Washed It!

As employers struggle with rising healthcare costs and a sour economy, U.S. workers for the first time in at least a decade are being asked to shoulder the entire increase in the cost of health benefits on their own.

The average worker with a family plan was hit with 14% premium increase this year, pushing the bill to nearly $4,000 a year, according to a survey by the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.

That is the largest annual increase since the survey began in 1999 and a marked change from previous years, when employers generally split the rise in the cost of premiums with their employees.

The average employer contribution to a family plan did not go up at all this year, meaning the entire increase was borne by workers.

At the same time, nearly a third of employers reported that they either reduced the scope of benefits they are offering this year or increased the amount that workers must pay out of pocket for their medical care.

Workers saw average copayments for routine office visits increase 10% and deductibles continue their surge upward.

In 2010, more than a quarter of American workers with employer-provided health coverage were in plans with deductibles of at least $1,000.

“It’s really bad news for everybody,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization of large employers that provide coverage to about 50 million workers, retirees and dependents.

Overall, premium growth slowed slightly this year to 3%, with the average annual cost of a family health plan reaching $13,770. Workers picked up 30% of that bill. The average plan for an individual cost $5,049.

The squeeze, reported by employers between January and May, largely reflects the fallout of the ongoing economic slowdown and may be ameliorated in future years as the new healthcare law is implemented.

But it could further complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to rally support for the law, which is expected to do relatively little in the short term to contain rising medical bills.

“There have been times when employers have been able to absorb costs. This is not one of those times,” said James Gelfand, health policy director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading critic of the new law.

The law, which focused on expanding coverage for Americans who don’t get insurance through work, was designed to largely preserve the existing employer-based healthcare system.

Independent analyses of the law estimate that most Americans will continue to get insurance through their employer, as about 157 million do now.

Administration officials Thursday pointed to two new studies from the Rand Corp. and the Commonwealth Fund that predicted small businesses in particular would probably expand coverage in coming years, in part with help from billions of dollars of in new tax credits.

“We have really just begun our efforts,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, emphasizing the growing number of tools government regulators have to control insurance premiums.

The Kaiser survey found that the percentage of firms offering health benefits rose to 69% from 60% this year, an unexpected increase that analysts speculate may reflect the failure of many businesses that didn’t offer benefits.

But the survey suggests that the coverage workers are being offered is becoming increasingly unattractive as employers try to control their costs in the down economy.

“We were all so focused on the reform debate that I think we took our eyes off the fact that what we call heath insurance in this country is changing,” said Kaiser foundation President Drew Altman. “What workers get looks less and less like the comprehensive coverage their parents had.”

U.S. employers push increase in cost of healthcare onto workers

After a difficult August, Wall Street began September with a big rally thanks to encouraging news about the manufacturing sectors in the United States and China.

The Dow Jones industrial average shot up 254.75 points, or 2.5%, to 10,269.47. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index soared 3%, as did the tech-dominated Nasdaq composite index.

In Europe, key stock indexes shot up 3.8% in France and 3.5% in Spain.

The surge came after the major U.S. indexes sank more than 4% in August on economic data that indicated a slowdown in economic growth and raised fears of a double-dip recession.

The manufacturing data Wednesday encouraged investors who thought the bearish sentiment had gone too far. Only 20.7% of investors ended August with a bullish outlook, the smallest percentage since the stock market hit bottom in March 2009, according to a index of market sentiment compiled by the American Assn. of Individual Investors.

“The catalyst allows you to look at things with a clearer head,” said Jim Paulsen, the chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management. “The pessimism got extreme at the end of August there, and extreme pessimism is a sign that people are overdoing it.”

Wall Street opened higher Wednesday after a report from China indicated faster-than-expected growth in the country’s manufacturing sector.

The rally soon accelerated on an unexpected increase in a similar index of U.S. manufacturing activity. The Institute for Supply Management’s gauge rose to 56.3 from 55.5 last month; anything above 50 suggests the sector is growing.

The manufacturing numbers were particularly encouraging because factory sector has been one of the leading drivers of the economic recovery since it began.

The positive news relieved some of the pressure on the market for U.S. Treasury bonds, which some investors had bought as a hedge against a worsening of the economy. The yield on the benchmark 10-year T-notes jumped to 2.58% from Tuesday’s 19-month low of 2.47%.

