Legislation introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to create a paid parental leave benefit would "provide meaningful financial help to new parents" but also cut participants' average lifetime Social Security retirement benefits, according to a report released Thursday by the Urban Institute. "A strong case can be made for guaranteeing parents paid leave, but the Social Security system may not be the best way to finance those benefits," the paper's authors wrote. The Urban Institute's researchers added that it could be hard to justify diverting resources from retirement at a time when there's increasing concern about the financial security of future retirees, reports The Hill . They also said that creating a paid leave benefit through Social Security "raises fundamental questions" about the Social Security system. "Allowing people to borrow against their future retirement benefits to meet their needs at younger ages would begin to transform the program from a social insurance program to a forced saving program," the researchers wrote.

The Trump administration yesterday pushed to give Medicare drug plans more options in the products they can offer beneficiaries in an attempt to increase their purchasing power and reduce drug prices, reports the Washington Examiner . The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that, beginning in 2020, Medicare prescription drug plans can leverage an indication-based formulary that expands the choices of offerings they can cover, letting plans chose cheaper drugs in certain cases. "This is a significant step in modernizing the successful Medicare Part D program by giving plans the tools that serve beneficiaries well in the private sector," said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Currently there are limits on which drugs can be covered on a Part D plan's formulary, and CMS said "if a Part D plan includes a particular drug on its formulary, the plan must cover that drug for every Food and Drug Administration-approved indication, or beneficiary condition, even if the plan would otherwise instead cover a different drug for a particular indication." The agency noted that, starting in 2020, the indication-based formulary will allow plans to tailor their formularies to include different drugs for different clinical indications. Earlier in August, CMS permitted plans on Medicare Advantage to deploy the step therapy method to save costs. This option entails giving a beneficiary a cost-effective treatment first and then transitioning them to a costlier treatment if it does not work. However, the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network warned step therapy could pose a hindrance to people with cancer from receiving needed therapy.

Older adults do not want to be called or perceived as old, and are looking for different labels that have less negative connotations, reports the Wall Street Journal . Stanford Center on Longevity Director Laura Carstensen prefers the term perennial, which she says implies reinvention without assigning positive or negative attributes. Bowling Green State University's Jeremy Wallach says baby boomers are particularly self-conscious. "They want to adopt a new generational identity for themselves in post-retiree years," he notes. Generational labels are especially inaccurate. There are both healthy and frail 80-year-olds, while the 60-plus population includes the so-called Greatest and Silent Generations, who think and feel quite different about age and propriety. Stanley Szott, 93, believes words such as "senior citizen" or "older adults" are redundant. "We don't need to be reminded that we are senior citizens," he says. Szott also contends such umbrella terms fail to identify a person as an individual. "You lose your identity. Everyone's the same," he says. RiverSpring Health CEO Daniel Reingold prefers "older adults," which he thinks is neutral and accurate. "The difference between a 90-year-old and a 40-year-old is that one adult is older," Reingold says.

President Trump has nominated Mark Gaston Pearce for a third term on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an unexpected victory for employee advocates and Democrats, reports Bloomberg Law . "Practically speaking, the renomination will have a substantive impact on Board procedures and decisions if Pearce is confirmed by the U.S. Senate for another term," says former Republican NLRB general counsel Jerry Hunter. The NLRB usually delegates authority to decide individual union elections and unfair labor practice complaints to three of the sitting members, which means Pearce will be able to partner with colleague Lauren McFerran to effectively form a two-member Democratic majority in certain cases. A Democratic majority also could rule in cases where the Republican chairman and other two board members have a conflict of interest. AFL-CIO general counsel Craig Becker says Pearce has "worked with his colleagues to address many pressing and difficult issues arising out of the changing nature of work and the workplace over the last eight years. We urge the Senate to honor the bipartisan tradition that has developed concerning the filling of board seats by promptly confirming Mark so that the board can once again be fully staffed." White House and Senate leaders have discussed a deal to grant Pearce a third term in return for Democrats conceding to waive waiting periods and confirm certain pending nominations for other positions, including some in the Labor Department.

A new Conference Board report found 51 percent of U.S. workers said they were satisfied with their jobs in 2017, the highest level since 2005, according to the Wall Street Journal . Over the past seven years, Americans report feeling better about their wages along with a greater sense of job security. Jobless claims hit their lowest level in nearly 50 years in July. Employees on the higher end of the income scale are more satisfied than their less-affluent peers. Nearly 58 percent of those with total household income above $75,000 said they feel satisfied at work, compared with about 45 percent of those from households earning less than $75,000. "These are higher-skilled workers, managers, and they tend to have more control over their day-to-day work activities," notes The Conference Board's Rebecca Ray. About 58 percent of households with incomes of at least $75,000 were happy with their salary, similar to the rate of their overall job satisfaction. Meanwhile, 29.4 percent of people surveyed with household incomes below $75,000 said they were satisfied with their pay. Job satisfaction has improved for two consecutive years among persons with income under $75,000, while it declined in 2017 for those above that level. That may mirror a particularly tight labor market for lower-salaried workers, who endured stagnant pay for years but have been seeing some faster increases than higher-paid workers.

