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• Buffalo News: Medicare reform fiasco is worse than 'insidious'. Excerpt: The gaily wrapped MedicaRX program triggers a massive transfer of taxpayer assets - money Americans pay into the Medicare Trust Fund via their payroll taxes - into well-connected private hands. These wealthy special interests spent $1 billion over three years in hammering the new program to their liking. Their expenditures include campaign gifts to the president and candidates for the House and Senate. The brand-name drug makers, insurance companies, doctors and hospitals also created fake "seniors" groups, conducted media campaigns and lobbied Congress so effectively they actually helped write the bill.



• USA Today: Share of health costs may rise. Excerpt: The Medicare legislation that passed Congress last week could speed the move by employers to boost the share workers pay toward their own health care. The legislation allows individuals to set aside money tax-free in health savings accounts, but only if they have health policies with at least a $1,000 deductible for individuals and $2,000 for families. While the provision initially will be most popular among the self-employed and others who buy their own health insurance, it is likely to influence employers who offer coverage, as well. "It will hasten movement away from low-deductible plans," says economist Paul Ginsburg of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a non-partisan think tank.



• Physicians for a National Health Program: Stop the HSA Tsunami!!. Excerpt: Anyone following the health care reform debate recognizes the rhetoric of the advocates of “consumer-directed,” “free market” health care. Galen has strongly supported medical savings accounts (now health savings accounts, or HSAs) as a tool to achieve consumer independence in the free marketplace. What Galen fails to point out is that HSAs fragment the insurance pools. The tax advantages accrue to the wealthy, and a tax-favored personal account appeals to those who do not expect to have high health care bills. By removing the large sector of the healthier and wealthier from the traditional insurance risk pools, the higher-cost individuals remaining drive up premiums making traditional coverage unaffordable for those with the greatest health care needs. HSAs are both regressive tax policy, and cruel health policy which rations care by erecting financial barriers for those with the greatest needs.



• LewRockwell.com: Republican Socialism by Rep. Ron Paul, MD (Republican, Texas). Excerpt: Congress worked late into the night this past weekend to pass a Medicare prescription drug bill that represents the single largest expansion of the federal welfare state since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. The new Medicare drug plan enriches pharmaceutical companies, fleeces taxpayers, and forces millions of older Americans to accept inferior drug coverage – while doing nothing to address the real reasons prescription drugs cost so much. ... Big corporations love the Medicare drug plan, because they want to shift the responsibility for providing drug benefits to their retirees onto taxpayers. Dozens of major companies shamelessly advertised in the Washington Times and elsewhere in support of the Medicare bill for this very simple reason. Their pension plans are dangerously underfunded, so naturally they use their lobbying influence to promote a Medicare drug system. In this sense the Medicare bill is a taxpayer-funded corporate bailout for hundreds of American companies.

• The Times of India: Indiana opposes outsourcing bill. Excerpt: Indiana lawmakers have opposed a legislation prohibiting foreign workers from doing contract work for the state government saying the ban "would go too far and have unintended consequences". During a two-hour long hearing on the bill, seeking a ban on outsourcing and visas for foreign workers on state projects, Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike on Monday feared that recommending the bill's passage would send a wrong message as Indiana tries to lure overseas investment. ... Under the deal, Tata America International, a New York-based subsidiary of TCS, was hired for a four-year project to upgrade computers used to process unemployment claims at Indiana 's Department of Workforce Development. TCS America won the Department of Workforce Development contract after its proposal came in $8.1 million lower than the next-most competitive bid. TCS had said it would hire local subcontractors and do some local recruiting, but most workers would come from India.



• Reuters: Accenture to double staff in India to 10,000. Excerpt: Technology consultant Accenture Ltd said on Wednesday it planned to more than double its staff in India to 10,000 people in 12 to 14 months, taking advantage of relatively low wages paid to software engineers in the country. "We expect all segments to grow as we go forward but the business process outsourcing sector is growing more rapidly," Martin Cole, global managing partner for Accenture's outsourcing group, said at a news conference in Bangalore. ... Headhunters, who are scrambling to fill new jobs in India, say global players such as Accenture, IBM Corp and Oracle Corp are offering salaries that are nearly 30 percent higher than what local rivals pay. India's software sector, including the back-office services industry, added about 130,000 -- nearly 25 percent -- to its workforce in the year to March, taking the total to about 650,000. Oracle said in August it aimed to nearly double its workforce in India to about 6,000 by late 2004, hiring people for software, product support, consulting and back-office work. IBM is estimated to have more than 5,000 people in India and is still expanding. Computer Sciences Corp said in June it planned to double its staff to about 1,600 by April 2004.



• Reuters: IBM services head sees more offshore outsourcing. Excerpt: International Business Machines Corp. will continue to build its services business abroad, an official said on Thursday, saying it makes IBM more competitive, saves its customers money and frees up funds for other purposes. "You can expect continued growth in this marketplace," Doug Elix, the head of IBM's services division, told analysts.



• Daily Times (Pakistan): US govt ‘helping’ export jobs to India. Excerpt: The US federal, state and local governments have been accused of doing little to protect computer industry jobs from leaving the country for India and, in fact, “giving every indication of helping more and more Americans become unemployed”. Douglas Chick, an expert in information systems, has said in an online statement, “The tech industry in the US is rapidly vanishing, and it’s not just the telephone support positions. It is also the software programmers, hardware and engineering positions. Congress has even made way for overseas workers to come to this country and replace jobs. I have even seen ridiculous articles on the Internet falsely stating that overseas outsourcing will save American jobs. We are all in danger of losing our jobs and if we don’t act now it may be too late”.



• Times of India: Blair hails outsourcing to India. Excerpt: In an extraordinary coincidence, Britain's largest insurance group on Tuesday announced the flight of thousands of jobs to India , even as the British Prime Minister robustly hailed the skills of "Indian graduates" and defended British companies' right to ship work overseas. Lauding India's chance to become a call-centre superpower, Tony Blair slapped down British trades union calls for government action to protect an estimated 200,000 British jobs being shipped overseas over the next five years.

• San Francisco Chronicle: IBM tested for toxic chemical. Expert says firm knew about benzene at plant. Excerpt: IBM apparently knew about the presence of a known cancer-causing chemical in a major work area, but did not try to determine how much of it was in the air, a chemistry expert testified at the company's toxics trial Thursday. Barton Simmons, chief of the hazardous materials laboratory of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, said IBM's air sampling records from the mid-1980s show that Big Blue scientists had found benzene in a key room at the company's former disk-drive factory in San Jose. But he said it appeared that IBM's staff did not take further scientific steps to try to measure the chemical. Simmons testified as an expert witness for plaintiffs Alida Hernandez and Jim Moore, who allege that they developed cancer as a result of working at IBM's facility. They are seeking unspecified damages.



• IT Web (South Africa): Pensioners to take legal action against IBM. Excerpt: A group of IBM pensioners will be taking legal action against the company, having received no response to their letter of complaint.The pensioners, who gathered outside IBM's offices in Sandton just under three weeks ago to protest what they say is the improper usage of their pension fund surplus, have sought legal counsel.“We have had no response on our issues, so we are pursuing legal action,” says Roger Hull, an IBM pensioner on the fund's board of trustees.



• A blast from the past! — IBM Workers United flyer from April 1981 on chemicals and worker safety at IBM. Page 1. Page 2.