The shift in sentiment Wednesday was such that investors appeared to shake off some economic reports that were less encouraging.

ADP, a payroll-service company, said private companies cut a net 10,000 jobs in August; analysts had expected an increase.

Analysts on average expect the Labor Department to report Friday that U.S. employers, including governments, shrank their payrolls by 100,000 jobs in August.

Other reports Wednesday showed weak car sales in August and a bigger-than-expected drop in construction spending in July.

Despite Wednesday’s sharp gains, stocks are unlikely to see a sustained rebound as long as the U.S. continues to suffer from high unemployment, said John Stoltzfus, chief market strategist at Ticonderoga Securities.

“The reality is we’ve been here before where we’ve seen rallies followed by sell-offs,” Stoltzfus said. “We expect that until some substantial catalyst arrives on the landscape the market is likely to be a giveth and taketh market, with short rallies and short sell-offs.”

nathaniel.popper@latimes.com

Stocks surge amid signs of growth in manufacturing

Five U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs and insurgent fire in southern and eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the latest casualties in a particularly bloody spell that has left 12 service members dead in two days, and 19 since Saturday.

Meanwhile, on the southern outskirts of the capital, Kabul, a gunman opened fire on a busload of Afghan Supreme Court clerks, killing three and wounding 12, the Interior Ministry reported.

Assailants on two motorcycles halted the bus Tuesday morning in the Musayi district, an area where insurgents are active, court spokesman Abdul Malik Kamawi said. One gunman then boarded the bus and opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing two people, Kamawi said. A third died later in a hospital.

“We’re trying to find out who they were. For now, we can only say they are the enemies of the Afghan people,” Kamawi said.

Suspicion immediately fell on Taliban insurgents who have waged a continuous campaign against Afghan government officials and institutions and have stepped up attacks in the run-up to Sept. 18 elections for the lower house of parliament. Candidates and their aides have been threatened, kidnapped and killed, and many voters say they plan to stay away from the polls for fear of violence.

In Tuesday’s attacks, NATO said four troops were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, while a fifth died in a battle with insurgents in the country’s south. No other details were given and the service members were not identified by name, as is standard procedure.

The deaths came a day after roadside bombs killed eight other members of the international force in Afghanistan, including seven U.S. troops, NATO said Tuesday. A 20-year-old Estonian soldier was also killed.

The deaths bring this month’s total to 55, including a Marine killed in fighting in the volatile southern province of Helmand on Friday whose death was not announced until Monday night. That is still fewer than the 66 killed in July, the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

Almost all of the recent coalition deaths have come in southern and eastern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is most deeply entrenched and where fighting has been heaviest.

Those areas are also closest to the mountainous border with Pakistan, where insurgents maintain safe havens and training bases to instruct recruits, including foreign fighters, who are later infiltrated into Afghanistan.

NATO commanders have warned casualties will mount as coalition and Afghan forces enter areas under longtime Taliban control, particularly in the hard-line Islamic movement’s spiritual heartland of Kandahar province. The NATO force swelled this month to more than 140,000 — including 100,000 Americans — with the arrival of the last of the reinforcements that President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan in a bid to turn the tide of the nearly nine-year war.

Also Tuesday, NATO also said its forces, working with Afghan army and police, had killed 19 insurgents and captured five in a major air assault on the village of Omar in the eastern province of Kunar.

Ground forces taking part in the assault that began Monday uncovered insurgent fighting positions, along with weapons caches and ammunition stockpiles inside the village, it said.

The coalition also said it killed two insurgents and wounded a third in an airstrike Monday on a Taliban commander in charge of logistics in Kandahar, including the coordination of homemade bomb attacks.

A number of Taliban and allied Haqqani Network commanders were also detained in operations Monday, including one recently returned from teaching bomb-making techniques in Pakistan, NATO said.

In Zabul province bordering Kandahar, insurgents on Monday night ambushed a convoy carrying food and other supplies, killing two private security guards and wounding five others, provincial government spokesman Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar said.
12 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan in 2 days

Thirty-three men stuck a half mile underground are now the longest-trapped miners in recent history as a huge drill is the early stages of digging a planned escape route.

