Another day, another set of mixed headlines about where the benefits business is headed. So today I'll just share a few, drop my snarky asides like some kind of belligerent court jester and let you get back to work.
The big news this week – if you're not Herman Cain – is that we have another court ruling in the ongoing legal battle over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The ruling comes in two increasingly intriguing parts. For starters, after a series of setbacks over the last few rulings, the Obama administration notches a much-needed win. I wouldn't be surprised to find a picture on Twitter somewhere this evening of the president dropping a Tebow in the Oval Office.
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But even more interesting is the fact that the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which ruled PPACA constitutional in their dismissal of a Christian group's lawsuit against the individual mandate, is a right-leaning court. Not only that, but it's considered the gateway to the Supreme Court itself and this ruling gives the administration a 2-1 lead in appellate court rulings.
All of this remains the speculation of an armchair lawyer, but things aren't looking good for those of you waiting for the courts to bail us out of this mess. And while I'm not normally one to say "I told you so," I've been saying all along that we needed to make our own change.
In other news, a new Labor Department report shows a huge jump of job openings – the most in three years, in fact. Maybe they're openings by all those homeless people, er, I mean protesters on Wall Street. I didn't realize there were so many of them.
And, finally, I just saw a new Cisco survey that claims 56 percent of college students and recent grads would turn down a job from a company with a social media ban. More than half, really? And 70 percent of college students don't believe an office is even necessary to be productive worker. Is it me, or do stories like this make you wonder if the economy is as bad we hear, or is it the people in it? Are we stuck trying to bridge cultural and generational divides we can't even see across?
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