Advocates for Medicaid clients squared off today with four HMOs and the Department of Social Services at a Freedom of Information Commission hearing in Hartford. The issue: Will the public get to see documents telling us what the HMOs pay doctors to be part of the state’s Medicaid network?Throughout the controversy, DSS has waffled between […]
The Right to “No”
Can HMOs take hundreds of millions of our tax dollars—and not even tell us what they’re doing with the money? Freedom of Information hearings starting Wednesday take up that question. The public’s right to know hangs in the balance. So does the health care of hundreds of thousands of families.
The Other Eminent Domain Case
As the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v. New London still reverberates through both state and national politics, another eminent domain case made it to the Connecticut’s high court this morning. This one is about the city of Norwalk trying to take car dealership. And this time, the law firm that represented the city […]
UConn Must Reinstate Fired Nurse
Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) accused nurse Susan O’Loughlin of pocketing two doses of flu vaccine for personal use. She denied it, hospital police couldn’t prove it, but management fired her anyway. This despite the fact a gerontologist, Dr. Rita Jepsen, told police she took the medicine and they never arrested […]
Ditching Damascus
I felt great leaving the Ministry of Information, having completed my goal of collecting all my reporting. I couldn’t communicate my joy to the cabbie, and he must’ve thought I was a nut. But I gave him a big tip. Liz and I proceeded to wander the Old City, but she wasn’t […]
Ministry of Information
The Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Information hides on the eighth floor of a concrete communist monument. The Soviet Union helped build modern Syria, thus many buildings reflect the function domination over form in Damascus. Drab four story concrete buildings, brown with years of desert wind and dust abusing them, populate the streets of downtown Damascus. Every […]
Reform Committee Sputters On
Today Bridgeport Democrat Ernest Newton resigned his state Senate seat under suspicion of corruption. It was also the same day a state Capitol working group was supposed to come up with a campaign finance reform consensus. But that group blew through its deadline without a finished product. They couldn’t even discuss the very disagreements that […]
Reform Working Group Sputters On
Today Bridgeport Democrat Ernest Newton resigned his state Senate seat under suspicion of corruption. It was also the same day a state Capitol working group was supposed to come up with a campaign finance reform consensus. But that group blew through its deadline without a finished product. They couldn’t even discuss the very disagreements that […]
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Back In Damascus
The man in the Damascus shop who sold me the best falafel I ever ate told me he liked George Bush, and was glad that Bush president and invaded Iraq.“Iraqis are free,” he said, “No more Saddam.“Sure, I said, but what about the dead? 25 Pounds, he said, as the first Syrian who I heard […]