The men were trapped Aug. 5 when a landslide blocked the shaft down into the San Jose copper and gold mine in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. Last year, three miners survived 25 days trapped in a flooded mine in southern China, and the Chileans surpassed that mark Tuesday.

While doubts and extreme challenges remain, experts said the rescuers have the tools to get the job done — though the government still says it will take three to four months to reach the miners.

“The drill operators have the best equipment available internationally,” said Dave Feickert, director of KiaOra, a mine safety consulting firm in New Zealand that has worked extensively with China’s government to improve dangerous mines there.

“This doesn’t mean it will be easy,” he added. “They are likely to run into some technical problems that may slow them down.”

The 31-ton drill made a shallow, preliminary test hole Tuesday in the solid rock it must bore through, the first step in the weeklong digging of a “pilot hole” to guide the way for the rescue. Later the drill will be outfitted with larger bits to gradually expand the hole and make it big enough so the men can be pulled out one by one.

Before rescuers dug small bore holes down to the miners’ emergency shelter, the men survived 17 days without contact with the outside world by rationing a 48-hour supply of food and digging for water in the ground.

Aside from their rescue, a union leader has expressed concern for the men’s livelihoods.

San Esteban, the company that operates the mine, has said it has no money to pay their wages and absorb lawsuits, and is not even participating in the rescue. State-run mining company Codelco has taken over.

Union leader Evelyn Olmos called on the government to pay the workers’ wages starting in September, plus cover the roughly 100 other people at the mine who are now out of work and 170 more who work elsewhere for San Esteban. Its license has been suspended by the government.

“We want the government to pay our salaries in full until our comrades are freed and then pay our severances,” said Olmos.

Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said the government was prohibited by labor laws from assuming responsibility for the salaries. He said it was up to the mining company and would have to be worked out in Chilean courts.

Golborne noted the extraordinary circumstances of the mine collapse but pointed out there are many other Chileans who lack a job and said the government cannot be responsible for all of them.

Union leaders and others blame the government in part for the San Jose accident because the mine had been cited for safety violations in the past but was allowed to continue operating.

In 2007, executives were charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of a miner. The worker’s family settled and the mine was closed until it could comply with safety rules, said Sen. Baldo Prokurica, who has long called for tougher regulations.

The next year, the mine reopened even though the company apparently had not complied with all the regulations, he said, adding that the circumstances surrounding the reopening are being investigated.

Workers at the current rescue operation are using the three existing bore holes to deliver food, water, air and medicine to the 33 miners, who are trapped about 2,300 feet underground in a shelter large enough to walk around in.

In an eight-minute video released by the government, the second made by the trapped miners, about a dozen of the men send greetings to their families and say they are feeling better since receiving the sustenance and supplies, including special clothes to keep them dry in the hot, humid mine.

The government last week said that five of the miners were suffering from depression, but Golborne said Sunday from the mine site that those men were doing better, had received antidepressants and were getting counseling.

Helping raise their spirits, the men spoke for about three minutes each to a family member on Sunday after a telephone line was lowered down one of the three existing 6-inch bore holes.

The men, while showing courage that has inspired people throughout Chile and the world, could not help but break down when speaking about their loved ones on the latest video.

“I’m sending my greetings to Angelica. I love you so much, darling,” said 30-year-old Osman Araya, as his voice choked and he began to cry. “Tell my mother, I love you guys so much. I’ll never leave you. I will fight to the end to be with you.”

The video showed the men mostly upbeat, joking on camera and talking about their absolute certainty that they would get out alive.

Experts say maintaining high morale among the men is essential. They will play a key role in winning their own rescue: The drilling technique that must be used means that up to 4,000 tons of rock and debris will fall down into a large mine shaft near the shelter — but far enough away from the men that they will not be in any danger.

Officials have said that it is essential the men be at their best physically and mentally because their own work clearing the rocks will be vital to keeping their eventual escape route from becoming plugged.
Drilling begins as Chile miners become longest-trapped in recent history

Federal officials investigating conditions at the two Iowa mega-farms whose products have been at the center of the biggest egg recall in U.S. history found filthy conditions, including chickens and rodents crawling up massive manure piles and flies and maggots “too numerous to count.”

