Ann O'Leary
Blog Post List
January 4, 2013
Cross-posted with author permission from Parents.com » In an 11th hour set of furious negotiations, Congress and President Obama reached an agreement on the so-called “fiscal cliff,” a self-imposed set of deadlines that would have resulted in automatic tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts in the absence of a deal. In many respects, the deal is good news for America’s children and families. It raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans (those families making over $450,000 per year, or individuals making over $400,000 per year) and uses the increased revenue to provide many supports...
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December 16, 2012
By now, most people who pay attention to the news have heard about the “fiscal cliff.” The problem: Most people don’t know what the fiscal cliff actually is, or how it will impact their families. The term “fiscal cliff” is shorthand for a series of events that will occur at the end of 2012 that will impact how the federal government operates. These include automatic, across-the-board cuts to funds for schools with low-income and special needs students; increases in income taxes and the payroll tax, which fall primarily on middle-income families; decreases in tax credits to support working...
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August 24, 2012
Cross posted with author permission from the Huffington Post » In 2010, China and the United States each conducted a national census. China found that 76.0 million of its citizens were children under the age of 5, about four times the number the United States has, 20.2 million . No real surprise there: China’s overall population of 1.34 billion , the most of any country, is four times that of the United States, at 309 million . What is a surprise – and may well be a major cause for alarm, from an American perspective -- is how many of those Chinese kids are getting a jump start in life...
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July 12, 2012
Crossposted with author permission from the Huffington Post . As the right grumbles and gossips about Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the left largely celebrates and ponders it, the response of our two most populous states—California and Texas—will ultimately test the effectiveness of the country’s grand experiment in health reform. With over 7 million uninsured residents, California is taking advantage of every incentive provided under the ACA to increase access to health insurance—expanding Medicaid to 400,000...
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May 16, 2012
Re-posted with author permission from the Huffington Post . Americans, or at least the chattering class, have gotten all riled up about motherhood twice in the past few weeks. First, there was the kerfuffle between Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney about whether Mrs. Romney, a stay-at-home mother, could truly understand the plight of working Moms enough to advise her husband on the subject. Instead of turning into a real debate about the struggles of parenting and working, it turned into a question of whether the left really hates stay-at-home Moms. Then last week, thousands...
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May 8, 2012
Cross posted with author permission from the Huffington Post . Ahhh…to think that I dream of the early 1990s when student loans averaged only $10,000 and the unemployment rate for recent college grads was a mere 3.3 percent Last week, I took a week out off of blogging to spend time giving final lecturers for my spring Health Law course at the University of California, Berkeley. As I walked the campus and saw the anxious faces of the graduating seniors, I was worried. I remembered back to my own graduation from college, nearly two decades ago (gulp!), amid a recession, with a mountain of debt...
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April 17, 2012
Cross posted with author permission from the Huffington Post . Wow. So many readers of my last blog post thought I was endorsing Rick Santorum, his policy prescriptions and all the anti-gay and anti-women statements he has made when I wrote that I’d miss him in the Presidential contest. Not at all. As I wrote, I don’t agree with his policy prescriptions, but I wish that we had people in both presidential campaigns who are forcing our country to confront the hard issues of how we raise our children and support our families at a time of growing single-parent households and growing childhood...
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March 22, 2012
Next week, a very adult conversation begins at the U.S. Supreme Court, but much of it will have an enormous impact on children. For three days, lawyers will argue over the constitutionality of two major provisions in the Affordable Care Act—the so-called “individual mandate,” requiring most Americans to have health insurance, and the Medicaid expansion, requiring states to cover low-income adults regardless of whether they have children or a disability. Congress has already acted to provide health insurance for most American children — 90 percent in 2010 — by expanding Medicaid and enacting...
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March 5, 2012
Ever wonder what happens to a worker who becomes disabled for weeks from injuries in a car accident? Or the worker who has a baby but no maternity leave? Or the worker whose parent, suffering from Alzheimer's, falls and hits his head and can no longer live alone? Here's what happens, and neither option is appealing: One, they stay home, a necessity in such cases as an auto accident or giving birth. It risks losing pay, and, sometimes, the job. In either case, it can set off a downward spiral. A 2001 Harvard Law School study found that a quarter of two-income couples who filed for bankruptcy...
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