Vancouver The first national campaign for ACORN Canada a decade ago had been to reform the payday lending industry. The federal government sidestepped the issue by pushing the primary responsibility for regulation to each individual province. In Quebec, the provincial parliament set a cap on payday lending annual industry rates at 30%, so the industry …
Month: May 2014
How are Hospitals Handling Charity Care and Health Insurance?
Vancouver For my money, one of the least examined impacts of the Affordable Care Act is how hospitals, many of whom are required by law or tax exempt status, to deliver some level of charitable care to lower income patients, will handle the new world of mandatory health coverage. There are still somewhere close to …
Criminalization of America’s Poor and Minorities on Trivial Beefs
Vancouver Over the last couple of days while traveling about I read on my Kindle a new book called, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by budding sociologist, Alice Goffman, about a 6-year period of observation of a changing neighborhood in Philadelphia. As the title makes clear the criminalization of this lower …