EFFECTS OF EBT CUSTOMER SERVICE WAIVERS ON FOOD STAMP RECIPIENTS: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Most State agencies are now using electronic benefits transfer (EBT) systems to issue food stamp benefits. To promote operational efficiency, some States have received waivers of certain rules governing EBT use. An exploratory study was conducted to ascertain the effects of these waivers on food stamp recipients. The results show that two of the waivers-those allowing recipients to select their own personal identification numbers and to receive EBT training by mail rather than in person-cause new food stamp recipients in waiver States to have more difficulties in using the electronic system than new recipients in nonwaiver States. Further, the difficulties are more apparent among the elderly or disabled. However, the problems tend to disappear as new users gain EBT experience. A third waiver, extending time for card replacement via mail, showed mixed benefits for recipients, most of whom prefer to pick up the card at a food stamp office. Perhaps the most important conclusion is that the customer service waivers do not affect recipient satisfaction with the EBT system; the high level of satisfaction that they expressed suggests that most problems with the waivers are either transitory or minor. The full report is available online. See Effects of EBT Customer Service Waivers on Food Stamp Recipients: Final Report, at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/efan02007EBT, new recipients, customer service, vulnerable subgroups, recipient satisfaction, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty,

Medicaid 1915(c) home and community-based services waivers across the states.

This article provides State-level data on the Medicaid 1915(c) home and community-based services (HCBS) waivers program. Medicaid 1915(c) waiver participants were 32 percent of the Medicaid participants in institutional care in 1997. These data document wide interstate variation in organizational oversight and program policies for the waivers. Many structural barriers to HCBS waiver growth existed. Case management services, in some form, were normative for most HCBS waiver participants, but formal mechanisms to assess client satisfaction and service quality were less common. Substantial new growth in this program may require fundamental changes in HCBS waiver policies

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Welfare Waivers

[Excerpt] The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it is willing to waive certain federal work participation standards under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant to permit states to experiment with “alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.” The work participation standards are numerical performance standards that each state must meet or risk being penalized through a reduction in its block grant. These are standards that apply to the states, not directly to individuals, though they may influence how states design their welfare-to-work programs. Such waivers will be the first “new” waivers to test welfare-to-work strategies in more than 15 years. The waiver initiative would permit states that undertake an alternative welfare-to-work strategy to assess their programs using measures different from those in the current standards. HHS announced this policy through the release of an Information Memorandum on July 12, 2012. State requests for waivers will have to be approved by HHS and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and meet specified criteria. Under the 1996 law that created TANF, states had the authority to operate programs created under waivers of pre-1996 welfare law until their scheduled expiration. The last such waiver expired in 2007. Additionally, the Administration of President George W. Bush made a legislative proposal to create new “superwaiver” authority that would, among other things, have allowed for the waiver of the federal TANF work participation standards. That proposal passed the House three times between 2002 and 2005. A scaled-back version of this proposal was reported from the Senate Finance Committee, but not approved by the full Senate, twice during that period. This report discusses • the current TANF work participation standards; • the HHS initiative to waive TANF work participation standards; • pre-1996 welfare waivers, including how they were treated under TANF; and • the “superwaiver” proposal. This report is not a legal analysis of the Secretary’s authority to waive TANF work participation standards. Rather, it describes and provides context for this HHS initiative

Fee Waivers in Money Market Mutual Funds

It is a widespread practice among mutual fund managers to voluntarily waive fees they have a contractual right to claim. The effective fee charged may be substantially less than indicated in expense ratios and may vary over the year despite a constant contractual fee. Retail fund managers use fee waivers to strategically adjust net advisory fees to current realizations in performance and expected fund flows. The paper finds differences in waiving between retail and institutional funds because of differences in the effectiveness of waivers in advancing performance.

Shaping Health Policy for Low-Income Populations: An Assessment of Public Comments in a New Medicaid Waiver Process

Since the Supreme Court decided that the Affordable Care Act\u27s (ACA) Medicaid expansion is optional for the states, several have obtained federal approval to use Section 1115 waivers to expand Medicaid while changing its coverage and benefits design. There has long been concern that policy making for Medicaid populations may lack meaningful engagement with low-income constituents, and therefore the ACA established a new process under which the public can submit comments on pending Medicaid waiver applications. We analyzed 291 comment letters submitted to federal regulators pertaining to Medicaid Section 1115 waiver applications in the first five states to seek such waivers: Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We found that individual citizens, including those who identified as Medicaid-eligible, submitted a sizable majority of the comment letters. Comment letters tended to mention controversial provisions of the waivers and reflected the competing political rhetoric of “personal responsibility” versus “vulnerable populations.” Despite the fact that the federal government seemed likely to approve the waiver applications, we found robust public engagement, reflecting the salience of the issue of Medicaid expansion under the ACA. Our findings are consistent with the argument that Medicaid is a program of growing centrality in US health politics

Assigning the Burden of Proof in Contractual Jury Waiver Challenges: How Valuable Is Your Right to a Jury Trial?

