Cartoon – My Particular Strength
Author Archives: henrykotula
Cartoon – Chaos Management
States are telling some people to pay back unemployment benefits
Tens of millions of people have been on unemployment at some point in the last seven months, since the pandemic began. Now, thousands are being told they have to pay some or all of that money back, either because they made an error when they applied for benefits, or the state did.
“People are terrified by these messages, and they’re coming in swarms,” said Anne Paxton of the Unemployment Law Project. “We’re hearing about this all the time.”
Many people receiving overpayment notices have already used their benefits to pay for basic living expenses.
“I don’t have $10,000 sitting around,” said Larson Ross, 25, who got a notice of overpayment from the state of Colorado in late August. “I was a low-wage tea house worker who was unemployed for four months. I was using the money from unemployment for food and rent. So it’s spent.”
He has no idea what he’s going to do. He’s never been so stressed in his life.
“The few days after I first received the letter I found it really hard to get out of bed at all,” Ross said. “It’s really tough.”
There are a variety of reasons people might get an overpayment of benefits notice. In Ross’ case, his employer successfully contested his eligibility for unemployment, saying he quit, which he disputes. In some cases, it’s because an applicant misunderstood or mischaracterized something on their application. In other cases, the state may have miscalculated a benefit, or approved an application before verifying all the information.
While this also happened in pre-pandemic times, the issue is particularly acute now given the historic number of claims that have flooded state unemployment offices since March — and the state of the economy.
“The circumstances for returning to work are just not the same,” said Kathy White, deputy director of the Colorado Fiscal Institute. “Congress needs to recognize that, and make sure that the systems that they’re putting in place for workers to help them through this time, that are just immediate relief … they cannot be punitive. Coming out of COVID with a $15,000 debt that you cannot repay is not helpful.”
With traditional unemployment insurance benefits and with Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, if someone has been overpaid, states have the discretion to waive repayment, as long as there was no fraud involved — particularly if repayment would cause financial hardship. But that is not the case with Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Under current federal law, states do not have the authority to waive repayment of PUA benefits if a person was overpaid, according to Michele Evermore of the National Employment Law Project.
“This is honestly the biggest reason that Congress needs to do something on COVID relief,” she said. “If this issue doesn’t get solved, this is going to be more explosive than people losing the $600 in some ways, because they’ll have to pay back six months of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Nobody who qualified for PUA is going to have that much money sitting around.”
Andrew Tolch applied for PUA in the spring, on the advice of both his bank and his accountant, when he had to temporarily close down his toy store in St. Louis, Missouri because of COVID.
He was approved, and used all the money he got — less than $200 a week in PUA, plus the extra $600 a week in FPUC — to pay utilities and rent for the store.
Then, over the summer, he got an overpayment notice from the state of Missouri: he owed a big chunk of that money back — $2,376 in total.
“I was shocked, and I didn’t understand it,” he said. “I followed the rules correctly. We should have qualified, and according to the rules they gave us, we qualified.”
Tolch has since connected with a number of other small business owners in Missouri who also got notices of overpayment, and he said none of them understands why the state is now saying they didn’t qualify for pandemic assistance. They’re considering the possibility of a class action lawsuit.
“It will sink a lot of people if they would have to give it all back,” Tolch said. “Just one more blow from 2020 to small businesses.”
People who think they got an overpayment notice in error, or who can’t afford to repay the benefits, can always appeal — and should, according to Eric Salinger, director of the Employment Law Project at Alaska Legal Services.
But for people who do not win on appeal, or do not get a repayment waiver, states can find ways to recoup that money. Some are more aggressive than others, according to Evermore.
“Every state has different recoupment authority,” she said. “In some states, other benefits can be garnished to pay for that. Taxes could be garnished, future wages could be garnished.”
Larson Ross is afraid that will happen to him. He finally found a seasonal job in northern Colorado, and is making enough money to get by this month, at least — as long as the state doesn’t garnish his wages. Then, he doesn’t know.
