Patient and health advocacy groups representing millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions are applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments in the case of Texas v. United States this term. The case is the latest court challenge to the health care law known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The groups filed an amicus brief urging the Court’s swift action and citing the detrimental impacts and uncertainty patients would face were the case left at the lower court level.

OSHA updates its silica NEP, pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities are on the rise and an employee’s fatal fall leads to prison time for a construction company owner.

A controversial rule to allow teenagers to perform a potentially hazardous task in nursing homes is conspicuously absent from the Fall Regulatory Agenda released last week by the U.S. Labor Department (DOL). The rule would have rolled back a previous policy prohibiting young workers (age 16 and 17) from operating powered patient lifting devices unless they are properly trained and are using such devices in tandem with a worker who is 18 or older.

U.S. Congressman Don Bacon’s (R-NE) efforts to help protect the nation’s workers have won him recognition from the International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) in the form of a Legislative Leadership Award. The award was presented to Bacon on February 26.

News sources are reporting that President Trump will soon name his nominee for the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), an agency that oversees the implementation of government-wide policies and reviews draft regulations. That person will help execute Trump’s plan to reduce government regulations.

Legislative measure that would compensate first responders for cancers and post-traumatic stress disorder are among the “hot topics” in workers comp identified in a recent update from the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), which monitors issues that could potentially impact the workers compensation system.

Although U.S. OSHA updated its occupational silica standard in 2016 for the first time in 45 years, relatively few countries have followed suit. Aside from a handful of European countries, some Canadian Provinces and Mexico, most other countries do not have as stringent of a standard as the current U.S. Permissible Exposure Limit of 0.05 mg/m^3.

A government audit gives OSHA’s fatality and severe injury reporting regulation a failing grade; small construction companies get a new safety assessment tool and a survey uncovers shocking workplace violence levels in hospital emergency departments. These were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

A Sauganash, Ill. city water department worker dies after an underground trench collapses around him during a routine project. A man dies after he was trapped in dirt up to his waist while working at a home construction site in Washington State. A Smithton, Pa. teenager dies when the walls of a 10-foot-deep trench collapse on him as he helps install a septic system.