Oregon Holds Health Insurance Lottery

clipped from www.physorg.com Oregon is conducting a one-of-a-kind lottery, and the prize is health insurance. The state will start drawing names this week for the chance to enroll in a health care program designed for people not poor enough for Medicaid but too cash-strapped to buy their own insurance. "It's better than nothing, it's at least a hope," said Shirley Krueger, 61, who signed up the first day. An estimated 600,000 people in Oregon are uninsured, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services. At its peak in 1995, the program covered 132,000 Oregonians. State budget cuts forced the program to close to newcomers by 2004, but it now has several thousand openings. The health insurance lottery winners will be chosen in a series of drawings that could take a few months. "This is such a wonderful opportunity," said Ellen Pinney, director of the Oregon Health Action Campaign. "We've heard absolutely no complaints, just a lot of hope that they are the ones who will be selected."

Do Parts of Ohio and Texas Not Count?

Follow the link to the complete text of this interesting article.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com In Texas and Ohio, where the latest polls suggest close races between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton today, 334 pledged delegates are at stake. But by the reckoning of some political analysts, voters selecting 142 of these delegates are rendered irrelevant by the Democrats’ primary rules, because they’re likely to be split down the middle among the two candidates. That’s because these delegates will come from the 19 districts in Texas and the 12 in Ohio that have an even number of delegates up for grabs. Slate’s Christopher Beam wrote to California Democrats before their primary that “there’s a good chance your district won’t count.” Adds Michael Barone, in U.S. News & World Report, “Nobody seems to have thought through the consequences of having allocated so many districts an even number of delegates

Vermont’s Outsized Influence

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Texas had 23.5 million residents in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — more than twice the population of Ohio at the time. Yet in today’s primary, Ohio has just 27% fewer delegates at stake than Texas. Meanwhile, Texas has 38 times the number of people as Vermont, but just 13 times more delegates at stake. Rhode Island has more than twice the number of delegates as Texas, per-person. delegate counts use the Electoral College count as proxy for population smaller states benefit All of these disparities concern pledged delegates, whose votes are supposed to be tied to the states’ popular votes. Superdelegates, whose votes aren’t bound, also aren’t tied to states’ population. Instead, they reflect the residence of Democratic National Committee members and the significant political offices held by Democrats in the states. As a result, Vermont has a superdelegate for every 78,000 people, according to the 2006 population figures; for Texas, it’s one in 672,000.

Smart Clips: We Are The Ones Song by will.i.am

Smart Clips: We Are The Ones Song by will.i.am

Your Boss Knows What Web Sites You Visit

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute found that 66% of the 304 businesses surveyed monitor what Web sites employees visit and 43% monitor the contents of the emails employees send. It also found that businesses are willing to act when they feel employees are abusing the technologies: 30% say they’ve fired someone for misusing the Internet and 28% say they’ve fired someone for misusing email. The AMA seems to think the worst of employees. In its write-up of the survey it accuses employees of playing “fast and loose with internal email,” and the survey’s tone suggests that employees are just waiting for an excuse to goof off. “It’s the folks who go overboard who get in trouble,” Manny Avramidis, a senior vice president at the AMA, told us when we asked if workers should be worried. He then listed activities that he thought were OK: Sending an email to make sure your child made it home safely or ordering flowers on Valentines Day.

Mass. Health Gurus Call for Revivial of Managed Care

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Massachusetts is in a pickle that could soon spread nationwide: How to make sure everyone can afford to buy health insurance. The state recently mandated insurance for all, but is finding it tougher than expected to bring down insurance premiums and copays to make coverage affordable. In an op-ed in this morning’s Globe, two of the state’s health gurus say the answer lies in managed care Dorsey, former medical director at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Berwick, CEO of the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement, both practiced medicine in the Harvard Community Health Plan, a managed care system they say was an early adopter of every hot idea you can think of: “electronic medical records, patient reminders, creative roles for advanced practice nurses and physician assistants, quality measurement, and more.” Read a recent WSJ profile of Berwick.

Fear and Ricin in Las Vegas

clipped from blogs.wsj.com A toxin called ricin just turned up in a Las Vegas motel, according to preliminary tests. It’s probably not terrorism-related, the Associated Press reports, but it’s plenty scary anyway. Seven people were taken to the hospital as a precaution. When it’s injected, ricin is “one of the most toxic substances known The poison interferes with RNA and blocks the body’s ability to make protein. “If you can’t synthesize protein, you’re dead, there’s no antidote. “Once you’ve got it in the cell, we don’t know how to get it out Ricin is made from castor beans (Latin name, Ricinus communis), which were found in the room along with a powdery substance believed to be ricin, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. “They’re quite pretty seeds as a matter of fact,” Norton says of the beans (pictured) A form of ricin is used in an experimental drug designed to target cancer cells while sparing healthy cells. An early-stage study is described here.