Kathy White is hoping that Colorado and other states will use their discretion to waive repayment in cases where there was no fraud, and that Congress will change the law so states can waive overpayment recoupment of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
“It should be just forgiveness for error or overpayment in these unusual circumstances,” she said. “You don’t want to put people in a worse position because of the aid you’re trying to give them.”
COVID-19 sparks national security concerns with top brass in quarantine
COVID-19 sparks national security concerns with top brass in quarantine
The quarantining of most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, coming on the heels of President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, is raising fears that U.S. adversaries might seek to exploit a perceived weakness.
Few expect any sort of overt military action, but there are other ways to wreak havoc on the United States.
Chief among them is disinformation. Experts have been warning ever since Trump tested positive for the coronavirus last week that disinformation is likely to kick into overdrive.
Now, with six of the seven members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff waylaid at home, warnings are being amplified about the national security implications of the growing COVID-19 outbreak among U.S. leadership.
“All these kinds of things are just a huge distraction for us where our national security apparatus is consumed with matters domestic and internal,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said at a Washington Post event after news broke of the Joint Chiefs quarantining. “So this is an ideal time for adversaries, particularly in adversary intelligence services, to look for ways to further confuse us, to distract us.”
Adding that “you can bet particularly our good friends the Russians are doing this,” Clapper warned of them “further sowing seeds of disinformation.”
“They will appeal to all the various tribes and continue to capitalize on the polarization in this country,” he said. “So it is a vulnerable time, and it’s an opportunity for them while we’re not looking and not being alert to further sow seeds of disinformation, casting doubt, discord, distrust in the country.”
The quarantining of top military officers stems from the Coast Guard’s No. 2 admiral contracting COVID-19. The Coast Guard announced Tuesday that its vice commandant, Adm. Charles Ray, tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday after feeling mild symptoms over the weekend.
The test result came after Ray met with most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on Friday.
That put Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley into quarantine, as well as the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force and National Guard. The vice chairman, Gen. John Hyten, was also in the meetings and is quarantining.
The only member of the Joint Chiefs who didn’t meet with Ray was Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger, who was traveling.
Berger’s deputy, Gen. Gary Thomas, met with Ray instead and went into quarantine Tuesday. The Marine Corps announced Wednesday evening that he has tested positive for the virus.
Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, also met with Ray and went into quarantine.
It’s unclear exactly where Ray caught the virus, but his schedule within the incubation period included a visit to the White House, which is now considered the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak that includes Trump himself.
Ray — along with Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other top defense officials — attended a White House ceremony for Gold Star families on Sept. 27.
The event happened the day after Trump announced he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court, a gathering for which several attendees have since been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Since Trump’s diagnosis, the Department of Defense has sought to allay any national security concerns.
When Trump’s positive test was first announced last week, the Pentagon insisted there has been “no change to DoD alert levels.”
After news broke Tuesday of the Joint Chiefs quarantining, chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman reiterated that “there is no change to the operational readiness or mission capability of the U.S. Armed Forces.”
“Senior military leaders are able to remain fully mission capable and perform their duties from an alternative work location,” Hoffman said in a statement.
The military chiefs are well-equipped to work from home, and besides Ray and Thomas, none have tested positive for the virus yet.
But the development has raised questions about whether adversaries will try to take advantage of the situation nonetheless.
After the military quarantines were revealed, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said “the national security implications of the president’s recklessness cannot be overstated” even though the military “can still operate while leadership is quarantined.”
“Since announcing that he tested positive for the virus, the president’s antics have been downright reckless and harmful,” Smith said in a statement. “Our adversaries are always looking for any weakness to exploit. President Trump’s pathetic attempts to exude strength aren’t fooling anyone — Americans know he is weak and so do those who wish us harm.”
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), another senior member of the Armed Services Committee, questioned why so many senior military leaders were meeting in person in the first place, as well as attending a White House reception in which they were pictured maskless.
“What if the Joint Chiefs’ responsibilities cannot be done remotely while they are isolating?” Speier wrote in a series of questions on Twitter. “How many other senior military leaders have tested positive? Why weren’t we safeguarding the health of senior military leaders like the natural security asset that it clearly is?”
Barry Pavel, senior vice president and director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, stressed that there is “no degradation in operational command and control” from the Joint Chiefs quarantining.
