FlaglerLive | March 18, 2013
The proposed law, by Sen. David Simmons, is intended to thwart efforts to pass labor-friendly laws in local governments, since state-level labor reform is beyond reach with the anti-labor, GOP-led Florida Legislature.
FlaglerLive | March 16, 2013
As more small employers avoid the health act’s requirements through self-coverage, small-business marketplaces intended to cover millions of Americans could break down and become unaffordable.
FlaglerLive | March 15, 2013
Although Florida lawmakers have made it known they have no intention of going along with an expansion of Medicaid under the federal health care law, legislative leaders say they’re open to crafting an alternative that would find some way to expand health care coverage to many more uninsured as the law envisions.
FlaglerLive | March 12, 2013
Florida lawmakers say they want to pursue an alternative plan, possibly expanding Healthy Kids, that would use federal money to help uninsured low-income people get coverage through private insurers. Democrats are not entirely opposed.
FlaglerLive | March 11, 2013
Flagler’s “Ulympic Games” feature 10 sports over a week, April 6-13, open to anyone employed by any local government, but as a March 15 deadline approaches, only a few dozen people had registered.
FlaglerLive | March 11, 2013
The state’s share would only be a fraction of the $55 billion overall expansion cost, with the federal government paying the rest. Under the law better known as Obamacare, Washington would pay 100 percent of the expansion costs during the first three years and gradually reduce that share to 90 percent in 2020.
FlaglerLive | March 4, 2013
Only a few hours after Florida’s chief economist said the state can’t afford to leave billions of federal dollars sitting on the table, the House committee on the Affordable Care Act voted to do exactly that.
FlaglerLive | March 2, 2013
None of his years of reporting had prepared Charles Ornstein for this moment, this decision–whether, and when, to let his mother die. In fact, he began to question some of his assumptions about the health-care system.
FlaglerLive | February 28, 2013
The peak nationally came in 1995, with 107,637 juveniles incarcerated on a single day, and dropped to 70,792 on a single day in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. During that time, the overall incarceration rate dropped by 41 percent.
FlaglerLive | February 27, 2013
Long-term care insurance is expensive, but the costs of long-term care are far more so. The experiences of local residents and businesses contending ding with reality almost everyone will eventually face illustrate the dilemmas of aging in a society with a meager safety net. A special report.
FlaglerLive | February 27, 2013
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the state had not shown a “special need” for drug testing applicants to the program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It upheld a preliminary injunction issued in 2011 by U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven.
FlaglerLive | February 21, 2013
The announcement was a dramatic move for the Republican governor, who launched his political career as an outspoken critic of President Obama’s efforts to overhaul the health-care system. The announcement also shifts the focus of the contentious Medicaid debate squarely to the Legislature, which would have to approve any expansion.
FlaglerLive | February 19, 2013
Even when deductibles are included, 36 percent of policies offered to individuals on the private market exceed the new health law’s allowable limit. Once the cap is enforced, consumers may see higher premiums instead.
FlaglerLive | February 13, 2013
We can’t begin to reduce our surging healthcare costs in this country without addressing affordability and accessibility to healthier foods, by not educating the users of the system on personal responsibility and choices, and by moving toward more locally grown food, argues Milissa Holland.
FlaglerLive | February 7, 2013
Car insurance costs go down when drivers drive responsibly for a few years. A similar approach to health care could help bring costs down, but first, Milissa Holland argues, people must take responsibility for their own health and lifesrtyles–and the way they seek out medical help: the ER is usually not the answer.
FlaglerLive | February 4, 2013
People leaving medicare Advantage for traditional Medicare are have higher levels of significant health problems, fueling concerns that the private plans cater to more profitable, healthy beneficiaries but don’t provide the most attractive care for the very ill.
FlaglerLive | February 2, 2013
Backers of early childhood education and an expansion of Medicaid were disappointed, educators were guardedly happy about raises, and others applauded more money for prevention services to keep youths out of the juvenile justice system, plus $145,360 for juvenile health and mental health.
FlaglerLive | January 31, 2013
Florida has too many working poor whose employers don’t provide health insurance. Rather than complaining about the costs of coverage, we should try to increase the earnings of our people, argues Rick Outzen.
FlaglerLive | January 30, 2013
The discipline it takes aside, getting healthy can be costly, writes Milissa Holland, in many more ways than one: healthy food is more expensive, exercise isn’t always as easy as deciding to do it, and even health insurance plans for the poor are becoming intractable. An invitation to discuss a central issue in most people’s lives.
FlaglerLive | January 29, 2013
In oncologists’ offices and Alzheimer’s nursing homes, illness is not “a portrait in blacks and whites, but unending shades of gray, involving the most profound of personal, moral, and religious questions.” Including when may it be right to help end a life.
FlaglerLive | January 29, 2013
It’s not here yet. But it’s spreading fast: a new, virulent strain of norovirus, an intestinal and very contagious virus that causes projectile vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms, and that has the Flagler County Health Department cautioning schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other such places to beware.
FlaglerLive | January 28, 2013
Last year, the Florida Legislature passed the nation’s most protective child abuse reporting law. The state’s abuse hotline will accept reports of abuse committed by people other than parents and primary caregivers, such as a coach, teacher or neighbor.
FlaglerLive | January 28, 2013
Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies drew their guns, then their Tasers, but ended up firing neither as Erik Flores, a 32-year-old resident of Lindsay Drive in Palm Coast, was wrestled to the ground and arrested in the latest confrontation between a potentially violent, mentally ill man and police, just five weeks after another 32-year-old man was shot and killed for wielding a machete at Flagler deputies.
FlaglerLive | January 24, 2013
For the first time, Coke is using its slick commercials to address obesity. But the company’s new ads, which are brimming with misleading statements, just put lipstick on this pig, argues Jill Richardson.
FlaglerLive | January 23, 2013
With a startling personal revelation of her own, Milissa Holland argues in her latest column that if mental illness is to be a focus of gun control, it must be much better defined–and far more de-stigmatized. Otherwise, it’s a shield behind which politicians will do nothing.
FlaglerLive | January 22, 2013
From Angry Birds to the Angry Whopper, road rage and mass murderers, we’re in an age of anger that appears driven by frustrated expectations and imagined grievances.
FlaglerLive | January 19, 2013
In the wake of allegations of abuse by staffers at a girls’ lockup in Milton, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice is tightening its oversight of private residential facilities – adding interviews with youths and a partnership with the non-profit Annie E. Casey Foundation to its monitoring procedures.
FlaglerLive | January 16, 2013
Sen. Oscar Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, filed the measure (SB 314) to repeal the 2011 “Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act,” which isn’t currently being enforced because a federal judge threw it out in July. The state, however, is appealing that ruling.
FlaglerLive | January 15, 2013
Americans with developmental disabilities still remain second-class citizens in the eyes of the law and our fellow human beings. There is no greater symbolic gesture of the ridicule they endure than the accepted use of the word “retarded” in day-to-day speech.
FlaglerLive | January 14, 2013
Florida’s costs could be as low as $3 billion over 10 years — a huge drop from the nearly $26 billion figure that AHCA produced in a report last month. Even with the changes, it appears that the Scott administration believes that the state’s final tab over 10 years would be higher.
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