Evans Rules City Health Insurance Cuts Can Proceed

Home >

VOL. 129 | NO. 213 | Friday, October 31, 2014

Chancellor Walter Evans has denied a move by city government retirees to stop the city from enacting changes to health insurance coverage effective Jan. 1.

Evans ruled Friday, Oct. 31, in the lawsuit filed by the retirees in September.

He specifically denied a motion by attorney for the retirees to grant a temporary injunction, which would have barred the city from enacting the health insurance coverage changes the Memphis City Council approved in June.

The lawsuit challenges the city's decision to stop subsidizing 70 percent of the premiums for health insurance coverage of retirees under the age of 65, and the case continues before Evans.

But the city is not barred from enacting that change and others while the case is being decided.

Attorneys for the retirees claimed city employees long have been promised that the city will provide them with health care coverage for the rest of their lives after they retire.

Attorneys for the city contend city government has the ability to change the specific terms of that coverage and Evans agreed with them.

'Although the city may provide such health insurance subsidies for 50 years, plaintiffs did not reasonably rely on the oral promises of various persons ... because plaintiffs were charged with knowing the law, which did not unambiguously indicate that the city would continue to pay a permanent or lifetime 70 percent portion of the retirees' health insurance,' reads the written ruling from Evans that was released Friday afternoon.

Evans also ruled the retirees did not show they 'suffered a detriment' when they worked for the city such that a promise of a lifetime health insurance subsidy should be enforced 'because plaintiffs failed to present sufficient proof that they could have been paid more by another employer if they had not worked for the city.'

The retirees also cited a 1966 ordinance that bars the reduction of city employee pension or fringe benefits.

But Evans questioned whether the premium subsidy was a part of the benefits mentioned in the ordinance.

Even if that were the case, he ruled a 1985 ordinance gives the city the ability to change retirement benefits.

The retirees could appeal Evans' ruling.

The health insurance changes are the first of two sets of changes to city benefits proposed by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. to right the city's financial condition which is imperiled by the unfunded liability the city bears for health insurance coverage as well as pension plans.

Experts have told the city both obligations are unsustainable under their present terms.

The council is scheduled to vote on pension plan changes by the end of the year. Those changes, in whatever form, would not take effect until 2016.

Health Insurance Still Too Expensive for Micro

Running a small business with only a handful of employees and minimal funding isn't easy, especially when it comes to providing health insurance. Although most microbusiness owners have their own health care benefits, most don't offer this coverage to their employees just yet, new research shows.

Only 9.6 percent of microbusiness owners have health insurance funded by their business, according to a new study from wholesale retail giant Sam's Club.

So where do other microbusiness owners get their health care coverage? Because many of these business owners are moonlighting to start their business, 35.3 percent of respondents said they get their coverage from their primary jobs. Other sources included the following:

Insurance paid for on their own but not through the microbusiness: 25.3 percent Medicare: 21.5 percent Military or veteran benefits: 4.5 percent Unions: 1.6 percent Medicaid: 1.1 percent

Another 1.1 percent listed 'other' or did not disclose their health care source.

According to the study, 76 percent of microbusiness owners do not currently offer their employees health insurance, 63 percent never offered health care benefits in the past and 70 percent do not intend to offer coverage within the next 12 months.

For microbusiness owners who do offer health care benefits, 78 percent plan to maintain them for the next 12 months, 10 percent intend to increase benefits and 7 percent intend to decrease them.

But it's not that microbusiness owners don't want to offer benefits. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said they see providing adequate benefits to their employees as a major issue.

'The microbusiness owners we track in this study have demonstrated a steely resolve to know their customers and deliver quality products or services to market,' said Rosalind Brewer, president and CEO of Sam's Club. 'Their sometimes razor-thin margin business models do not always leave room to cover health care. Yet health benefits are a key differentiator for many microbusinesses and a recruiting tool for top talent, so it's an issue the small business community is watching closely.'

The lack of health insurance among microbusinesses makes sense when you consider how they're funded. Most microbusinesses (66.6 percent) are funded through the owners' personal savings, and 40.6 percent use credit cards.

The study, which was conducted with global research company Gallup, surveyed 1,006 respondents via phone interviews. All respondents represented businesses with five or fewer employees.

