August was only 216,000. The rate of payroll job losses is declining.

Many economists believe that the number of payroll jobs will start to increase by the first quarter of 2010. That’s good! But, an increase in payroll jobs will likely lead to an increase in the unemployment rate.

The reason for the increase is that when employers start to hire, many who were “marginally attached” to the labor force will start to actively search for jobs. When they start to actively search they will join the ranks of the “unemployed,” thereby raising the unemployment rate. Consequently, the unemployment rate will likely peak in the range of 10.5%.

Looking ahead, unemployment will probably remain around 8% for at least two years. The primary reason is fear – fear on the part of consumers and employers. Consumer spending is the primary driving force in our economy. When people have lost or fear losing their jobs, have seen the values of their homes tumble and witnessed significant declines in the values of their retirement fund assets – then they become scared and spend less.
The $787-billion stimulus program has had some positive effect. But, as Warren Buffet noted, “Our first stimulus bill…was sort of like taking half a tablet of Viagra.”

High Meadows is the state’s only facility that treats male youth with psychological and physical issues with on-site, round-the-clock medical care. Governor Rell has moved ahead with her proposal to close the facility, which she first announced in February, and DCF has been rapidly discharging patients and transferring children to out-of-state facilities for the past six weeks.

Parents of special needs children and the clinicians, therapists, social workers, teachers and support staff who work with them at High Meadows gathered at the Capitol today to testify before the Office of Health Care Access (OHCA). Advocates for the youth at the residential center came to lambaste the request by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to expedite Governor M. Jodi Rell’s proposal to close the facility despite the legislature funding its services in the new 2010 – 11 biennial budget.

Legislators have questioned the legality of the Governor’s actions. At a joint hearing convened by the General Assembly’s Public Health and Human Services Committees earlier this month, Representative Toni Walker (D-New Haven) raised doubts about the Governor’s authority to close a facility with a budget in place that calls for it to stay open. Speakers at the hearing also questioned the so-called cost savings the Governor has claimed will result from the closing of High Meadows.

Stacy Tattersall’s twelve year-old son Raymond has been living at High Meadows in Hamden. At six, Raymond had a brain tumor removed resulting in eating, anger and behavior issues that necessitate around-the-clock medical care.

“My biggest goal for Raymond is to get him out of the institution setting. He’s been doing it for two and a half years now. He’s a little boy. I’m tired of seeing him moved around, getting attached and making friends with the children and the staff and building bonds and then being moved again. It’s not helping him. He takes steps backwards every time he’s moved. It’s horrible for him,” said Stacy.

Dr. Victoria Soovajian is a board-certified Pediatrician with twenty years of experience in working with DCF-involved patients. “The greatest gap in service for these children is residential and community resources for the medically complex population and that gap continues. High Meadows bridges that gap and that gap will widen further if we are closed” she said.

“The expense, patient trauma and general chaos associated with using emergency rooms for dealing with ill and troubled children who have been ejected from group homes, private residential settings, foster homes and families will become a greater and greater problem if OHCA approves DCF’s rush to close High Meadows” Soovajian added.

Kathy Fenton, a special education teacher at High Meadows, said “in thirty-six years of providing services to a constantly changing special education population, I can honestly say that while at the High Meadows facility, I have seen countless success stories. I have seen large and small changes in our boys. Changes that don’t make the evening news, and they don’t bring any money into the state. But, to a child who learns to read, make change, follow a recipe, read a bus schedule, or navigate the Internet, they are far more important.”

Rates of births to teenage mothers are strongly predicted by conservative religious beliefs, even after controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Reproductive Health have found a strong association between teenage birth rates and state-level measures of religiosity in the U.S.

Joseph Strayhorn, an adjunct faculty member with Drexel University and the University of Pittsburgh, and Jillian Strayhorn used data from the Pew Forum’s US Religious Landscapes Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to evaluate the state level effects of belief on teen birth rates. Joseph Strayhorn said, “The magnitude of the correlation between religiosity and teen birth rate astonished us. Teen birth is more highly correlated with some of the religiosity items on the Religious Landscapes Survey than some of those items are correlated with each other”.

The religiosity of a state was determined by averaging the percents of respondents who agreed with the eight most conservative opinions possible in the Religious Landscapes Survey, such as ‘There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion’ or ‘Scripture should be taken literally, word for word’. According to Strayhorn, “Our findings by themselves do not, of course, permit causal inferences. But, if we may speculate on the most probable explanation, we conjecture that religious communities in the US are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself”

A study published online today [Thursday] estimates nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears in tyesterday’s [Thursday's] online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

Lead author Dr. Andrew Wilper, who worked at Harvard Medical School when the study was done and who now teaches at the University of Washington Medical School, said, “The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors and baseline health. We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes and heart disease – but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”

The study, which analyzed data from national surveys carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), assessed death rates after taking education, income and many other factors including smoking, drinking and obesity into account. It estimated that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually.

Previous estimates from the IOM and others had put that figure near 18,000. The methods used in the current study were similar to those employed by the IOM in 2002, which in turn were based on a pioneering 1993 study of health insurance and mortality.

Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease.

An increase in the number of uninsured and an eroding medical safety net for the disadvantaged likely explain the substantial increase in the number of deaths associated with lack of insurance. The uninsured are more likely to go without needed care.

Another factor contributing to the widening gap in the risk of death between those who have insurance and those who don’t is the improved quality of care for those who can get it.

