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Before 2017, the national uninsured rate for children declined for nearly 10 years; however, the share of uninsured children suddenly increased that year (the most recent year available). In Georgia, the number of children without health insurance increased by 21,000. There are many reasons that progress to covering more children has stalled, including cuts to outreach efforts that help ensure that families enroll their children in Medicaid or PeachCare (Georgia’s version of the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP), a lack of funding for marketplace subsidies, changing federal rules governing the marketplace or immigrant parents choosing not to...

After a month of blistering criticism over Facebook’s decision to help more politicians lie in online advertisements, the company has conveniently announced an update on its efforts to shield American voters from the misinformation chronically afflicting its platform. “We have a responsibility to stop abuse and election interference on our platform. That’s why we’ve made significant investments since 2016 to better identify new threats, close vulnerabilities and reduce the spread of viral misinformation and fake accounts,” four senior Facebook officials blogged on Monday, while announcing several changes intended to “help protect the democratic process.” For weeks, Facebook, which makes the...

Canada 2019: Live updates8:01 PM EDT: Riding to watch as the votes start really flowing in from the Maritimes: West Nova, where the Liberals had a 59% chance to hold at the beginning of the night. This riding is the first real bellwether riding as depicted in the Bellwether-o-gram: the model puts the probability of a Liberal plurality conditional on winning West Nova at 90%, and the probability of a Conservative plurality conditional on that at 60%, both of which are way up from their overall probabilities at the start of the evening. For what it’s worth, the Conservative candidate...

Illinois's new No Salary History law went into effect on September 29th, which means that employers will no longer be allowed to ask job applicants for past wages during the hiring process. It's a huge victory for equal pay! The practice of using past pay to determine salary offers is a major contributing factor to the gender wage gap. We want to make sure all of Illinois knows about this win for economic justice! So Women Employed has created a toolkit to help job applicants understand their rights, employers understand their responsibilities, and advocates spread the word. As a valued...

The political network funded in part by billionaire libertarian Charles Koch is going to try a new strategy against President Donald Trump’s trade war with China after conceding that its previous campaign hasn’t worked. Koch network leaders said Thursday that their digital and TV ad blitz that emphasized how Americans could experience financial pain from the tariff fight wasn’t panning out the way they had hoped. “The argument that, you know, the tariffs are adding a couple thousand dollars to the pickup truck that you’re buying is not persuasive,” a senior Koch official says. he political network funded in part...

States may uise the 2018 HAVA funding to: 1 -Replace voting equipment with equipment tat utilizes a voter-verified paper record. 2- Post-election audit system 3- Upgrade election related computer systems. 4- Facilitate cybersecurity training for state chief election official’s office and local election officials. 5- Implement cybersecurity best practices 6- Fund other activities that improve election security Cyber security was a significant issue in 2018, but not as it relates to voting machines. Voting machines are closed systems and simply collect data. The data transfers that take place before and after the actual collection of the vote – registration, poll...

When the Census Bureau reported an increase in the number of people without health insurance in America, it sent political partisans reaching for talking points on the Obama-era health law and its travails. But the new numbers suggest that fears of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown may be a more significant factor in the slippage. Overall, the number of uninsured in the U.S. rose by 1.9 million people in 2018, the agency report this past week. It was the first jump in nearly a decade. An estimated 27.5 million people, or 8.5% of the population, lacked coverage the entire year....

CHART BOOK INDEX Fiscal Policy Outlook: August, FY2019 Snapshot 2018: $779 Billion Deficit Higher Than Average Spending And (Eventually) Taxation Mandatory Spending Crowds Out The Budget Major Components Of Mandatory Spending Entitlements And Interest Is Squeezing Other Priorities Mandatory Spending Is Bad: Interest Is Even Worse The U.S. Is Borrowing To Pay Interest Costs The U.S. Runs A Structural Primary Deficit Debt Ultimately On An Upward Trajectory Debt Ultimately Approaches 1.5 Times The Size Of The Economy What Drives Our Debt? Congressional Budget Process Timetable SHARE CHART BOOK Read more: https://www.americanactionforum.org/chartbook/budget-chart-book-fy2019-q4/#ixzz5ygwA6HrG Follow us: @AAF on Twitter

Employees aren't afraid to challenge their employers on workplace and social issues. That kind of employee activism may challenge HR to rethink its employee experience strategy. Employees are increasingly demanding a higher standard of conduct from their employers. They are going public to drive change, which could put pressure on HR departments to improve their employee experience strategy. Three recent high-profile protests illustrate this change in workplace attitude. Last month, employees at home goods retailer Wayfair protested a furniture order to a migrant detention center. In May, some 7,600 Amazon employees signed a letter pressing for action on climate change....

