August 24, 2007 | Main | August 31, 2007
August 30, 2007
SPITZER'S GOOD STAND
| We'll smile too if Spitzer expands health coverage for New York's kids |
Despite bipartisan Congressional support for expanding SCHIP to cover more uninsured children, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced on August 17 that states seeking waivers to implement a higher-income ceiling for SCHIP (currently 200 percent of the poverty line) would have to show that they have already enrolled 95 percent of eligible children—a ridiculously high number that states say would be near impossible to reach, though New York, for instance, insures 88 percent of those who fit the current criteria.
The reason for CMS's petty rule, you might have heard, is that the Bush administration fears that this program could pave the way for universal health care...
Read the rest: "SPITZER'S GOOD STAND"
GREAT KATE
 |
Shindle (right) joined Acosta on condom duty Credit: Erline Andrews |
Is it just us or has the number of celebrities lending their names to efforts to fight AIDS tapered off in recent months (maybe it's the August torpor)? The slowdown made us especially appreciative to see Kate Shindle, now playing blue blood Vivienne Kensington in the Broadway musical Legally Blonde, at the corner of Nostrand and Fulton Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Tuesday handing out condoms, encouraging people to get tested for HIV and taking an HIV test herself (result: negative). Shindle was volunteering with the Housing Works Mobile Access Neighborhood Outreach (MANO) mobile-testing crew, which regularly brings its services to Bed-Stuy, one of the city's epicenters of the disease. Some 5,000 residents of the neighborhood have HIV/AIDS.
"A lot of my AIDS outreach has been at Gay Pride events—hey, I'm a former Miss America," Shindle said, "but I'm glad to have this opportunity to come to Bed-Stuy. AIDS is obviously a massive problem for women and minorities." Shindle was crowned Miss America in 1998 and spent the year of her reign doing HIV prevention and education. She has since had a successful career in theater, most notably playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret on Broadway...