The research, carried out at the Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, analyzed U.S. adults under age 65 who participated in the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) between 1986 and 1994. Respondents first answered detailed questions about their socioeconomic status and health and were then examined by physicians. The CDC tracked study participants to see who died by 2000.

The study found a 40 percent increased risk of death among the uninsured. As expected, death rates were also higher for males (37 percent increase), current or former smokers (102 percent and 42 percent increases), people who said that their health was fair or poor (126 percent increase), and those that examining physicians said were in fair or poor health (222 percent increase).

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, study co-author, professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Mass., noted: “Historically, every other developed nation has achieved universal health care through some form of nonprofit national health insurance. Our failure to do so means that all Americans pay higher health care costs, and 45,000 pay with their lives.”

Dr. David Himmelstein, study co-author and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, remarked, “The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from lack of health insurance. Even this grim figure is an underestimate – now one dies every 12 minutes.”

Consumer Watchdog has released internal insurance company documents showing that firefighters, police officers, war correspondents, expectant fathers, pregnant women and patients with a history of domestic violence, asthma, acne, allergies, and toenail fungus will often be denied health insurance policies.

The internal insurance company documents – known as “underwriting” guidelines – reveal that insurers deny applicants based on occupation, age, weight, use of a wide range of common prescription drugs, minor health conditions or mere “symptoms” that have not been reported to a physician. In some cases, instead of denying coverage outright insurance companies will sell policies to these applicants but only at exorbitant costs.

Download the underwriting documents at:

PacifiCare (subsidiary of United Health Group)

Blue Cross of California (subsidiary of WellPoint Inc.)

Blue Shield of California

Health Net

Read Consumer Watchdog’s policy recommendations to regulate health insurance rates and practices in the report Regulation, Not Deregulation: The Prescription for Lowering Health Costs Without Cutting Coverage (With or Without a Public Option).

The Economic Strategic Plan does exist! It is in full effect, without any public, legislative review or comment, and no apparent review by the governor, as the process called for in the legislation was completely ignored.

The plan reviews numerous factors that influence the state’s economic climate, from its transportation network, housing market and education system to its relative tax burden, energy costs and health care system. The plan then recommends more than 60 specific strategies and initiatives for the future, grouped in three general areas: Talent and Technology, Cultivating Competitiveness and Responsible Growth.

Recommendations include:

Creating a $100 million, public-private student loan partnership, offering loan forgiveness in most-needed occupations such as science and engineering and depending on the length of career spent in Connecticut after graduation.

Creating a $25 million International Opportunities Program to encourage global technology companies to locate their North American headquarters in Connecticut

Implementing an Angel Investor Tax Credit, giving a tax break to individuals, corporations or institutions that invest in qualified start-up enterprises in areas such as biotechnology, digital media and “green” technology.

Continuing the development of regionalism – programs and policies that have cities and towns working together rather than competing with one another.

Creating a statewide Connecticut Port Authority consisting of the ports of Bridgeport, New Haven and New London; Bradley International Airport; Tweed New Haven Regional Airport; Waterbury/Oxford Airport; and Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Bridgeport.

Building the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield, Massachusetts, commuter rail line, then adding a spur to Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.

78 percent of Americans see pharmaceutical industry deals as harmful

A survey conducted by the Lombardo Consulting Group shows that Americans are losing confidence in the health care reform process. The national poll found that an overwhelming number of poll respondents believe that “side deals” between Washington decision makers and the pharmaceutical industry have “seriously compromised efforts to enact real reform of the health care system.”

The poll, conducted during the last week of August, showed that nearly 8 out of 10 registered voters, 78 percent, believe that the role pharmaceutical companies and other special interest groups have played in the reform debate thus far has seriously compromised the process and potential outcomes of the reform effort.

The survey also revealed that the overwhelming majority of respondents, 63 percent, believe that taking control of the rising cost of healthcare in the United States should be the most important goal of reform. Further, 54 percent of respondents believe that reform should focus first on controlling costs for individual patients while 37 percent believe the focus should be on controlling the cost of government programs paid for by taxpayers.

Connecticut voters say 56 – 34 percent that Gov. Jodi Rell “copped out” by her refusal to either sign or veto the recently enacted state budget, and disapprove 52 – 42 percent of her handling of the state budget, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.

Voters disapprove 49 – 44 percent of the way she is handling taxes.

Gov. Rell gets a 59 – 34 percent overall approval rating, down from 65 – 30 percent in a July 22 survey to an all time low. Her approval has gone from 73% in May to 59% now. Dissaproval has gone from 20% to 34.

And Connecticut’s Governor has a much higher approval rating that the State Legislature, which has a negative 35 – 55 percent score, its worst score since July 2003. Voters disapprove 61 – 28 percent of the way Democrats in the legislature are handling the state budget.
Voters split 45 – 44 percent in their approval of the way Rell is handling the job situation in Connecticut and disapprove 49 – 44 percent of the way she is handling taxes.
Key elements of the budget receive wide voter support, including:
• 74 – 24 percent in favor of higher taxes for upper income individuals and families;
• 65 – 32 percent support cutting the sales tax from 6 percent to 5.5 percent;
• 68 – 30 percent in favor of raising cigarette taxes from $2 to $3 per pack.

But voters disapprove 66 -28 percent of cutting estate taxes for the wealthy. Even Republicans disapprove 52 – 36 percent.