Small Business Health Insurance Problem

Part of the new law is a set of tax credits and penalties to encourage employers to provide insurance.The problem is that for most small young companies, not work.That 's of the My conclusion, based on a I conducted research with Alicia Robb Foundation.We Ewing Marion Kauffman reviewed the decisions of the founders of young companies or not to offer health insurance, using information from the survey on business Kauffman, which follows a cohort of about 5,000 new companies.

The data show that very few new companies offer health insurance for employees. Almost two thirds of businesses with employees have no health insurance of employees at any time during the first five years of operation. Moreover, only one in five insurance offered to their employees every year. Insurance: no performance gains

A pair of young small businesses that offered health insurance differ significantly from those who do not: They usually pay higher, partnerships and corporations, and have offered their employees a number of advantages. Most young companies do not fit this profile. Most are modestly paid employees within individual enterprises. Only a handful of young companies are growing rapidly. A transition from minority entrepreneurs to other legal structures. Few people ever to add a lot of benefits. This means that only a small percentage of young children

One argument often made to justify giving employees health insurance is to help businesses perform better. Those who provide health insurance for employees, according to this argument, the employees do better and work harder. We examined whether the provision of employee health insurance offers all the performance benefits for young companies. We have found that does not work. Control for a variety of other companies and founder characteristics, we saw no significant effect of health insurance for employees available for business survival, growth of assets, sales growth, profit growth, or growth employment during the first five years of operation. In other words, offers health insurance to employees do not seem to do anything to improve the performance of young firms, despite what some observers argue. We should not pretend that the new law will be useful to owners of small businesses by making their companies more successful. low wages, individual firms

The data provide three steals to key decision makers. First, only a minority of new companies that offer health insurance to employees, even for less than five years. Fewer still will not offer insurance to provide. When you think about how to manage the health insurance companies small, the authorities must bear in mind that insurance is not offering something that young companies to evolve naturally as they mature. Consequently, most employees to new companies that do not offer health insurance to be covered by government programs and exchanges of state.

Baby Dies as New Milk Powder Scare Spreads Across China

Tainted milk formula has killed one baby and caused the development of kidney stones in dozens of others who may have drunk the same product, Chinese authorities concluded on Thursday, in a grim reminder of a milk-powder scandal that killed 13 infants four years ago.

Traces of cyanuramide, which can cause kidney stones, were found in Sanlu-brand milk formula, the Ministry of Health said late on Thursday. The Sanlu Group issued an immediate recall of milk formula made before Aug 6.

Doctors in Gansu Province, in northwestern China, told the Xinhua news agency this week that "fake milk powder" from one brand could have been responsible for kidney stones developing in 14 patients, all infants under 11 months.

Parents of the affected babies, mostly from poor and remote areas, said they had bought the powder much more cheaply than usual, Xinhua said.

Gansu health authorities were aware of the problem as early as July 16, after a local hospital reported seeing 16 babies with kidney stones who had all drunk the same brand of formula, Xinhua said, without explaining the delay in disclosure.

Dozens of other cases of babies developing kidney stones had been reported in Gansu this year, after none was reported in 2006 and 2007. It was unclear whether they had drunk the same brand of milk formula.

Cases of babies developing kidney stones had since emerged in two other hospitals in Gansu and also in Jiangsu, Shandong, Hunan, Anhui, Ningxia and Shaanxi, Xinhua said.

A Sanlu Group spokesman surnamed Cui said the milk powder may have been mislabeled and that "someone" might be counterfeiting their product, Xinhua said.

Sanlu Group, based in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, is partly owned by New Zealand dairy export giant Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd. In a statement carried by the New Zealand Press Association, Fonterra said its Chinese partner was moving to ensure its products were safe.

Sanlu has previously been involved in quality scandals. Authorities in the northern port city of Tianjin seized hundreds of cases of mislabeled Sanlu-brand yoghurt in 2005.

Kidney stones are small, solid masses that form when salts or minerals normally found in urine crystallize inside the kidney.

If they become large enough, they can move out of the kidney, cause infection and lead to permanent kidney damage.

In 2004, at least 13 babies in eastern Anhui province died after drinking fake milk powder that investigators later found had no nutritional value, a scandal that rocked the country and triggered widespread investigations into food and health safety.

China is the world's second-biggest market for baby milk powder.

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Bacterial infections linked to cot deaths

The condition, also known as Sudden Infant Sudden Death Syndrome (SIDS), kills 250 babies in Britain every year but the exact cause is not known.

Parents have been advised not to smoke during or after pregnancy and put babies to sleep on their backs to avoid SIDS, but the precise reasons why this helps are not completely understood.

Now a new study has identified a bacterial infection that appears to contribute to some cot deaths.

The research, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, found samples from babies who had died for no apparent reason often carried Staphylococcus aureus, a particularly virulent bacteria better known for the MRSA strain in which it becomes resistant to the antibiotic methicillin.

Associate professor Paul Goldwater, from The Women's and Children's Hospital and the University of Adelaide in Australia, analysed the post mortem reports for 130 babies who had died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), 32 who had died suddenly as a result of infection, and 33 who had died of non-infectious cause, such as a road traffic accident.

He then analysed the bacterial isolates from "sterile" sites which are normally free of infections, such as heart blood or spleen in all of the babies.

Unsurprisingly he found infection at a sterile site was rare in those infants who had died of non-infectious causes and common in the babies who had died as a result of infection.

However he also found infection was relatively common in those babies that had died of SIDS.

In many cases, the infection was caused by S. aureus. a particularly virulent bacteria, known to produce potentially lethal toxins.

"The finding of S. aureus in a normally sterile site in a large proportion of cases of SIDS would indicate that a proportion of these babies died of staphylococcal disease," said Dr Goldwater.

S. aureus is common in organisms carried by most healthy adults and scientists said colonisation of infants does not imply lack of hygiene but is bound to happen.

Further research is now needed to find out how to prevent death involving these organisms.

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