Community ClicksDrug money
A severe but underappreciated American drug problem (sometimes deadly and often expensive) is patients’ failure to take prescribed medications — even to save their own lives (such as with anti-coagulants or cholesterol-regulating statins).
In recent pilot programs, according to a June New York Times report, compliance rates have been significantly improved — by
giving patients money ($50 to $100 a month, sometimes more) if they remember to take their drugs.
Data show that, indeed, such compliance subsidies reduce society’s overall health care costs by preventing expensive hospital admissions.
Beyond health care costs is the social benefit when violent schizophrenics take their medications and refrain from attacking people, according to data.
Government in real action
Labor unions’ sweet, recession-proof contract with the New York City area’s severely cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year provided 8,074 blue-collar workers (conductors, engineers, repairmen, etc.) with six-figure compensation, including about 50 who earned $200,000 or more.
Researchers cited by The New York Times in April found that one Long Island Railroad conductor made $239,148, about $4,000 more than the MTA’s chief financial officer and about $48,000 short of being the highest-paid person in the entire system.
Included in some of the fat payouts for LIRR locomotive engineers was special “penalty” pay (about $94,600 in one case) for engineers who are required to move a train to a different location from its normal assignment.
>>> Arizona (viewed by some as hard-hearted for its April law stepping up its vigilance for illegal immigrants) showed a soft side recently, implementing a $1.25 million federal grant that it believes will save the lives of at least five squirrels a year.
The state’s 250 endangered Mount Graham red squirrels risk becoming roadkill on Route 366 near Pima, and the state is building a rope bridge for them to add to several existing tunnels.
Great art!
At a June concert in Australia’s Sydney Opera House, American musicians Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed performed Anderson’s 20-minute, very-high-pitched composition, “Music for Dogs,” an arrangement likely to have been largely unmelodious to humans, who generally cannot hear such high pitches, but of more interest to dogs, who can.
Dogs were permitted in the audience, but news reports were inconclusive about their level of enjoyment.
>>> West Virginia’s Division of Culture and History announced in June it would hold a state-sponsored art exhibition, showcasing the state’s arts talent.
Until now, the state has refused such projects because the last one, in 1963, turned out badly. The grand prize that year, supposedly representing the character and tradition of the state, went to “West Virginia Moon,” which was a collection of broken boards and a screen door.
