The Mississippi Delta’s healthcare blues, By Noam N. Levey, June 3, 2010, Los Angeles Times: ” This crumbling Delta town, set amid cotton fields, abandoned railroad tracks and cypress-studded bayous, is a hard place. So hard that the plaintive sound of a local musician drawing a knife blade across the strings of his guitar gave birth to the blues here a century ago. So hard that a Roman Catholic nun named Anne Brooks has struggled for the last 27 years to keep a medical clinic open for the poor. ‘It’s a pretty hand-to-mouth existence,’ said Brooks, 71, a physician with a wry sensibility and a profane streak. Brooks earned a medical degree at age 44 before coming to the Mississippi Delta to open the Tutwiler Clinic with the blessing of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. She sees the nation’s new healthcare law as a potentially happy turn in a long, hard journey. The measure provides hundreds of billions of dollars to help states expand medical insurance for the poor and pay doctors like Brooks, nearly half of whose patients have no coverage. But there’s a good chance this story will end with another difficult twist in the road for Brooks and for Tutwiler…”
Miss. looks to Iran for rural health care model, By Sheila Byrd (AP), June 2, 2010, Washington Post: “Scratch-poor towns in the Mississippi Delta once shared more in common with rural Iran – scarce medical supplies, inaccessible health care and high infant mortality rates – than with most of the U.S. Then things in Iran got better. Since the 1980s, rural Iranians have been able to seek treatment at health houses, informal sites set up in small communities as the first stop for medical care, rather than an emergency room. They’re staffed by citizens, not doctors, and the focus is on preventive care. Infant deaths have dropped from 200 per 1,000 births to 26. With the Delta’s rate 10 times worse than Iran’s, a group of volunteers is traveling to Iran this month to get a crash course in how health houses work…”
Freeze over, minimum wage up by $26 a week, By Ben Schneiders and Misha Schubert, June 4, 2010, The Age: “More than 1.4 million low-paid workers will receive their biggest pay rise in many years after the first decision by the Rudd government’s new workplace tribunal in a move attacked by employers as ‘excessive’ and ‘irresponsible’. Employers warned of a threat to jobs and said it would add $2.5 billion to the small business wages bill after the decision to lift award-reliant workers’ wages from July 1 by $26 a week to $569.90 a week or $15 an hour. The decision – $1 a week less than the ACTU’s claim – comes after minimum wages were controversially frozen last year in the final ruling of the Fair Pay Commission, the body set up by the Howard government…”
Opinion split over minimum wage rise, June 4, 2010, ABC News: “Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has dismissed concerns that Thursday’s decision to increase the minimum wage will put pressure on inflation and employment growth. Fair Work Australia has granted Australia’s lowest paid workers a wage increase of $26 a week, bringing the minimum weekly wage to almost $570. But business groups are furious, saying the increase is risky, irresponsible, unjustified and will cost jobs. Ms Gillard says the pay rise will give low-paid workers a fairer share of the benefits of Australia’s economic recovery…”