Vocal Fry, Made Famous By Kim Kardashian, Is Making Young Women 'Less ...

Posted:

There's a new speech trend common among young women today, and it's called vocal fry.

Best described as a female's voice descending into a lower register as they complete a sentence, it's becoming more and more prevalent among young women as vocal fry users like Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears saturate the media. Unfortunately, according to communication expert Diane DiResta, adolescent girls are subconsciously adopting this speech pattern, and it's limiting their employment opportunities.

Hear more about the negative implications of vocal fry in the clip above, and get a better idea of what vocal fry actually entails in the clip below. Watch the whole HuffPost Live segment on vocal fry here. Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live's new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!

'There was a study by Florida Atlantic University and they determined that women who had vocal fry were perceived as less competent, less educated and less trustworthy and less hirable,' she told HuffPost Live on Thursday.

Evans Rules City Health Insurance Cuts Can Proceed

Home >

VOL. 129 | NO. 213 | Friday, October 31, 2014

Chancellor Walter Evans has denied a move by city government retirees to stop the city from enacting changes to health insurance coverage effective Jan. 1.

Evans ruled Friday, Oct. 31, in the lawsuit filed by the retirees in September.

He specifically denied a motion by attorney for the retirees to grant a temporary injunction, which would have barred the city from enacting the health insurance coverage changes the Memphis City Council approved in June.

The lawsuit challenges the city's decision to stop subsidizing 70 percent of the premiums for health insurance coverage of retirees under the age of 65, and the case continues before Evans.

But the city is not barred from enacting that change and others while the case is being decided.

Attorneys for the retirees claimed city employees long have been promised that the city will provide them with health care coverage for the rest of their lives after they retire.

Attorneys for the city contend city government has the ability to change the specific terms of that coverage and Evans agreed with them.

'Although the city may provide such health insurance subsidies for 50 years, plaintiffs did not reasonably rely on the oral promises of various persons ... because plaintiffs were charged with knowing the law, which did not unambiguously indicate that the city would continue to pay a permanent or lifetime 70 percent portion of the retirees' health insurance,' reads the written ruling from Evans that was released Friday afternoon.

Evans also ruled the retirees did not show they 'suffered a detriment' when they worked for the city such that a promise of a lifetime health insurance subsidy should be enforced 'because plaintiffs failed to present sufficient proof that they could have been paid more by another employer if they had not worked for the city.'

The retirees also cited a 1966 ordinance that bars the reduction of city employee pension or fringe benefits.

But Evans questioned whether the premium subsidy was a part of the benefits mentioned in the ordinance.

Even if that were the case, he ruled a 1985 ordinance gives the city the ability to change retirement benefits.

The retirees could appeal Evans' ruling.

The health insurance changes are the first of two sets of changes to city benefits proposed by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. to right the city's financial condition which is imperiled by the unfunded liability the city bears for health insurance coverage as well as pension plans.

Experts have told the city both obligations are unsustainable under their present terms.

The council is scheduled to vote on pension plan changes by the end of the year. Those changes, in whatever form, would not take effect until 2016.

The County Commission's Health

click to enlarge

For a fortnight (a term used by the Brits and, once upon a time, by Henry Luce's Time Magazine), a legitimate issue of governance predominated among the members of the Shelby County Commission, who have otherwise been preoccupied with internal political intrigues.

The issue was that of health-care benefits for county employees - a reprise of sorts of a dilemma that had been previously faced by such governmental entities as the City of Memphis, Shelby County Schools, and the City of Bartlett.

And the gravamen of the county variant was a provision of the new insurance deal proffered by County Mayor Mark Luttrell that went by the name of 'spousal carve-out,' or, alternatively, 'spouse-out' - the removal, for cost-saving purposes, if spouses and dependents from the county insurance rolls if those spouses and dependents happen to covered already by other health-insurance policies.

The elimination of spousal coverage would save the county $3.8 million, according to data presented to the Commission by mayoral aide Kim Hackney, who bore the brunt of testimony about the new plan. Another $7.2 million would be saved by various plan-adjustments, and $2.8 million by raising premiums - for a total of $11 million needed, said Hackney, to make up for shortfalls and additional costs relating to the Affordable Care Act.

