HMO-phobia
A bit of a health and safety theme today. The New York Times
leads with a story about how managed care health providers in California, who
now cover more than half the state's population, face a state government review
and many possible legislative reforms, all arising from widespread patient
dissatisfaction with their rules. The Los Angeles
Times is above the fold with an account of how HMOs will launch a
lobbying blitz this week against current congressional proposals for deep cuts
in the payments they receive for Medicare patients. Their big message: if any
of these are passed, plan members will have to start paying for their
prescriptions.
The Wall Street Journal 's main front page feature examines the
trend of nonprofit hospitals retaining their tax-exempt status while straying
pretty far from their original charge of using their assets for such charitable
purposes as caring for the indigent. The piece focuses on a Nashville,
Tennessee nonprofit hospital that has a lavish plastic surgery center catering
to country and western stars and will soon own a $15 million, 18-acre office
and training-field complex that it will rent to the new NFL franchise coming to
town. And USA
Today leads with the news that during the period when 27 states raised
their speed limits, traffic fatalities actually fell slightly. The paper
reminds readers that opponents of higher speed limits had claimed they would
result in 6,400 more fatalities per year.
The LAT 's top story is that the leader of the recent coup in
Cambodia, Hun Sen, "promises free and fair elections and urges human rights
organizations and the media to continue their work." And the Washington Post leads with the NAACP reconsidering its
long-held goal of integration at its convention this week.
The front pages of the NYT , LAT , and WP make plenty of
room for Madeleine Albright's trip to the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague where for
the first time, she saw the names of her paternal grandparents in an inscribed
list of Holocaust victims.
Starr-gaysing . The WP carries a piece way inside with the
suggestion that some of Kenneth Starr's investigators recently asked Bob
Hattoy, a gay Clinton administration official, if he had been successful hiring
homosexuals in to the government. Starr says that the question was never put to
Hattoy, but that when in the course of a Whitewater interview, Hattoy was asked
about his general government duties, he volunteered that, in Starr's words, "it
was his job to locate homosexuals" for administration jobs.
Guess which major newspaper isn't reading Slate carefully enough?
This very issue of this very magazine contains a piece by ace foreign
correspondent Peter Maass (two "s"s) concerning his persistent experience of
being confused with the author of The Valachi Papers and Serpico ,
writer Peter Maas (one "s"). And yet, on today's on-line version of the
NYT op-ed page, there appears a piece on Bosnia over the byline of Peter
"Maas." Although it's possible that Sammy the Bull's collaborator has branched
out, it's not likely--after all, the piece's credit line is all about
Peter "Maass."
