CPS returns child; makes fatal mistake

"Case files from Sacramento County Child Protective Services, recently obtained by The Sacramento Bee show how a two-year old girl died. However, the records do not explain how the agency made the decision to return the child to care that led to her death."

After countless reports of abuse and neglect, including 8 missed doctor's appointments for her heart defect and cleft palate, CPS put the child in foster care. However, just months later, she was returned to her parents, a move that requires CPS to convince a dependency court judge that the conditions that originally made the home unsafe had been fixed.

"From 2008 through 2010, Chino Valley Medical Center in San Bernardino County claimed that 35.2 percent of its Medicare patients were suffering from acture heart failure. That’s six times the state average, according to a California Watch analysis of Medicare billing data.

However, in 2006, before Medicare began making bonus payments to hospitals treating patients with major complications, Chino Valley reported no cases of acute heart failure."

Two decades ago, Democrats and Republicans together sought to protect Americans from nearly 200 dangerous chemicals in the air they breathe. That goal remains unfulfilled. Today, hundreds of communities are still exposed to the pollutants, which can cause cancer, birth defects and other health issues. An ongoing investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, with NPR and the Investigative News Network uncovers the secret ‘watch list’ that underscores what government knows about the threat — and how little it has done to address it.

"The United States has deported more than 250 Haitians since January knowing that one in two will be jailed without charges in facilities so filthy they pose life-threatening health risks.

An investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found that the Obama administration has not followed its own policy of seeking alternatives to deportation when there are serious medical and humanitarian concerns."

Trevor Aaronson wrote a behind the scenes account of how this project became a reality.

"The Pinellas County Resource Recovery Facility is one of the nation’s largest waste-to-energy trash incinerators. The plant’s boilers consume 3,000 tons of garbage every day, creating saleable energy that allows the county facility to turn a $20 million annual profit."

However, in an investigation done by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, partnered with the Center for Public Integrity, discovered that the "facility was one of seven sites included within the last two months on the EPA Facility Watch List, which names “high-priority violators” of the Clean Air Act whose violations have gone unresolved for more than 270 days."

At age 52, no one would think a mother and wife, with a roof over her head, would die from a drug overdose. However, after hurting her shoulder more than a decade ago, Myrtle Bailey died of a hydrocodone overdose. Unfortunately for her and many others, doctors are treating symptoms instead of actual problems. “Bailey was one of six people in Madison County to die of drug overdoses within a four-day span in June 2010. She was also one of 62 to die of a drug or alcohol overdose last year in the county, by far the county’s highest total in the past 10 years.”

Kevin Bersett and Jacqueline Lee of the Belleville News-Democrat take a deeper look, using computer-assisted reporting tools, into why the East  St. Louis police are claiming heroin is to blame for the rise in deaths.

There’s no doubt that every city should have a children’s hospital, but what about three? Gilbert Gaul with Kaiser Health News, in collaboration with McClatchy, takes a hard look at why Orlando and other cities are building multiple children’s hospital,  and who’s behind the push.

The leading independent children’s hospitals are nonprofits, but you wouldn’t know that looking at the bottom lines of many of them – and at the million dollar salaries paid to CEOs. They’re pouring billions of dollars into new buildings, adding beds and equipment and staff at the same time Washington, the states and employers grapple with budget-busting increases in health care spending. Hospitals strongly defend the need for new and bigger facilities, and often claim they’re good for the economy because of all the jobs created. But nothing is free in health care: tax exemptions accorded nonprofits help to fund the construction, and all the costs of care ultimately are borne by taxpayers, employers and workers.