As former S.C.S. board member and current Commissioner David Reaves would note during debate, the schoolteachers of the county system had already had to bite this bullet on spousal elimination, and it was only fair that other county employees should have to, as well.

Resistance to the Luttrell plan's formulations was spearheaded by unlikely allies Terry Roland, a Millington Republican whose conservatism has been tempered by a desire to champion public employees' concerns (especially those of first responders), and Walter Bailey, a venerable Democrat who commands the loyalty of his party mates on the Commission, especially that of several newcomers to the body.

In last week's discussion of the plan in committee and at this past Monday's debate in the Commission's general session, Roland complained, with apparent justice, that relevant details in justification of the proposed health-care changes had not been presented to the Commission before the relatively sudden roll-out of the plan, and he and Bailey insisted that alternatives had to be explored.

The two of them, abetted here and there by other Democratic members, made enough headway - despite assertions by GOP member Mark Billingsley and others that the administration's numbers were likely to withstand serious challenge - to force a postponement of action by the Commission. It was agreed some more behind-the scenes consideration would continue until special back-to-back committee and general sessions that were hurriedly scheduled for Thursday could be held.

At the Thursday committee session, held in the Commission's new 6th-floor meeting room, Roland repeated his laments that the welfare of employees' families was under threat, Bailey, as before, insisted there had to be alternatives. His remarks bore a hint of the final outcome, though, as he wondered aloud why none of the several unions whose representatives had testified against the plan had been ahead of the curve and developed alternative health-insurance scenarios of their own.

Meanwhile, Hackney outlined a couple of alternatives to the basic mayoral plan that would eliminate the proposed spouse-out. Both of these, it became obvious, would jack up employee premiums too high or reduce the level of coverage or otherwise dilute the effectiveness of a county health-insurance system that, as Danny Young of the Firefighters Union had acknowledged during testimony, had been a 'very good' plan.

So it was that, after two hours of superficial wrangling in the committee room, the follow-up general sessions held downstairs in the auditorium of the Vasco Smith County Administrative Building became a pro forma affair. What had been a persistent stumbling point regarding insufficient communications between the administration, the commission, and county employees was resolved in a suggestion by administration CAO Harvey Kennedy that a replacement would be found for erstwhile liaison official/negotiator Danny Kail, who had ascended to another administrative position elsewhere in county government.

Within a half-hour, th

click to enlarge

e original Luttrell plan - spousal carve-out and all - was approved by a 9-3 vote. Republican Steve Basar was absent in New Orleans, getting married, and the only nay votes came from the GOP's Roland and Democrats Bailey and chairman Justin Ford. (Credible sources indicated Ford's vote was window dressing, that he had promised the administration a yes vote if circumstances necessitated it.)

The resolution cleared the way for the employees' open enrollment period to proceed as scheduled from Monday, November 3, to Friday, November 21.

Left unresolved was the basic question of why the administration had been unable to provide an explicit earlier warning of what was to come to the commission and to employees' groups. As Young and other union officials would testify during debate, as recent as the spring employees' representatives were told that few revisions, if any, would be called for.

That basic question had been implicit in much of the discussions that had gone on but was never actually posed or answered in point-blank fashion. Acknowledging as much, Democratic Commissioner Van Turner said that various factors over the past several months had intervened - notably including the county general election, the winding down of a former, contentious Commission preoccupied with other matters, and the post-election ushering in of a changed Commission with six brand-new members.

And now, with its first major governmental issue resolved and out of the way, that new Commission is free to revert to the county governing body's traditional pastime, the waging of an internal power struggle. The next phase of that will be a November 6 hearing in the courtroom of Chancery Judge Walter Evans regarding a suit brought by a Commission majority against Chairman Ford's allegedly arbitrary rejection of agenda items.

Mom Wants Kardashian Kids Line Banished From Babies R Us

Bertrand Rindoff Petroff via Getty ImagesKim Kardashian, Kanye West and daughter North West attend the Givenchy show during Paris Fashion Week last month. Is the idea of a baby in diapers rocking a pleather miniskirt so she could be just like the Kardashians enough to rock your sensibilities? Could you even imagine such a thing being for sale at your local Babies R Us?