But, he added, adversaries such as Russia and China could misperceive that the United States is distracted and decide to act. For example, he cited concerns about China moving against Taiwan or Russia trying to grab more territory.
Pavel also listed what he called Russia’s “non-kinetic war” against the United States in the cybersecurity, influence and disinformation realm.
“This is a KGB officer’s most wildest dream coming true almost on a daily basis,” he said. “And so I think it’s a big threat. Who knows what proportion of our current public divisions are sown by Russian influence and bots or are just part of our current division. I don’t know the answer to that question. But they’re certainly right now exploiting it.”
To diminish those concerns, Pavel said, the Pentagon should keep emphasizing its military readiness, as well as demonstrating it by taking actions like publicizing a previously planned exercise.
“It’s probably a good idea to keep repeating those messages,” he said, “to be reiterating those messages, sending them publicly, privately, by third parties and through various forms of military activity so adversaries have no misunderstanding about our readiness and capabilities despite the chairman being quarantined in his quarters.”
Jobless claims: Another 840,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims last week
U.S. states saw another 840,000 jobless claims filed last week, as the number of Americans applying for first-time unemployment insurance benefits each week continues to hover at a historically high level.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released its weekly jobless claims report at 8:30 a.m. ET Thursday. Here were the main metrics from the report, compared to Bloomberg estimates:
- Initial jobless claims, week ended Oct. 3: 840,000 vs. 820,000 expected and 849,000 during the prior week
- Continuing claims, week ended Sept. 26: 10.976 million vs. 11.4 million expected and 11.979 million during the prior week
New weekly unemployment insurance claims have held below the psychologically important 1 million mark for the past six consecutive weeks, but have so far failed to break below 800,000 since the start of the pandemic. At 840,000 last week’s new claims remained at a level still handily above the pre-pandemic record high of 695,000 from 1982.
The past two weeks’ jobless claims totals have also been flattered by an absence of updated new claims out of California. The state – which has consistently been one of the biggest contributors to new weekly claims – announced last week it was taking a two-week pause in processing initial claims to “reduce its claims processing backlog and implement fraud prevention technology,” according to the Labor Department’s statement.
Across all programs, the total number of jobless claims decreased for the week ending Sept. 19. Total claims came in at 25.5 million, down from the about 26.5 million during the previous week, as a smaller number of self-employed or gig workers not eligible for regular state programs claimed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. But the number of workers collecting benefits through the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation Program – which offers an extra 13 weeks’ worth of federal benefits to those who had exhausted previous state or federal compensation – rose by 154,000 to 1.96 million.
Continuing jobless claims, which are reported on a one-week lag and represent the total number of individuals still receiving state unemployment benefits, continued their gradual downtrend last week. But as with new jobless claims, continuing claims have held well above pre-pandemic levels, and have not broken below the 10 million mark in more than 6 months.
“Net, initial filings fell less than expected last week. The improvement in continuing claims is reflecting people being hired but also individuals exhausting their benefits,” Rubeela Farooqi, chief economist for High Frequency Economics, said in an email. “Overall, the signal from the claims data is still one of ongoing weak conditions in the labor market. Even as filings are declining, levels remain extraordinarily high. Employment growth has already slowed and without fiscal support that protected jobs, risks are skewed to the downside for payrolls going forward.”
The latest jobless claims report comes amid dimming hopes for another round of virus relief measures out of Congress, despite increasingly urgent calls from Federal Reserve officials for more fiscal stimulus to support individual Americans more directly.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had asked his negotiators to halt further stimulus talks until after the election, but added that he would support standalone measures providing tens of billions of dollars for airline payroll support and the Paycheck Protection Program. House Democrats, however, have previously balked at the notion of passing slimmed down versions of a stimulus package – meaning the prospect of further fiscal stimulus in the next month remains unlikely.
Advocate Aurora Health, Beaumont Health end merger plans
Advocate Aurora Health and Beaumont Health have put an end to their discussions around a potential partnership, officials announced Friday.
The announcement comes months after the two organizations signed a letter of intent to open discussions.
