Public Interactive

Health care reform around the country

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: February 26, 2010

It was hard to miss: The White House confab this week with the warring sides in Congress meeting over the heated issue of health care reform. National shows and local stations each weighed creative approaches to coverage:

KQED in San Francisco (home city of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been a leading advocate of health care reform), put together a page for comments and a live blog of the event. The Sunlight Foundation provided a tool to track donations to members of congress Congressional representatives as they spoke during the summit.

Tennesee had three representatives in their delegation: – two republicans and one democrat, some open to compromise on the health care bill, and one, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who made the case as other Republicans did to “start from scratch,” as WPLN in Nashville, with Capitol News Connection reported .

Nashville is a hub for the health care industry, which doesn’t seem to be hurting as the health care reform debate continues. WPLN reported that four major health are providers in Nashville, including HealthStream, posted positive year-end financial results.

But the urgency of health care reform certainly hasn’t gone away with a few hours of debate at the White House. As WAMC in Albany, NY found, thousands of people in New York alone are at risk without some serious changes:

The failure to enact health care reform this year will lead in the next decade to approximately 13,900 premature deaths of people between 25 and 64 years old in New York according to a report released today by the consumer health group Families USA.

Similar stories are cropping up around the country. For a full video roundup of health care coverage, PBS has a collection of clips from Frontline, NewsHour and more.

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Recalling the recall

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: February 23, 2010

Lawmakers in Washington are hearing from Toyota executives and auto industry experts this week to determine why some models have uncontrollable acceleration problems and whether Toyota tried to cover up flaws on the many thousands of vehicles that have now been recalled.

Capitol News Connection’s Matt Laslo was at today’s congressional hearings and has been tweeting updates. A snippet of what he’s seen today:

Some conservative members of Congress were more hesitant to slam Toyota outright. Capitol News Connection’s Sara Schiammaco noted in a roundup of opening remarks:

Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., scolded her colleagues on the panel who she said came in during the eleventh hour of the congressional examination to politicize the issue. “This should not be a trial, but rather a hearing to get to the bottom of safety issues,” Blackburn said. “This is a serious issue that has resulted in the loss jobs.”

Michigan Public Radio followed the state’s delegation at the hearings in Washington:

U.P. Congressman Bart Stupak is chairing today’s hearing. He suggests Toyota executives may be trying to hide problems with their vehicles.

“A staff analysis of the documents Toyota provided to the committee, shows that roughly 70 percent of the sudden, unintended acceleration events, recorded in Toyota’s own customer call data base, involve vehicles that are not covered by the floor mat or sticky pedal recalls,” says Stupak.

But the problems for Toyota run even deeper than Congress’s questions. PBS NewsHour’s Gwen Ifill spoke with a reporter in Detroit and analysed the criminal charges Toyota could face if a federal grand jury finds its executives at fault.

Toyota’s complete list of operations and plants in the U.S. can be found here. Take a look and see how your state is being represented at the hearings. If there’s a plant in your area, how has the recall had an impact locally?

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Monday quarterbacking

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: February 8, 2010

Last night’s Super Bowl may do wonders for the New Orleans economy after the Saints win, and it was also a big night for some unusual businesses and advertisers.

WWNO commentator Andre Perry talks about what he calls the “most pivotal weekend in New Orleans since Katrina.”

One baseball card shop in Chicago was pretty happy with the Super Bowl outcome – and it had nothing to do with the Saints. It’s an ad for Miller Lite that’s made the store a hit, as WBEZ’s Adrienne Hill reported:

Owner Tim Herron says the response has been more than a little overwhelming—people are calling, writing, emailing. Thousands of people have visited his website.
Herron: It blows anything away that I could have done personally, I just advertise in the yellow pages locally.

In an average year Herron spends three to four thousand dollars on advertising.
If Herron had bought the ad himself during the Super Bowl…it would have cost him around 3 million dollars.

Those Super Bowl ads costs millions of dollars for a few short seconds; even the U.S. government had to shell out $2.5M for its public service announcement about the upcoming U.S. Census.

If you missed any of the ads last night, NPR lists some of the best and worst Super Bowl ad moments.

