| Supreme Court Rules Home Care Workers Not Entitled to Overtime
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court, ruling Monday on a case brought by lawyers for a New York City woman, said home care workers are not entitled to overtime pay under federal law. The unanimous decision upheld a 1975 Labor Department regulation exempting the nation's 1 million home care workers from the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that the agency did not exceed its authority when it left home care workers without overtime protection and that "courts should defer to the department's rule." The overtime case was brought by lawyers for Evelyn Coke, a 73-year-old Queens retiree who spent more than two decades in the home care industry helping the ill and the elderly. Now in failing health, Coke said her employer never paid her time and a half for all her extra hours on the job.
Dementia drugs linked to sudden death in elderly
A Kingston doctor has found that treating elderly patients who have dementia with anti-psychotic drugs leads to an increased risk of sudden death in as little as a few weeks after they have been prescribed.
But Dr. Sudeep Gill, who practises gerontology at St. Mary's of the Lake Hospital and who is one member of a team whose findings were published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, is cautioning that the study's findings do not mean people should suddenly stop using the drugs that control dementia.
"The risk of death to the individual patient is very small, and I wouldn't recommend at all that they stop using the drugs," Gill said.
"But I would hope this leads to a dialogue with the physician about whether the course of treatment is correct."
He also hopes that it will result in more patients being taken off courses of anti-psychotic drugs if their disorder could be managed with other non-drug therapies, such as behaviour management.
What If Social Security Were Completely Scrapped?
President Bush did ultimately propose a reform. Unfortunately, the Bush proposal aimed at establishing a bureaucratically managed national savings program, instead of genuine privatization. Ironically, Democrats saved us all from Bush's national savings program by characterizing it as a "risky scheme to privatize Social Security." While the Democrats who attacked the Bush proposal for Social Security were "useful idiots" for those who want genuine Social Security, it is still worthwhile to expose the illogic, and factual error, and ideology behind their rhetoric. Opposition to authentic privatization, which means elimination of the program, derives from a combination of faulty reasoning and collectivist ideology. Among the many misconceptions surrounding opposition to Social Security privatization, there are a few that appear most common.
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