Water used to wash eggs at one of the producers tested positive for a strain of salmonella that appears to match the variety identified in eggs that have sickened at least 1,500 people, according to preliminary Food and Drug Administration reports of inspections at facilities operated by Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa Inc.

FDA officials who briefed reporters on the findings in a telephone conference call declined to say how serious the violations were for facilities that house millions of birds. Between them, the two producers have 7.5 million hens. But FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods Michael Taylor said that “clearly the observations here reflect significant deviations from what’s expected.”

Food safety experts said conditions described in the reports are some of the worst they’ve seen in decades.

The reports offer clues to what may have caused the salmonella enteritidis outbreak that prompted the recall of half a billion eggs.

Investigators began examining conditions at the Wright County operation Aug. 12, the day before the company issued its first recall. Inspectors completed their work at that facility Aug. 30, according to documents released by the FDA.

They found:

•Barns with dozens of holes chewed by rodents that mice, insects and wild birds used to enter and live inside the barns;

•Flies on and around the egg belts and hen feeders;

•Manure built up in 4- to 8-foot-tall piles in pits below the hen houses, in such quantities that it pushed pit doors open, allowing rodents and other wild animals access to hen houses;

•Dozens of hens, which had escaped their cages, roaming freely, tracking manure from the pit to other caged parts of the barns;

•Hen houses with significant structural damage and improper air ventilation systems.

Investigators checked out the Hillandale site Aug. 19-26. Their tests of spent water from an egg wash station came up positive for salmonella, although it was not clear whether that contaminated water had been used to clean eggs, an FDA official said.

Wright County Egg recalled a total of 380 million eggs beginning Aug. 13, and Hillandale has since pulled 170 million eggs from the market. Last week, FDA officials said that salmonella tests taken at both operations came back positive.

In a statement, a Wright County Egg spokeswoman said that the company had fully cooperated with the FDA and that “to date, the vast majority of the concerns identified in the FDA report already have been addressed through repairs or other corrective measures.”

A spokeswoman for Hillandale said the company was “committed to taking the steps necessary to regain the full confidence of our customers and consumers.”

FDA officials declined to discuss what, if any, penalties the egg producers might face. Possible penalties include seizure of products, court orders requiring improvements in operations or criminal prosecution. Wright County Egg owner Austin DeCoster has a decades-long record of regulatory violations in at least three states and has paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements.

The agency also announced that next month it would begin inspection of the nation’s 600 largest egg farms, which produce 80% of the nation’s eggs. Those inspections, industry officials say, are expected to include some of the industry’s smaller operations — those with as few as 50,000 laying hens — as well as mega-farms such as those operated by the DeCoster family in Iowa.

Many of the eggs consumers eat are being produced by a shrinking number of farmers. There are 192 large commercial egg producers in the U.S. that control 95% of all the laying hens, compared with 2,500 in 1987, according to the trade group United Egg Producers. The majority of those operations are based in six states, including California.

Filthy conditions found at egg producers

Time for an update on one of my all-time favorite fees — the fee that telecom companies charge to not provide you a service.

That service is publishing your name in a phone book, which is undoubtedly a pricey endeavor for phone and cable companies.

So if a customer asks that his or her name not be included in the directory, you’d think you’d be saving the telecom provider a little cash. That’s one less entry in the database, for example, one less dollop of ink at the printer.

But this month, Time Warner Cable more than doubled its fee for an unlisted number to a whopping $1.99 a month, or nearly $24 a year.

The higher fee applies immediately for new customers. Existing customers will see their unlisted number charge go up in January.

Again, that’s a recurring fee — now one of the highest of its type in the telecom industry — for something Time Warner isn’t doing for customers.

What prompted the increase? I asked Jim Gordon, a Time Warner spokesman, if the company’s own costs had gone up.

He declined to answer that question directly, saying only that this is “an administrative fee” and that it’s “consistent with our competitors in this space.”

Actually, it’s higher. Verizon Communications charges $1.75 a month not to list your name in its phone book and not to give your number to people who call directory assistance. AT&T charges $1.25 monthly not to provide these services.

OK, so why is the unlisted number fee charged on a recurring basis? After all, your ongoing preference can be recorded with a few taps at a keyboard, and then it’s done.

“It’s a recurring service that you’re provided throughout the month,” Gordon explained.

Let’s savor that a moment, shall we?

