Paid family and medical leave and sick leave can help workers meet their personal and family health care needs, while also fulfilling work responsibilities. Access to paid leave is a particularly salient concern for women, who comprise nearly half of the nation’s workforce and who are often the primary caretaker for children and aging parents. Yet, many U.S. workers do not have access to paid leave time.
The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires eligible employers to provide certain workers unpaid family leave; however, unlike nearly all other industrialized nations, the U.S. does not have national standards on paid family or sick leave, despite strong public support. Paid leave has garnered increasing attention among elected officials at the national and local level, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some temporary paid leave benefits programs were enacted as a result, though the majority of those have since expired. Some employers also report taking more permanent action on their paid leave policies during this time. Some efforts at the federal level have begun to gain momentum, including a provision of the 2020 Build Back Better Act that would create a national paid family and medical leave program. Additionally, the Healthy Families Act, which was introduced in 2019, which would require most U.S. employers to offer workers paid sick leave, though efforts to bring it to a vote have since stalled. Many states and localities have...
The issues of fraud and fraudulent billings continue to dominate national and local headlines. The state lost its federal Medicaid fraud unit funding for not aggressively pursuing falsified billin...