- In places with scarce prenatal care, midwives deliver maternity solution, By David Wahlberg, November 23, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “The people who live in and around this small city where the foothills meet the plains can count on an important service: The hospital delivers babies. One reason maternity care is available in New Mexico’s San Miguel County, where the poverty rate is nearly twice the national average, is the presence of midwives, who oversee most of the births. Rural hospitals in New Mexico, Wisconsin and across the country have dropped deliveries in recent years because they can’t find enough doctors to do them. But the arrangement in Las Vegas, where only one doctor does obstetrics full time but three nurse midwives attend births, suggests midwives can help maintain maternity care in rural areas…”
- High deductibles mean less medical care for lower-income families, survey finds, By Eryn Brown, November 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Lower-income families with high-deductible insurance policies are more likely to delay or forego medical care because of cost than higher-income families, reported a study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The findings are not surprising. But coming at a time when policymakers are working to keep healthcare costs down and outcomes up — calibrating insurance plans to motivate consumers to be choosier about the medical services they purchase, yet still seek enough care to remain healthy — the results could yield useful ideas, the researchers wrote…”
Day: November 24, 2010
No Child Left Behind and School Transfers
Student transfers from failing schools via No Child law swamp successful ones, By Michael Birnbaum, November 23, 2010, Washington Post: “In some struggling school districts around the country, students transferring from failing schools are overwhelming the few successful schools in their areas, an unintended byproduct of the No Child Left Behind law. The issue arose in Prince George’s County this year, when the parents of nearly 3,000 middle-schoolers learned just days before school started that they could switch their children to the only two non-specialized middle schools in the county that met the law’s performance goals. About 200 families accepted the offer, taking their new schools by surprise. The flurry of transfers – more than 700 in Prince George’s this year across all 12 grades – has packed classrooms while underscoring a tough aspect of the Bush administration’s landmark education initiative. It demands steadily rising achievement – all students are supposed to pass benchmark tests by 2014 – and, as a result, more schools fail every year…”
Young Men in Poverty – Canada
Young men the face of poverty in post-recession Canada: study, By Heather Scoffield, Winnipeg Free Press: “The recession has left a lingering bruise on an increasingly vulnerable sector of Canadian society: young, single men. As social scientists begin to dissect the effects of the downturn, they’re coming to the same conclusion Kerry Kaiser has reached intuitively, by watching the clientele at her downtown Ottawa food bank. ‘Single males are screwed,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t know why.’ She has an inkling, though. The young men who show up hungry on her doorstep are spending most of their welfare cheques on rent. They don’t get the benefits or the subsidies that governments have set up over the years for struggling families. And now, with low-skill jobs scarce in the wake of the recession, they can’t compete. ‘We see them getting it at all angles,’ Kaiser said. Her observation dovetails with the findings of John Stapleton, a social policy researcher who has just completed an exhaustive study of social assistance during the recession, for the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation…”