The Wall Street Journal reported on communities hard hit by the opioid epidemic, hoping settlement funds would mitigate the damage done by drug addiction. The Opioid Master Settlement Agreement was patterned after the tobacco settlements, except federal officials tried to structure the funds in such a way to avoid the money from being siphoned off for purposes unrelated to drug treatment.
Author: Devon Herrick
Are Senior Homeowners Aging in Place or Stuck or Stuck in Place?
I toured a naturally occurring retirement community (NORC) in Queens, New York a few years ago. It was an Aging in Place initiative, partly funded by the Denver-based Daniels Fund. Fun fact: The fund was established by Bill Daniels before he died. His fortune came from basically inventing cable TV. The purpose of a NORC is to allow people in the community to age in their own homes as long as possible, rather than forced to move into assisted living.
A New Government Initiative Aims to Root Out Anticompetitive Practices in Health Care
There is an old idiom in American English, “he shut the barn door after the horse has bolted.” The saying refers to someone who initiates preventive measures after it is too late. This is another way of saying an action was too little, too late. This analogy applies to a new initiative of the federal government to root out anticompetitive behavior in the health care industry.
STAT News: Nonprofit Hospitals Should Pay Taxes on Profits
The phrase nonprofit does not mean nonprofit organizations do not earn profits. Any organization that loses money every single year will soon go out of business. At the very least nonprofit organizations must break even. Nonprofit status is a tax election. It means in theory the organization is supposed to plow all profits back into a charitable mission, rather than distribute profits to shareholders (of which there are none in a nonprofit organization). In reality nonprofit hospitals plow most of their profits into expansion.