What Does Obama Really Believe In?, By Paul Tough, August 15, 2012, New York Times Magazine: “From the back seat of Steve Gates’s white Pontiac, Monique Robbins spotted Jasmine Coleman walking home from school alone. It was an icy December afternoon on Chicago’s South Side, and Jasmine’s only protection against the wind was a thin purple jacket. She looked cold. Gates pulled the car over to the curb, and Robbins hollered at Jasmine to get in. Jasmine was 16, and Robbins and Gates, who were both in their 30s, were her neighbors. All three of them lived in or around Roseland, a patch of distinctly subprime Chicago real estate that stretches from 89th Street to 115th Street, way down past the last stop on the El. Fifty years ago, Roseland was a prosperous part of Chicago, home to thousands of blue-collar workers, most of them white, employed by the South Side’s many steel and manufacturing plants. But the plants closed long ago. . .”
Tag: Chicago
Medical Home Network – Chicago, IL
Coordinated care program aims to save Medicaid millions, By By Peter Frost, April 20, 2012, Chicago Tribune: “On Easter, Keontae Barnes doubled over in pain, her back and stomach tightening so much she thought she was in labor. Nearly eight months pregnant with her second child, a girl, Barnes headed straight to the emergency department at Holy Cross Hospital in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood, just a few blocks from her home. After a quick – and costly – examination, doctors determined it was a false alarm; her pains were normal for women in the later stages of pregnancy. The next day, her primary care doctor at Chicago Family Health Center called, asking Barnes what happened and making sure she was OK. ‘I was shocked. I said, ‘How did you know?” Barnes said. ‘She told me to come in the next day, and she gave me her emergency pager and her email. She said if I ever have any questions or concerns, I can always get in touch, any time of day.’ About a week later, Barnes did just that. Instead of rushing to the ER with intense chest pains, she called her doctor. Acid reflux. A trip to Walgreens solved the problem in short order and saved the state’s Medicaid program and Holy Cross thousands of dollars…”
Free and Reduced-Price Lunch Program
School free-lunch program dogged by abuses at CPS, By Monica Eng and Joel Hood, January 13, 2012, Chicago Tribune: “When a teachers assistant at Chicago’s North-Grand High School handed in her child’s lunch form last school year, it showed that her household made too much money for the child to receive free lunches. So the school’s assistant clerk told the woman to fill out a new one, explaining, ‘She shouldn’t have to pay for lunch,’ and besides, ‘Nobody checks the applications anyway,’ according to an inspector general’s report released last week. Apparently, word had gotten around. At the West Side school, more than a dozen CPS and city employees had submitted false applications for free or reduced-price lunches, according to James Sullivan, Chicago Public Schools’ inspector general. The alleged offenders included teachers, teachers assistants, district employees, a security officer and two people in law enforcement, some of them earning six-figure salaries. The findings led Sullivan to conclude in his report that the National School Lunch Program, meant to provide basic nutrition to needy students, was ‘ripe for fraud and abuse’ because of layers of bureaucracy, incentives for high enrollment, and minimal checks and balances…”