United Parcel Service Inc. has asked for exemptions from 2020 entry-level driver training regulations that would hurt the company’s ability to hire new drivers, according to a report from FreightWaves. The new Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules would require behind-the-wheel and theory driver training instructors to have two years experience and to have held a commercial driver’s license for two years. “If it has to comply with the instructor qualification requirements, UPS would not be able to use a minimum of 25% of its current certified driver instructors,” UPS said, according to the logistics news site. Looking forward two...

A New York program requiring acute-care hospitals to develop sepsis protocols has improved detection and treatment, but the results weren't as pronounced in hospitals that serve higher proportions of black patients, according to a new study. Since the program started in 2014, the proportion of patients who underwent the sepsis protocol increased from 61% in 2014 to 72% in 2016, and in-hospital mortality fell from 25% to 21%, according to research published Monday in Health Affairs. But black patients experienced the lowest increase in completion of the protocol at only 5 percentage points compared to 6.7 percentage points among Hispanics,...

Clint Eastwood will reportedly produce a movie filming in Georgia this summer, even as other Hollywood actors, producers and directors avoid the state in protest over the "heartbeat" bill the General Assembly passed this year, WCNC-TV in Charlotte, N.C. is reporting.

March for Our Lives and McCann New York were behind 'Generation Lockdown' “Generation Lockdown,” a gun violence campaign from March for Our Lives created by McCann New York earned the Grand Prix for Good at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week. The spot, directed by Bryan Buckley of Hungry Man, shows an expert well-versed in gun safety protocol instructing a group of office workers on how to prepare themselves in case of an active shooter incident. It turns out that expert is a child. Charity work is ineligible for Grand Prix in the regular categories at the...

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it will take up cases over whether the federal government must pay billions of dollars to health insurers that sold coverage on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. The Supreme Court will consider whether the government had an obligation to pay private health insurers under the so-called "risk corridor" program that was meant to offset insurer losses in the early years of the ACA exchanges. That three-year program has ended, but health insurers argue the HHS owes them more than $12 billion in unpaid funds. The Supreme Court will hear three consolidated cases during...

Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said Thursday that the state's employers added 2,600 jobs in May, pushing the total to 4.59 million jobs. That number is up more than 69,000 from the same time last year. Georgia had four job sectors that added more than 10,000 jobs over the past year: Education/health services, 17,700 Professional/business services, 16,400 Leisure/hospitality, 13,400 Construction, 11,100. "We are continuing to see Georgia grow jobs and overall we're still seeing fewer layoffs year over year," Butler said in a statement. "I think it's been a pretty impressive pace of job creation over the last several years,...

Now may be a good time to dust off that resume. Employers in the metro Atlanta area say they expect to hire at a brisk pace this summer. According to the ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) Employment Outlook Survey, 27% of Atlanta employers polled said they plan to hire more people from July through September. About 4% said they plan to cut staff. That yields a net employment outlook of 23%. "Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA MSA employers have reported a stronger hiring pace compared to Q2 2019 when the Net Employment Outlook was 12 percent," said Carmen Seda, a spokesperson for Manpower. "Compared...

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $99.4 billion HHS appropriations bill with several amendments including reversing a longtime ban on developing a national patient identifier, money for hospital emergency departments dealing with opioid overdoses, and a nod to the anti-vaccination controversy. For decades, Congress has prohibited HHS from funding the development or promotion of any national program where patients would receive permanent, unique identification numbers. Lawmakers previously argued such a program could violate privacy issues or raise security concerns, while the medical community and insurers claimed the ban kept them from properly matching patients with the correct medical information....

The case for change: Understanding the current state of infrastructure in the United States In developed economies like the United States, public infrastructure is typically one of the few forms of government spending that gets support across the political landscape. Roads, water treatment systems, and power lines all contribute to a smoothly functioning economy. They can also stimulate economic growth, increase safety, and reduce energy demand.

Number of Ga. recipients falls 200,000 since 2018, continuing 6-year trend. As of March 31, nearly 1.38 million Georgians were receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly known as food stamps, according to figures obtained from the Department of Family and Children Services by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That’s down from more than 1.55 million in June 2018. That drop-off is part of a steady decline in recipients since 2013, when the number of Georgians using food stamps peaked at 1.95 million. State employees and advocates working with poor and low-income Georgians say the decline is the result of several factors...

Georgia’s Medicaid and PeachCare programs covered 20,000 fewer children at the end of 2018 than the year before, a new report says. That 1.6 percent drop is less than an overall 2.2 percent decline in enrollment nationally, according to the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. The report, released Thursday, said that nationally, about 828,000 fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which in Georgia is called PeachCare for Kids. Not every child cited in the statistics is now necessarily without coverage. With unemployment low, many less affluent people have been able to...