Time Warner and other telecom companies are charging for a service that consists of them basically not doing anything. And because they continue not to do anything month after month, they keep charging you on the grounds that it’s a recurring service.

Time Warner’s fee is all the more remarkable because the company doesn’t produce its own phone book. It pays Sprint to compile all its customers’ names and numbers, and to then pass them along to whichever phone company dominates a particular market for inclusion in that firm’s directory.

Just to be clear: That’s $1.99 a month not to be in a phone book that Time Warner doesn’t even publish.

AT&T’s and Verizon’s fees are a little more understandable. After all, they make extra cash selling ads in their phone books. The more people who choose not to be listed, the less valuable the directory becomes to advertisers, so the phone company wants to discourage people from leaving.

But Time Warner isn’t in the phone book business. Its recurring fee for unlisted numbers is a money grab, pure and simple.

And the unlisted number charge isn’t the only way that the cable giant has started reaching deeper into people’s pockets.

As of Aug. 6, the company raised its fee for customers to pay their bill by phone to $4.99 from $2.99. It also raised it fee for ordering pay-per-view by phone to $4.99 from $2.99.

I’m not trying to tell Time Warner how to run its business, but are such heavy-handed charges really the best way to maintain customer loyalty, especially during economic times like these?

Time Warner Cable doubles fee to not list phone number

Anton Geesink, who helped make judo a universally popular sport by winning a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, has died. He was 76.

Geesink died Friday, according to the Dutch state broadcaster NOS. He had spent several weeks in a hospital in his hometown of Utrecht, Netherlands. No other details were released.

The 6-foot-6 Geesink stunned Japan by becoming the first Westerner to win the World Judo Championship in 1961 in Paris, then won his Olympic gold three years later in Tokyo, the first time the Olympics included judo. He won another world title in Rio de Janeiro in 1965, along with a record 21 European championships.

At the 1964 Games, Japan dominated the judo competition, but its champion, Akio Kaminaga, was no match for Geesink in the open division, where there were no weight classifications. According to United Press International’s account of the match, Geesink “crushed Kaminaga to the mat and held him there for the required 30 seconds.”

Jim Bregman, a member of the U.S. judo team in 1964, told The Times in 1984: “The entire Japanese team returned to the locker room and wept, but this was no humiliation really.

“Anton was more than just a big guy, as many thought. What he was was a 6-foot-6, 300-pound technical genius, a very powerful, very fast judo player of consummate skill in a very large frame. Anton Geesink was quite the package.”

Antonius Johannes Geesink was born April 6, 1934, in Utrecht in the Netherlands. He first participated at the European championships in 1951, finishing second.

The International Olympic Committee praised Geesink as a “great athlete” who “dedicated his entire career to the promotion of sport and its values.” Geesink had been a member of the Olympic committee since 1987.

In 1999, Geesink received a warning from the committee in connection with a bribery scandal in the selection of Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. A foundation bearing his name received a $5,000 check from Tom Welch, the former Salt Lake City organizing committee chief. Geesink maintained that he did nothing wrong and that the money was not paid to him.

Geesink is survived by his wife, Jans, and their three children.

news.obits@latimes.com
Anton Geesink dies at 76; Olympic gold medalist popularized judo

It’s a Wednesday morning, and Zenaida Tan is warming her students up with a little exercise in “Monster Math.”

That’s Tan’s name for math problems with monstrously big numbers. While most third-graders are learning to multiply two digits by two digits, Tan makes her class practice with 10 digits by two — just to show them it’s not so different.

On this spring day, her students pick apart the problem on the board — 7,850,437,826 x 56 — with the enthusiasm of game show contestants, shouting out answers before Tan can ask a question. When she accidentally blocks their view, several stand up with their notebooks and walk across the room to get a better look.

The answer comes minutes later in a singsong unison: “Four hundred and thirty-nine billion, six hundred and twenty-four million….”

Congratulations, Tan tells them, for solving it con ganas. That’s Spanish for “with gusto,” a phrase she picked up from watching “Stand and Deliver,” a favorite film of hers about the late Jaime Escalante, the remarkably successful math teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has hundreds of Jaime Escalantes — teachers who preside over remarkable successes, year after year, often against incredible odds, according to a Times analysis. But nobody is making a film about them.