Blog

WASHINGTON — In the first comprehensive count of domestic partner benefits by a federal government agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that about one-third of all workers had access to health care benefits for same-sex partners.

Bureau officials added two questions about domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples to the National Compensation Survey, a sample of 17,000 businesses and local governments, as a response to growing public interest in the topic, said Philip Doyle, assistant commissioner at the agency. The results were made public on Tuesday.

Thirty-three percent of state and local government employees had access to domestic partner health benefits for same-sex couples, the survey found, slightly higher than the 29 percent of employees in private companies.

Gary Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the data collection “reflects contemporary reality of what constitutes a compensation package.” It will also allow researchers to track whether laws on same-sex marriage affect the availability of domestic partner benefits.

Access to the benefits varied depending on the type of job. Business and financial managers, for example, had some of the highest rates of access to such benefits at 52 percent, compared with 17 percent for workers in the service industry. That is partly because service industry workers tend to have less access to health care than financial managers.

In all, 42 percent of service workers have access to health care. Of those, about a third had access to domestic partner health benefits, the survey found.

The regions with the greatest access for people working for private employers were the Pacific region, the Mountain region (which included Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming) and New England. Those with the lowest were the South and the West North Central (which included Iowa, Missouri and South Dakota).

The Ivy League will announce on Wednesday that, in an effort to minimize head injuriesamong its football players, it will sharply reduce the number of allowable full-contact practices teams can hold.

The changes, to be implemented this season, go well beyond the rules set by the N.C.A.A. and are believed to be more stringent than those of any other conference. The league will also review the rules governing men’s and women’s hockey, lacrosse and soccer to determine if there are ways to reduce hits to the head and concussions in those sports.

The new rules will be introduced as a growing amount of research suggests that limiting full-contact practices may be among the most practical ways of reducing brain trauma among football players. According to a study of three Division I college teams published last year in the Journal of Athletic Training, college players sustain more total hits to the head in practices than in games.

“Because of the seriousness of the potential consequences, the presidents determined the league needed to take proactive steps in protecting the welfare of our student-athletes,” said Robin Harris, the executive director of the Ivy League.

According to the new rules, teams will be able to hold only two full-contact practices per week during the season, compared with a maximum of five under N.C.A.A. guidelines. On the other days of the week, practices cannot include contact or live tackles, and no player may be “taken to the ground.”

During the preseason, teams will be able to hold only one full-contact session during two-a-day practices.

In the spring, the number of no-contact practices will be increased to four, from three. Over all, the number of practices with any kind of contact will be reduced 42 percent compared to N.C.A.A. limits.

An ad hoc committee that included college presidents, athletic directors, coaches, team physicians and other medical experts created the rules after a nearly yearlong investigation, the league said. Though a precise link has not been defined between playing football and long-term effects on brain functions, a growing body of data prompted the committee to move proactively.

The league is also asking football coaches to spend more time emphasizing and teaching techniques for avoiding helmet hits and show videos of permissible and nonpermissible hits.

Some coaches in the eight-team Ivy League have already been limiting the number of full-contact practice sessions, and rules are in place to examine players and remove them from games if they have sustained severe head hits or concussions. The new rules, however, will prevent existing or new coaches from adding full-contact practices, Harris said.

“I’m not sure there will be any dramatic changes, because the changes over the last few years for dealing with head hits have changed dramatically,” said Tim Murphy, the football coach at Harvard. “If we want young people to continue to fall in love with this great sport, we have to protect the athletes.”

Murphy said that reducing the amount of contact during the week will not only reduce the chance of head trauma, but also keep his players fresher on game days. Too much contact in practice can lead to diminishing returns, he said. Murphy added that he did not think that the stricter rules will have any impact on recruiting.

During a full season of practice, each team tracked in the study published by the Journal of Athletic Training averaged 2,500 total hits to the head that measured as significant blows (50 to 79 g’s of force) and about 300 hits to the head that were considered in the concussion-causing range (80 to 119 g’s). Each team experienced almost 200 practice collisions that measured above 120 g’s, which experts have likened to crashing a car into a concrete wall at 40 miles an hour.

The Ivy League does not have league-wide statistics on the number of concussions and head hits that occur during practices or games because the universities track them differently. But in more than 40 games involving Ivy League teams last year, eight penalties were assessed for helmet hits or blows to the head. Four other penalties were handed out for hits to a defenseless player. In all, 0.18 percent of plays involved significant helmet hits or hits to the head, according to the league’s data.

Several schools and conferences have re-evaluated their protocols concerning head injuries in recent years, although restrictions on practices like those being implemented by the Ivy League are considered rare, if not unprecedented.

“We worry about it, and it seems we should err on the side of caution,” said Margot Putukian, the director of athletic medicine at Princeton University. “My hope is that this will work at Penn State, too.”

 

New York regulators have approved an average 9.1 percent hike in loss costs used by insurers, which is less than the 10.4 percent increase sought by the industry.

The New York State Insurance Department approved the increase to be effective on Oct. 1, 2011.

The increase follows a 7.7 percent increase approved last year.

The department held a public hearing on the industry’s loss cost filing on June 23. The filing was made for insurers by the New York Compensation Insurance Rating Board (NYCIRB) using data from policy years 2008 and 2009.

At that hearing, NYCIRB actuaries told officials that loss experience in the state is deteriorating, producing a pure loss ratio at 95.8 percent. The industry said claim frequency continues to decline but at a lower rate than in previous years.

The state is implementing changes in the maximum weekly benefits starting this year, as well as modifications to several  medical fee schedules. The increases in the maximum weekly benefits are expected to result in a 1.4 percent increase in the total workers’ compensation claim costs, according to NYCIRB.

Last year, the state approved an average increase of 7.7 percent in loss costs effective Oct. 1, 2010, which is what the industry requested.