Latinos left behind in health care overhaul
Latinos left behind in health care overhaul
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s largest minority group risks being left behind by President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
Hispanics account for about one-third of the nation’s uninsured, but they seem to be staying on the on the sidelines as the White House races to meet a goal of 6 million sign-ups by March 31.
Latinos are “not at the table,” says Jane Delgado, president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, a nonpartisan advocacy network. “We are not going to be able to enroll at the levels we should be enrolling at.”
That’s a loss both for Latinos who are trying to put down middle-class roots and for the Obama administration, experts say.
Hispanics who remain uninsured could face fines, not to mention exposing their families to high medical bills from accidents or unforeseen illness. And the government won’t get the full advantage of a group that’s largely young and healthy, helping keep premiums low in the new insurance markets.
“The enrollment rate for Hispanic-Americans seems to be very low, and I would be really concerned about that,” says Brookings Institution health policy expert Mark McClellan. “It is a large population that has a lot to gain … but they don’t seem to be taking advantage.” McClellan oversaw the rollout of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit for President George W. Bush.
The Obama administration says it has no statistics on the race and ethnicity of those signing up in the insurance exchanges, markets that offer subsidized private coverage in every state. Consumers provide those details voluntarily, so federal officials say any tally would be incomplete and possibly misleading.
Chicago train jumps tracks, rams escalator
CHICAGO (AP) — The president of a Chicago transit union said Monday there are indications that the operator dozed off before the train jumped the tracks and scaled an escalator at one of nation’s busiest airports, injuring 32 people.
The operator told Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 President Robert Kelly that she had worked a lot of overtime recently and was “extremely tired” at the time of the derailment, he said at a news conference.
The derailment happened just before 3 a.m. Monday at the end of the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line at O’Hare International Airport. No one suffered life-threatening injuries.
Earlier, National Transportation Safety Board official Tim DePaepe said investigators had not drawn any conclusions about the cause of the accident, but were looking into whether faulty brakes, signals or human error were factors.
The operator, who was still hospitalized, will be interviewed, DePaepe said, and investigators would examine her routine over the last few days.
The timing of the helped avoid an enormous disaster, as the underground Blue Line station is usually packed with travelers coming to and from Chicago.
Denise Adams, a passenger on the train, described the impact to reporters.
“I heard a ‘Boom!’ and when I got off the train, the train was all the way up the escalator,” she said. “It was a lot of panic.”
Monday’s accident occurred almost six months after an unoccupied Blue Line train rumbled down a track for nearly a mile and struck another train head-on at the other end of the line in September. Dozens were hurt in that incident, which prompted the CTA to make several safety changes.
Investigators will review video footage from a camera in the station and one that was mounted on the front of the train, DePaepe said. The train will remain at the scene until the NTSB has finished some of its investigators, after which crews will remove the train and fix the escalator that has “significant damage.”
Hours after the crash, the front of the first car could still be seen near the top of the escalator.
While the station is shut down, the CTA was busing passengers to and from O’Hare to the next station on the line.
The train appeared to have been going too fast as it approached the station and didn’t stop at a bumping post — a metal shock absorber at the end of the tracks.
“Apparently (it) was traveling at a rate of speed that clearly was higher than a normal train would be,” CTA spokesman Brian Steele said. He also said it wasn’t clear how many people were on board at the time of the crash, but that it took place during what is “typically among our lowest ridership time,” Steele said.
The injured were taken to area hospitals, and Chicago Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago said Monday morning that most were able to walk away from the wreck unaided.
Chicago’s 240-mile subway system, which had fallen into disrepair in recent decades, has recently undergone renovations. A four-year, $429 million overhaul has started on the Blue Line from O’Hare to downtown. The line, which still has stations built in the late 1800s, was extended to O’Hare in the early 1980s.
Transit officials say there are more than 80,000 daily riders along the Blue Line O’Hare branch.
NYC museum dedicated to 9/11 victims opens May 21
NEW YORK (AP) — A long-awaited museum dedicated to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will open to the public at the World Trade Center site on May 21, officials announced Monday.
The opening will follow a May 15 ceremony and a six-day dedication period during which the museum will be open around the clock for 9/11 family members, rescue and recovery workers and others directly affected by the 2001 attacks, said Joe Daniels, president of the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
“We want to make sure that our doors are open for them to see it before the public does,” Daniels said.
The museum includes two core exhibitions at the foundation of the trade center complex.
One of them, called “In Memoriam,” pays tribute to the 2,983 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as well as the six people killed in a truck bombing at the trade center on February 26, 1993. The other, a three-part historical exhibition, tells the story of Sept. 11 and explores what led to the terrorist strikes.
The museum’s regular hours will be 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
“This is a major milestone,” Daniels said. “It’s just a very real marker of the rebirth of the World Trade Center.”
Planners had originally hoped that the museum could open in 2011, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Construction delays were made worse by flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy and by a funding dispute with the site’s owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, stopping all work for nearly a year.
The planned ticket price of $24 has angered some Sept. 11 family members.
Retired Deputy Fire Chief Jim Riches and Sally Regenhard, each of whom lost firefighter sons in the attacks, complained earlier this year that the museum “was never intended to be a revenue-generating tourist attraction with a prohibitive budget and entrance fee.” Museum officials defend the planned ticket price, saying the museum’s operations are privately funded.
Daniels said there will be no admission charge for relatives of Sept. 11 victims or for rescue and recovery workers. Children age 6 and younger will get in free, and admission will be free for everyone on Tuesdays from 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
There will continue to be no charge to enter the World Trade Center memorial plaza, which is already open. About 5.3 million people visited the plaza last year to see the two huge fountains that sit in the original footprints of the twin towers.