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Some reassurance at least

08 Feb 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Jesus is kept busy in this Sunday's gospel healing the many sick people who were brought to him. In one bright spot on a dark economic horizon, it will become vastly cheaper for most people to keep their health insurance after losing a job if a provision in the current stimulus proposal makes it into law. The billions to be poured into health care from the economic stimulus package will do little if anything about the chronic conditions behind the nation's stubbornly large ranks of uninsured, advocates for reform point out. Instead, the plan is a temporary lifeline for nearly desperate times. For those who qualify, relief would be substantial. Under a dramatic, temporary expansion of COBRA, the law that lets the unemployed keep health insurance from their old job for up to 18 months if they pay for it in full, costs would drop by about two-thirds for a year. Moreover, people who lose a job they've had for 10 years could stay on COBRA at their expense all the way to age 65, when Medicare takes over, if they don't get another job with insurance first. People 55 and over could do the same without meeting the 10-year requirement. It's so expensive for people to extend that insurance now that many don't do it. It can quickly eat up a majority of unemployment benefits. People who lose jobs at businesses that employ fewer than 20 people don't qualify for COBRA. For them, the government plan would bring many more jobless people under Medicaid's wing. The federal government would pay for that and give states much more money to run the cost-shared part of the program. In return, states taking the extra money would have to back down on some of the cuts they've made to the program recently. Altogether it's a pricey lifeline: $40 billion to subsidize health insurance for the unemployed and more than twice that to support Medicaid. Source: An article by Calvin Woodward for the Associated Press

unemployment benefits states health insurance health care uninsured cobra unemployed medicaid medicare

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Gimme shelter

22 Mar 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday the author of 2 Chronicles describes how the enemies of Israel "burnt the house of God." Some of those who have lost their houses due to foreclosure in the current financial crisis are turning to the nation's airports for shelter. Clusters of big-city homeless have long settled in airport terminals, ideal round-the-clock shelters for men and women displaced by cities trying to clean up their downtowns. Now, some of the newly homeless are also turning to the relative anonymity of airports for at least temporary shelter. Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, explains that the working poor or newly unemployed prefer squatting at an airport to registering with an official public shelter. "An airport is one place where most Americans have been, it's a place where they can hide their homelessness," he said. Source: An article by Dionne Walker for the Associated Press

unemployed homeless homelessness airports michael stoops national coalition for the homeless working poor

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Among unemployed a discouraging word is heard

26 Jul 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday's reading from the Second Book of Kings, many are fed from a few barley loaves, thanks to the abundance of the Lord. In the U.S., many of the unemployed must rely on federal programs and charities for their daily bread. And in some states, nearly half of those job seekers are so discouraged they have given up looking for work. The number of discouraged workers nationwide has more than doubled in the past year, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. This trend isn't reflected in the widely publicized unemployment rate--discouraged workers aren't included in unemployment figures, which only measures those actively looking for work. In states as diverse as Mississippi, South Dakota, and New York, however, this invisible segment of the unemployed signals a population losing hope. Some jobless people have stopped looking for work because they are otherwise occupied--they're back in school, taking on family responsibilities, or too sick to search. They, along with workers who have stopped looking because they're discouraged, make up a group the Labor Department calls the "marginally attached." Discouraged workers make up about a third of the marginally attached nationwide, and their numbers have been increasing. Between the third quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year, Mississippi averaged the highest percentage of discouraged job seekers among its marginally attached--nearly 50 percent, compared with 32.6 percent nationwide. South Dakota ranked second, and Florida, Michigan, Connecticut, West Virginia, and New York followed. Discouraged workers are characterized by their perception that there are no jobs to be had or that they lack the necessary training to be hired. They may be convinced that employers think they're too young or too old or that they face some other kind of discrimination that prevents them from finding work. Other factors, such as negative media coverage of the job market, unsuccessful job searches among friends and family, and their own long-term unemployment, nudge job seekers toward hopelessness, analysts said. Hoyt Bleakley, Jr., a University of Chicago economist, said researchers now are paying less attention to how many job seekers say they're looking for work and more attention to how quickly they are actually finding it. With 4.4 million job seekers nationwide out of work for more than 27 weeks or more in June, "those numbers are pretty grim," Bleakley said. "People who claim they're looking for work are not finding it." Source: An article by Liz Wolgemuth for U.S. News and World Report

unemployment unemployed discouraged workers marginally attached hoyt bleakley jr

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