Well, the short, short skirt -- with attached diaper cover -- really is for sale at the chain. And a Kansas mom is so riled up at the idea that she has launched a Change.org petition to try to get the Toys R Us division to stop selling the line.

Amie Logan, noting the retail giant just gave in to public pressure and pulled another ill-conceived idea for its clientele -- toys glorifying the drug-dealer show Breaking Bad -- wants Americans to join this fight, too.

Logan's petition says:

I don't want my child to grow up to be a Sex Tape star. You pulled the Breaking Bad toys because they promoted Drug use. You should pull this clothing line because it promotes bad behavior as well. The madness has to stop. If the toys are damaging so is the clothing.

More than 2,500 people have signed in the past three days with such comments as: 'These women represent a family whose fame is based on a sex tape. I would never want my daughter to have to be so desperate for attention in life to do something so degrading. The fact Babies 'R' Us endorses this family is disgusting.'

So far, though, Toys R Us appears to be far more defensive of its trashy clothing line than its drug dealer toys.

Toys R Us spokeswoman Kathleen Waugh told the website SFGate.com: 'We have no plans to pull the collection.'

Sisters Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian -- whose lives are chronicled in their own reality series -- have parlayed their fame into an adult clothing line and recently added the kids line to the mix. Kim Kardashian, before the reality show, was best known for being captured in a widely distributed sex tape with hip-hop singer Ray J.

Kim Kardashian's corset selfie raises questions: How dangerous is the practice ...

This week, selfie-queen Kim Kardashian posted yet another photo of herself in the mirror, this time squishing her mid-section into an itty-bitty corset and announcing to her 20 million Instagram followers that she is 'really obsessed with waist training.'

She isn't alone - Jessica Alba, Khloe Kardashian and Brooke Burke are all reportedly fans of the practice. But are these Hollywood types actually promoting a pretty dangerous practice to their legions of admirers? In the past year, perhaps in connection with increased celebrity chatter, Google searches related to waist cinching have doubled and a concept called the 'Corset Diet' has been floating around cyber space.

'This is so ridiculous, these people should know better. You are blocking oxygen, reducing flow to your lungs, heart and other organs which in turn slows metabolism as your cells become deprived of oxygen,' New York Times bestselling celebrity fitness and health expert JJ Virgin told FOX411. 'Organ failure can also occur. In a word: don't.'

Some women and men will seek to 'train' their waists to incredibly small sizes by progressively donning smaller and smaller steel-made corset for up to 12 hours a day - some even sleep in them. The Guinness World Record holder is a woman by the name of Cathie Jung, who got her waist down to a mere 15 inches. Over time, the repressive steel garment can alter the position of organs in the body and can even lead to muscle atrophy as the muscles used to hold the body upright are weakened.

The tight feeling around the waist also compresses the abdomen and may reduce one's appetite or ability to consume larger amounts of food. Corsets made of latex increase sweating, leading a loss of water weight. But Raffi Hovsepian, MD, FACS and Triple Board Certified Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon, cautions that the results are only 'temporary,' and that problems can arise in conjunction with the excessive perspiration. 'The theory is that if you do it long enough, it will change your shape and contour your ribs but for the most part, it pushes your insides...away from your waist,' Dr. Gabriel Chiu, of the Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery, added. 'But when used appropriately, it is safe.'

Julia Reed Nichols, a Los Angeles-based singer and burlesque performer who routinely 'slips' in and out of a corset, said that everyone wants to warn of the dangers associated with the garment - from broken ribs to fainting on stage - but she has yet to encounter anyone who has taken their waist training to the point of injury.

'We wear them to help obtain that perfect feminine hourglass figure,' she said. 'But they are not comfortable, and certainly no ideal for the busy life that most of us live.'

Love it or loathe it, the practice of corseting is hardly new. The first corset was created in the 1500s and became a historical staple of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

'The corset allowed the lady to keep a youthful figure longer, a factor important to most ladies to this day,' explained Don Bracken, of History Publishing Company. 'The appearance of a youthful figure is something no lady wants to lose...'

Physicians later claimed the garment was a prime cause of miscarriages and cancer. The rise of the feminist movement in the 20th century saw them plummet further into the background, but thanks to the recent Hollywood limelight, corsets are having a moment once again.