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The giving text

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: January 14, 2010
Earthquake in Haiti/ Credit: Matthew Marek, American Red Cross

Earthquake in Haiti/ Credit: Matthew Marek, American Red Cross

The devastating earthquake in Haiti has dominated headlines this week, and now we are learning where aid is going and how people are giving. The spread of information and opportunities to contribute to the cause online are more advanced than during any previous crisis – to date, over $5 million dollars has been raised from text message donation programs alone.

Scott Jagow at Marketplace explains how text donations work and why they may be turning “slacktivists” into activists.

Since the money is being billed to customers and collected later, the phone companies have to advance it to the Red Cross and the other organizations…. It also allows people to act immediately as the crisis is unfolding (when they are the most emotionally moved by it as well). The trick will be getting the money in place as quickly as the technology is allowing it to be donated, and of course, as with any natural disaster, properly accounting for it and spending it effectively.

Those text donations may take a little while to meet their destination — up to 90 days — as GigaOm reported, but surely the need will still be there. Social giving site MGive is even mapping where those text donations have come from.

Once the donation is made, where does it go? Doesn’t common sense dictate that Haiti would need goods and services before or in tandem with financial donations? GlobalPost says no – supplies and drugs clog up a system that’s trying to get sorted. After the Asian tsunami in 2004, there was a “mountain of materials that confounded the efforts of the pros, and made it more difficult to deliver essential supplies on the earthquake-ravaged roads.”

Under no circumstances should you mail care packages, toys, food or clothes. Don’t even think about sending drugs. The response to prior disasters shows that regardless of your intentions, you will only be making matters worse.

For a list of where to donate and how, PBS NewsHour has compiled a page of organizations sending relief funds directly to Haiti, including Wyclef Jean’s aid organization Yele, the American Red Cross, and Partners in Health.

In addition to donation resources, there are emerging ways of finding people and information coming out of Haiti.

The Miami Herald and WLRN are following Facebook messages from people in Haiti and Facebook is trying to unclog servers so people can find each other via groups.

A map at http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ plots incidents in Haiti as they occur and reports from workers and citizens.

NPR’s Twitter list aggregates updates from people in Haiti and organizations working in the region.

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Tackling tuition

By Laura Hertzfeld | Published: November 20, 2009

Here in California, education has been making headlines this week, as the University of California board of regents voted to increase tuition more than 30%. And California is hardly alone. Across the country, education is being affected by the recession.

In New Hampshire, some students are facing a subprime loan crisis much like the housing one – except this time it’s loans to help cover rising tuition costs of higher education.

“In many cases private student loans come with variable interest rates that can top twenty percent. In addition, a number of recent graduates contend that the education they paid for included sub-par labs, mediocre instructors, and fell short of the quality education that was advertised.”

NewsHour’s Paul Solman reported that a new bill making its way through the Senate would move the student loan industry under the Department of Education, reducing the subprime risk.

In Michigan, among the areas hardest hit by recession, some recent graduates are staying true to their state.

“Anna Barson graduated from The University in Michigan and immediately moved to Washington D.C, and then New York. She’s discovered there’s a lot of grassroots activism in Detroit she wants to be a part of.
“I do feel some connection, and if I am serious about wanting to do social justice work, Detroit– I mean, it is in my home state, and I think it would be hypocritical of me to completely ignore that,” said Barson.”

Propublica reported on how the US Department of Education is dividing up stimulus funds to schools – and it’s turning into a competitive race to get any of that funding.

“Using an elaborate scoring system just announced, the program will benefit only those states that have already taken steps to shake up their school systems, the [Wall Street] Journal reports. “This is going to be highly competitive, and there are going to be a lot more losers than winners,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporter Neil King Jr. Preliminary plans for the program provoked an outpouring of criticism, The New York Times reports, but the final rules have added flexibility. Some potentially volatile aspects remain – like President Barack Obama’s emphasis on charter schools – but the new rules invite states to describe “innovative public schools other than charter schools.”

There is some good news for veterans looking to go back to school, however. As Emilie Ritter reported for Montana Public Radio back in August, a new GI bill is sending those who’ve served back to college — for free.

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