Category: Health

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Douge Cook

Are Regulators Being Bought Off by the HMO Money Machines?

Florida health czar Doug Cook said he was “sick for a week” after he learned two of his HMO regulators had accepted more than $90,000 in consulting fees from two Medicaid health plans. “Common sense would indicate this is extremely improper,” said Cook, director of

Fred Schulte April 24, 1998
Bruce C. Vladeck, the outgoing administrator of the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration.

The Medical Gold Rush for Poor Patients

Just a few short months ago, a New York medical insurance plan called AssureCare, Inc. hoped to reap hearty profits caring for thousands of society’s poorest people. Bankrolled by a Florida entrepreneur with a $480 million personal fortune, the HMO seemed likely to snatch up

Fred Schulte November 14, 1997
Corey Whitman, 11, is physically healthy, but is one of thousands of children coping inside a family ravaged by AIDS. His mother and sister have died and his father and other sister are infected. He is shown here with his favorite sister, Megan, who has since died. When she began to have difficulty walking, Corey was the first to put her in the stoller and take care of her. At age 11, Corey attempts to fill an adult role and helps his mother care for Megan.

The Others who Suffer from AIDS

Here is the dream that kept coming back to Corey Whitman in the fall of 1991, a few weeks after he turned eleven: He and his parents and his four brothers and sisters are camping out in the woods in a motorhome, a spanking new

Doug Root and Randy Olson May 15, 1996
Alone and confused, Melody, 8, follows her grieving mother into a bar across from the funeral home where her twin sister's body was handled. Melody doesn't outwardly dwell on the fact that she, too, has AIDS, but she will tell anyone who asks that she probably won't live much longer.

Milestones

Most Fridays, George Whitman doesn’t have the strength of will to take his four children to the community dinners for people affected by AIDS. There is the hour he spends in verbal combat with his two oldest boys – Corey, 15, and Ryan, 16, who

Doug Root and Randy Olson February 16, 1996
Chris and her kids are crushed by the AIDS-related death of the two-year-old son of a close friend they met at an AIDS family support group. The death of the little boy, Jesse, makes Chris wonder if she can survive the death of her own children. Weeks later, despair gives way to practical considerations. She begins to plan custody arrangements for her children should she die before them. Photo by Randy Olson

An American Family Lives with AIDS

In the last three months of her life, Christine Skubis Whitman passed through the layers of dying from the AIDS virus in much the same way a newborn infant learns to live. Megan and Melody are six-year-olds fraternal twins living markedly different lives with the

Doug Root and Randy Olson May 16, 1995