It also comes after Michigan lawmakers—as well as doctors at Beaumont—raised serious concerns about Beaumont, Michigan’s largest healthcare system, becoming part of one of the largest nonprofit integrated health systems in the U.S.
Advocate Aurora has 28 hospitals, more than 500 sites of care and more than 70,000 employees. Beaumont Health is a $4.7 billion health system with eight hospitals and 145 outpatient sites of care and 38,000 employees.
“We continue to have a very high regard for Advocate Aurora Health,” said John Fox, president and CEO of Beaumont Health, in a statement. “But at this time, we want to focus on our local market priorities and the physicians, nurses and staff who provide compassionate, extraordinary care every day.”
Discussions began in late 2019 but were put on hold in the midst of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said. In April, Beaumont Health temporarily laid off 2,475 workers and cut 450 positions in response to massive financial losses.
However, the two organizations made their letter of intent public in June, saying at the time they wanted to allow further discussions into creating a health system that would span across Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois.
Leaders from the organizations had agreed to an equal one-third governance representation of any future partnership between Beaumont and both the legacy Advocate Healthcare and Aurora Healthcare organizations, which merged in 2018 to created Advocate Aurora Health. That megamerger formed one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the U.S. with a combined revenue of $11 billion.
“We have great respect for Beaumont Health, and we continue to believe scale will play a critical role in advancing quality, accelerating transformation and reducing cost in the healthcare world of tomorrow,” said Jim Skogsbergh, president and CEO of Advocate Aurora Health, in a statement.
Earlier this year, Beaumont Health called off a potential deal with Akron, Ohio-based Summa Health.
Hospitals that don’t submit daily COVID-19 data could lose participation in Medicare, Medicaid
Hospitals currently not reporting daily COVID-19 data have a few months to get in compliance or risk being thrown out of Medicare and Medicaid.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Tuesday it will send notices to all hospitals over their requirements for reporting COVID-19 data to the Trump administration.
Any hospital not in compliance with the daily reporting requirements will have 14 weeks to get in line or risk their participation in Medicare and Medicaid, officials said.
The agency gave an enforcement timeline that gives “hospitals ample opportunity to come into compliance,” said Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma on a call with reporters Tuesday.
The Trump administration wants hospitals to submit daily data that includes COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations as well as patients currently in the intensive care unit with the virus. Hospitals must submit data on the ages of patients admitted with suspected COVID-19 infections. Facilities need to also report their inventory of the COVID-19 therapy Remdesivir, any staffing shortages and the number of ventilators. Every week hospitals also report data on their personal protective equipment on hand and supply of critical medications.
Facilities now must also report on new data for influenza cases. “The new requirements will allow us to gather critical information on influenza at hospitals across the U.S.,” said Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, M.D.
Verma said that the large majority of hospitals in CMS’ system are already reporting this data to the agency. CMS will also give hospitals that are not in compliance a wide berth to get them into compliance.
Hospitals will be sent multiple notices over the 14-week timeline to get their data reporting in line.
“This work of getting hospitals into compliance around reporting has been an ongoing effort,” Verma said.
CMS proposed the mandatory daily reporting requirements back in August, much to the chagrin of hospital advocates.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) said that CMS tying Medicare and Medicaid participation to compliance “remains an overly heavy-handed approach that could jeopardize access to hospital care for all Americans,” according to a statement released Tuesday.
“Today’s interpretive guidance on COVID data reporting does answer some of the questions hospitals and health systems have been asking about compliance since the interim final rule was released six weeks ago,” the group said. “In particular, the Administration will provide hospitals with information on whether their data are making it into HHS Protect and they will give hospitals the necessary time to adjust their data collection to come into compliance if need be.”
The Federation of American Hospitals called the new rules “sledgehammer enforcement.”
“It is both inappropriate and frankly overkill for CMS to tie compliance with reporting to Medicare conditions of participation,” said FAH President and CEO Chip Kahn in a statement.
Cartoon – Our recent polls show
Cartoon – Anti-Science or Pro-Myth?
Cartoon – Key to Leadership Campaigning
HENRY KOTULA 