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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Day: October 12, 2012

US Health Care System

This election, a stark choice in health care, By Abby Goodnough and Robert Pear, October 10, 2012, New York Times: “Joyce Beck, who runs a small hospital and network of medical clinics in rural Nebraska, is reluctant to plan for the future until voters decide between President Obama and Mitt Romney. The candidates’ sharply divergent proposals for Medicare, Medicaid and coverage of the uninsured have created too much uncertainty, she explained. ‘We are all on hold, waiting to see what the election brings,’ said Ms. Beck, chief executive of Thayer County Health Services in Hebron, Neb. When Americans go to the polls next month, they will cast a vote not just for president but for one of two profoundly different visions for the future of the country’s health care system…”

Low-Income Children and Prescription Medications

  • Attention disorder or not, pills to help in school, By Alan Schwartz, October 9, 2012, New York Times: “When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall. The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder ‘made up’ and ‘an excuse’ to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools. ‘I don’t have a whole lot of choice,’ said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. ‘We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.’ Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken proponents of an idea that is gaining interest among some physicians. They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost their academic performance…”
  • Use of antipsychotic drugs up sharply among poor children in Kentucky, By Beth Musgrave, October 9, 2012, Lexington Herald-Leader: “The amount of powerful antipsychotic drugs distributed to poor and disabled children on Medicaid in Kentucky jumped 270 percent from 2000 to 2010, according to a new report by researchers at the University of Kentucky. The largest growth was for minority children, who took medications to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression at three times the rate of white children in 2010. In addition, the report found unexplained geographical differences in how minority children are treated for mental illnesses. For example, minority children in Bath County in Eastern Kentucky are taking antipsychotic medications at a rate nearly 26 times higher than minority children in Christian County in Western Kentucky. Yet the report found little difference in white children in those two counties. The study also revealed wide geographical variances in prescriptions for drugs meant to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD…”

The Unemployed and Job Retraining

Rare agreement: Obama, Romney, Ryan all endorse retraining for jobless—but are they right?, By Amy Goldstein, October 10, 2012, ProPublica.org: “In February 2008, six days before he would win the Wisconsin presidential primary, Barack Obama traveled to a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wis., for a major economic address. Janesville is a community of 63,000 on a bend in the Rock River near the Illinois line, three-fourths of the way up Interstate 90 from Chicago to Madison. On the sides of downtown buildings, pastel murals by area artists show scenes from the city’s past, hinting at its muscular civic spirit and outsized role in U.S. industry. ‘History. Vision. Sweat.’ is lettered across one mural’s bottom edge. The small city has been catapulted into public view as the hometown of this year’s Republican vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan. But long before, it was the home of Parker Pen. And for nearly a century, the soul of the local economy had been the Janesville Assembly Plant, where GM had started out making tractors and, in 1923, begun to build cars. The oldest operating automotive facility in the United States, it was even four years ago a storied site for a campaign speech…”