Tuesday, September 30 at 9 p.m. (check your local listings)

Watch the trailer at www.pbs.org/pov/criticalcondition
Critical Condition paints a disturbing and gripping portrait of what happens when you’re sick and uninsured in America. The unforgettable subjects of this cinema verite documentary discover that being uncovered can cost them their jobs, health, homes, savings, and even their lives. [...]

The Economic Policy Institute recently released a comparison of McCain’s and Obama’s healthcare plans. Please click on the link to read the entire article.
“Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have presented very different plans to reform health care in the United States. Last week, the Urban Institute/Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center (TPC) provided what appears [...]

In a dramatic victory for the 8.5 million out of work Americans, Congress passed an essentially “bulletproof” 13-week extension of unemployment benefits last week. Given that our economy is now losing 60,000 jobs a month due to lay-offs, job eliminations, and an otherwise sluggish economy, the action was overdue.

From Editor and Publisher:
“SANTA ANA An Indian company will take over copyediting duties for some stories published in The Orange County Register and will handle page layout for a community newspaper at the company that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning daily, the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks [...]

This is an excerpt from a New York Times story published May 16, 2008. Click on the link to read the entire article:

“People on Wall Street seem to be vanishing overnight.

JoAnne Kennedy was laid off by JPMorgan Chase while she was recovering from surgery.

Thousands are losing their jobs as hard-pressed banks cut deep. But while layoffs are nothing new in the financial industry (they come with almost every downturn), this round seems different: it is eerily quiet.

So quiet, in fact, that people refer to these cuts as stealth layoffs. Some bosses hardly say a word after people are fired. At Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, for example, the first clue that someone is gone can be e-mail messages that are returned to senders from a former colleague’s inactivated corporate address.

While the financial markets have found a bit of a footing lately, banks are pushing ahead with plans for some of the deepest job reductions in years. Since last summer, banks worldwide have announced plans to cut 65,000 employees. …”

Here’s a healthcare horror story on a national level: 60 Minutes’ report on Remote Area Medical (RAM), which sets up emergency clinics in the world’s neediest areas. Recently, though, RAM set up its massive clinic, for a weekend, in an exhibit hall in Knoxville, Tenn. Founded to transport U.S. doctors to truly remote areas to provide medical service, RAM is now running weekend clinics in urban as well as rural U.S. areas.

From The St. Petersburg Times:
“Finding a job in Florida is the toughest it has been in three years. State officials said Friday that Florida’s unemployment rate jumped to 4.7 percent in December from 4.3 percent in November. The basic problem: a slowdown in job creation. The economy is creating jobs, but not enough to keep [...]

“It’s the perfect crime, so big and so reeking of establishment that few recognize the inherent criminality, but the results are the same as if some street thug held us all up at gunpoint. This country is spiraling toward recession. Huge amounts of wealth have disappeared with upward of 2-million families in danger of losing [...]

Are you eligible for Medicare but still needing to work (and having trouble finding any) and so painfully aware of the need for finding the plan option that best meets their needs for costs and services … and confused by all the blood-suckers out there?

The St. Petersburg Times’ monthly LifeTimes section, October 30, 2007, aimed at the seniors just published these articles linked below. They do a great analysis of what’s what, tell clearly how to find details you need on the Medicare.gov site, and are generally VERY well written. They’re a solid resource for our members and other readers in that age/needs demographic.

The St Petersburg Times is blessed with a law-degreed, progressive Perspectives page columnist, Robyn Blumner. Here’s the link to her latest: Locked in a job by health insurance:
“[T]his tethering of an employee to his job [in order to retain health insurance for family members with preexisting conditions] reduces job mobility by about 25 percent, says [...]