The Washington Post reports on an analysis by Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA) which shows that more than 50% of students at for-profit colleges drop out without earning a degree or certificate:
“Industry officials immediately disputed the analysis, which Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) released during a hearing on for-profit colleges that Republicans called unfair and one-sided. The Obama administration is attempting to tighten regulation of the industry, which relies on federal student aid for much of its revenue.
“‘The bottom line is this: For students enrolling in for-profit schools, graduation with a degree is a possibility, but debt without a diploma is a probability,’ said Harkin, chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
“Of about 960,000 students who enrolled from July 2008 through June 2009 in schools run by 16 for-profit companies, data show that 57 percent had withdrawn from school as of August 2010, according to Harkin.”
According to The New York Times, the 8.2% rise in Medicaid enrollments from December 2008 to December 2009—primarily due to joblessness and the resulting loss of health benefits—is the largest increase since the early days of the government health insurance plan for low-income and uninsured people:
“Those kinds of increases exact a heavy toll on state budgets, as states share the cost of the Medicaid program with the federal government…
“‘We do have horrific pressures on the Medicaid program,’ said Carol A. Herrmann-Steckel, Alabama’s Medicaid commissioner.’
“…Despite the enhanced federal aid for Medicaid last year, virtually every state made cuts to benefit levels or provider payments in order to balance budgets. As a condition of receiving stimulus money, states were prohibited from lowering eligibility thresholds, which they are allowed to set within federal parameters.”
The Wall Street Journal has analyzed which cities face the biggest housing risks—those in California and Florida top the list—and offers a housing stress indicator with data for most of the major metropolitan U.S. areas that have been hit hard by the housing crisis:
“Real Time Economics has worked up a simple housing-stress indicator for most of the major U.S. metropolitan areas that combines three factors — the fraction of mortgage-holding homeowners in a community with a monthly housing payment in excess of 30% of income, the percentage of all people in the region without health insurance and the fraction of the population without a job. The indicator uses 2009 data from Census’s American Community Survey.
“Within more than 500 metro areas, the top 20 most stressed include nine in California and six in Florida, where the housing bust has been particularly acute. Among the most populous cities, Miami tops the list, followed by California’s Inland Empire, Los Angeles and San Diego.”
USA Today covered a congressional hearing on how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) handled the recall of adult Motrin that was found to be defective, a case that highlighted the question about whether the FDA should have the authority to mandate drug recalls, which are currently voluntary on the part of manufacturers:
“The Food and Drug Administration waited too long to ask McNeil Consumer Healthcare to recall defective adult Motrin made in the company's San Juan, Puerto Rico, plant, the agency's principal deputy commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein, said Thursday at a congressional hearing.
“‘It was clear in November 2008 that the Motrin lots did not meet specifications,’ Sharfstein told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ‘Yet, the actual recall did not happen until early August of the following year. This took too long.’
“Oversight committee chair Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., has dubbed it the ‘phantom recall,’ because McNeil hired a contractor to buy up the defective Motrin without mentioning the word ‘recall.’”