Employers have long used arbitration agreements to manage the risk associated with the resolution of employment disputes. But as dissatisfaction with arbitration increases, employers are fundamentally changing their approach to dispute resolution by incorporating jury waivers into their employment agreements as an alternative. These jury waivers are an attractive compromise between arbitration and jury trials because they offer the full procedural protections of the public judicial system at a considerably lower cost than a comparable jury trial. Some courts have invalidated such jury waivers, however, making the enforcement of such waivers uncertain. In order for pre-dispute jury waivers to be used effectively, this uncertainty must be addressed and resolved. In this Article, Chester Chuang surveys the law surrounding the use of pre-dispute jury waivers in employment agreements and traces the inconsistent judicial treatment of such waivers to a disagreement over which party bears the burden of proof when such waivers are challenged in court. Chuang argues that strong public policy considerations support placing the burden of proof on the party seeking to enforce the waiver. Chuang concludes that resolving the burden of proof question in this way will allow such waivers to be used to mitigate risk when appropriate

EPA MANDATE WAIVERS CREATE NEW UNCERTAINTIES IN BIODIESEL MARKETS

Biodiesel, Biofuel Mandate, Waivers, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q11, Q16, Q42, Q48,

Unenforceable Waivers

Textbook tort law establishes that waivers of liability-—especially those involving physical harm-—are often unenforceable. This Essay demonstrates through an extensive survey of the case law that despite being unenforceable, such waivers remain in widespread use. Indeed, defendants frequently use waivers even when a court has previously declared their specific waivers to be void. So why do such waivers persist? Often the simple answer is to hoodwink would-be plaintiffs. Waivers serve as costless deterrents to tort claims: Either they dupe naïve victims into believing that their claims are barred, or if not, the defendant is no worse off than before. Such flouting of unenforceability doctrine undermines the goals of the tort system-—denying compensation to victims and eroding the care incentives of prospective injurers. In this Essay, we focus some long-overdue attention on the problem of unenforceable waivers and explore some solutions

Accounting for the Decline in AFDC Caseloads: Welfare Reform or Economic Growth?

Nationwide, AFDC caseloads have decreased by about 18 percent since March 1994, while some states, such as Wisconsin, Indiana, and Oregon, have seen declines of 40 percent or more. Two factors are frequently suggested as possible causes: state-level experiments with welfare reform and strong economic growth. In this paper, we use state-level monthly panel data from 1987 to 1996 to assess the importance of each of these factors by estimating a model of AFDC caseloads as a dynamic function of time-dependent state welfare reform variables (welfare waivers) and economic variables such as per capita employment. Our results from the dynamic model suggest that the decline in per capita AFDC caseloads is attributable largely to the economic growth of states and not to waivers from federal welfare policies. In the 26 states experiencing at least a 20 percent decline in per capita AFDC caseloads between 1993 and 1996, we attribute 78 percent of the decline to business-cycle factors and 6 percent to welfare waivers.

Waiver of the Right to Appeal

This Article explores the legal and constitutional issues raised by appeal waivers. Section I analyzes the current state of the case law. Section II explores the due process challenge to appeal waivers, and concludes that such a challenge would be difficult to sustain given the current state of due process law. It, nonetheless, goes on to suggest that a key premise of due process theory as it relates to plea bargaining- the presumed equality of bargaining power between the prosecution and the defense-may be ripe for challenge. Section ill discusses the public policy arguments for and against appeal waivers, and argues that the public policy debate has been unduly skewed in favor of caseload concerns, without giving sufficient consideration to the essential role that the right to appeal plays in the criminal justice system. Section III argues that appeal waivers should either be disapproved or given very restricted scope. Finally, Section IV explores the particular problems raised by waivers of sentencing error. It concludes that waivers of future sentencing error are very difficult to reconcile with traditional definitions of knowing waiver or with the basic policies which inform the right to appeal. This section urges that even if appeal waivers are upheld generally, such approval should not extend to waivers of prospective sentencing error