The Senate voted (60-39) today to extend coverage to United States citizens. It will be very interesting to watch the details come out of this next year. Will prevention become a focus?
Washington Post: Senate approves landmark health-care bill.
The Times ran an editorial (End to the Abstinence-Only Fantasy) on the policy/funding changes for abstinence-only education:
From the piece:
Gone is all spending for highly restrictive abstinence-only sex education programs that deny young people accurate information about contraceptives, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. The measure redirects sex-education resources to medically sound programs aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy.
…The new $114 million initiative, championed by the White House, will be administered by a newly created Office of Adolescent Health within the Department of Health and Human Services with a mandate to support “medically accurate and age appropriate programs” shown to reduce teenage pregnancy.
Unfortunately, some of this progress could be short-lived. The health care reform bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee includes an amendment, introduced by the Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, that would revive a separate $50 million grant-making program for abstinence-only programs run by states.
The DC Agenda reports (Fenty signs marriage bill) on the enactment of the Religious Freedom & Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009 pending congressional review.
From the article:
“My parents know a little something about marriage equality,” [Mayor Fenty] said. “They married almost 40 years ago and in a country at the time where every jurisdiction didn’t agree that an interracial couple should be married. Had they not been able to, I would not be standing here as mayor of the District of Columbia right now.”
The Washington Post (HIV funds bypassing areas in need) reports on HIV funding in Washington, DC, citing programs that have had (1) “little lasting impact,” (2) “financial and operational problems,” and even (3) outright fraud. Focusing on the “disparity in AIDS dollars in the District” is one major part of the fiscal equation, but the article doesn’t discuss how parity in funding would address 1, 2, and 3. These are symptoms to a disease which is not specific to HIV or AIDS and falls under the label of mismanagement.
Program Evaluation, which monitors progress and is a watchdog for quality, clearly connects the dots between the goals of a program and its outcomes. The DC Department of Health would benefit from having a strong evaluation function involved up-front at the program design and initiation phases of these programs.
Looking for early HIV and AIDS imagery for my dissertation, I came across the following article and website recently:
Trebay, G. (2009, December 11). Lost to AIDS, but Still Friended. The New York Times. Retrieved December 12, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/fashion/13memorial.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hpw
The Washington Post (‘Cash for Clunkers,’ household edition) reports on the inevitable next stimulus program. After home buyer credits and vehicle trade-in incentives, the next program is focusing on household appliances.
Rather than gaining assets and depreciating them over the long term through maintenance and repairs (thus reducing expenses), Schumpeter’s ”creative destruction” seems to be the sign of the times. The big question is just how fast the consumption cycle needs to spin to support the consumption-dependent economy. One also wonders what’s next in this tail-chasing cycle of stimulus and re-stimulus: incentives to clear out your closets, trade in your shoes, and toss our your furniture to buy new?
The Washington Post (Lobbyists pushed off advisory panels) reported on the Obama Administration’s new policy to prohibit lobbyists from serving on federal advisory panels. It will be interesting to see the way the committee system restructures to return to its previous state.
Today I had the pleasure of conducting dissertation research at the Library of Congress. Standing on the steps of the Jefferson building, I took the photo above of the U.S. Capitol building.
I was reading the following article in the Post (Federal oversight of subways proposed), which discusses a proposal by the Obama administration to have the federal Dept. of Transportation (DOT) oversee the nation’s subways rather than leave them to state and regional oversight boards.
I came across the passage about having oversight bodies pass “certification programs and demonstrate that they had an adequately trained staff, as well as financial independence and authority to compel compliance from systems they oversee” and reflected on how true it is that so many bureaucratic systems are the same. Schools, armed forces, churches…but not public health care…yet.
The New York Times (Degree Required, but You Don’t Have On) reports on the importance of credentials.
From the article: Owning that paper may seem especially important when the unemployment rate is high. Many employers are now reflexively listing a bachelor’s degree as a requirement; it’s an easy way to help whittle down hundreds of applications into a manageable pile.