According to TechCrunch , Google wants to make the transition from military service to civilian life easier for veterans with tools that help them find work or promote their businesses. Among the new features is an initiative called Grow with Google, the company's career development program. It helps veterans find job openings relevant to the skills they learned while serving by entering the phrase "jobs for veterans" into Google's search engine along with their military job codes. Meanwhile, for vets who founded, own, or head a business, Google has added a new "Veteran-Led" attribute to help identify them on Google Maps and mobile search listings. Separately, the Google.org charity initiative will grant $2.5 million to the United Service Organizations to provide IT training, career support, and Google Support Professional Certification, a course designed to prepare people for entry-level IT jobs.

Senate Republicans say they would like Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona to appoint a successor to the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who, unlike McCain, would support legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), reports The Hill . Republican lawmakers say they will not have time to hold another vote to repeal the law in 2018 but vow to try again next year if they manage to keep their Senate and House majorities. "If we reengage in that discussion in some point in the future, it would be nice to have members who enable us to pass it," Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (SD) said when asked about the possibility of ACA repeal legislation coming up for a future vote. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said he does not know whether the Senate will move another comprehensive health care reform package, but he expects Republican leaders will push "piecemeal efforts to make affordable once more that which has not been affordable since ACA passed." Republicans want Ducey to appoint someone who will be a more reliable vote on health care in case they retain their congressional majorities.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced the results of study into opioid abuse to see whether personalizing the epidemic could change prescribers' behavior, reports Forbes . The team first identified 170 people who had a fatal prescription opioid overdose over 12 months in one California county. They then located 861 doctors who had written at least one prescription to one of the deceased and sent them letters from the county's medical examiner notifying them of their beneficiary's overdose death, along with that beneficiary's name, address, and age. The study found opioid prescribing was almost 10 percent lower among the clinicians who received the letters versus a control group over three months. In addition, doctors who received the letters were 7 percent less likely to start a new beneficiary on opioids and wrote fewer prescriptions for high-dose opioids. NIH also announced the launch of the Acute to Chronic Pain Signatures (A2CPS) program to investigate the biological characteristics underlying the transition in some people from acute to chronic pain, via an anticipated $40.4 million budget allocated over four years. A2CPS is part of NIH's Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, which has helped to almost double funding for research on opioid misuse, addiction, and pain from about $600 million in fiscal year 2016 to $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2018.

A study of 86 in-depth interviews with women in a professional development program at a large nonprofit organization found many participants decided to join the program for its networking and educational opportunities, and cited the chance to contribute to research as an added benefit, reports the Harvard Business Review . However, women consciously rejected calling attention to themselves, opting instead for a risk-averse, conflict-avoidant strategy in the office. Women used this "intentional invisibility" when they avoided conflict with colleagues, softened their assertiveness with niceness, and accomplished tasks by discretely moving things forward without drawing attention to themselves. These women often ended up feeling well-liked but underappreciated. The underlying motivations of this behavior include the desire to avoid conflict or backlash from bosses and colleagues, to feel authentic at work, and to balance professional and personal demands. In terms of backlash avoidance, women aware of gender biases applied intentional invisibility to limit their exposure to it. Meanwhile, women spurned the executive, self-promoting leadership style, preferring a mission-oriented, communal style. They labeled the pursuit of visibility as self-serving and rejected the idea that they should have adopt norms set up to benefit traditionally male characteristics. Moreover, mothers were more likely than other women to welcome intentional invisibility, as it gave them more time and energy to meet family obligations and avoid backlash from their partners.

A study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes suggests depression, anxiety, or other forms of mental distress may significantly elevate the risk of heart disease among older adults, reports HealthDay News . The four-year analysis tracked psychological distress among nearly 222,000 apparently healthy men and women, age 45 and up, with no prior history of heart disease. The researchers determined the risk of heart attack grew 18 percent among women and 30 percent among men suffering a high or very high degree of mental distress. Furthermore, stroke risk climbed 44 percent among highly distressed women and 24 percent among highly distressed men. "The stronger association between psychological distress and heart attack in men could be due to women being more likely than men to seek primary care for mental and physical health problems, thus partly negating the possible physical effects of mental health problems," says the University of Edinburgh's Caroline Jackson. She alternatively suggests the trend could be reflective of "the known hormonal protection against heart disease in women." Jackson also says there was "a strong association between psychological distress and stroke in women, perhaps suggesting different mechanisms exist between psychological distress and different types of cardiovascular disease in women." The study findings have prompted Jackson to urge more research to specify how mental distress seems to boost heart health risk.