martha coakley

A year after the latest effort to pass health insurance reform began, national polls indicate Americans are evenly divided on whether it's a good idea or not. In the next few days we will find out which side – and which political party – gets its wish. Whatever you feel about President Obama's crusade on this issue, one argument he has made is incontrovertible: The status quo cannot stand.  

A huge number of local organizations supported the application for the grant. Rep. Richardson's excuse is something difficult, if not unbelievable to understand. She stated, "I was given an extremely short deadline to write the letter. I was not elected to blindly support the use of money without knowing what the programs were for."  

The state's labor market continued to stabilize in February, as the jobless rate held steady at 9.5 percent and the state's employers added an estimated 1,500 jobs in the month. The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development reported that the fastest growing sector last month was the education industry, while the weakest sectors included the professional and scientific services sector and the hotel and restaurant industry. During the past 12 months, the state has shed nearly 80,000 jobs.  

Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary restraining order against Mauricio Meyer of Marlborough and his company, Tyrex Construction and Remodeling, for allegedly providing home improvement contractor services in Sudbury without a license. According to a press release from the AG's office, Meyer allegedly created false documents and adopted the identity of a similarly named contractor who is the owner of a business in Everett. Coakley said Meyer used the Internet to find  

Advocates for single-payer health care, incensed at being excluded from a series of state hearings on health care costs, plan to hold an "informational picket" Friday to provide literature to hearing attendees. "It's just outrageous to exclude single payer," said Benjamin Day, executive director of MassCare, a single payer advocate. "We're just going to hand out testimony."

It's a little bit of a mystery to our physicians how our contract is driving up these increases.   -Thomas Glynn

 

"Marketplace" aired a story today that looked at how Google ads were used to good effect by the Scott Brown Senate campaign in Massachusetts. They're cheap, can be targeted to desired readers and showed up when voters googled Martha Coakley, Brown's opponent. "People think Google is a search engine," says Rob Willington, Brown's online strategist.

People think Google is a search engine   -Rob Willington

 

News broke this morning that the president was postponing his trip to Australia and Indonesia until June. He'd already delayed the trip, moving his departure date back to Sunday. There are a couple of ways to read this. The first reaction may be that Obama is worried about health-care reform failing in the House and wants to be on hand to twist some arms if necessary.  

Massachusetts Republicans have landed a hot speaker for their party convention. Chairwoman Jennifer Nassour announced Thursday that newly elected Sen. Scott Brown will deliver the keynote remarks at the DCU Center in Worcester on April 17. Former Harvard Pilgrim Health Care president Charles Baker and convenience store magnate Christy Mihos are competing for the party's gubernatorial nomination.  

Yesterday marked the first day of the Patrick Administration's hearings on health care cost trends. Our goals for the first day of the hearings were to publicly highlight the research data regarding what is driving health care cost growth in Massachusetts, the potential cost of inaction, and the way this issue is experienced on "Main Street" by consumers and employers. The hearings, convened by the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, featured opening remarks from key state officials, including G