They really are coming after us
A $12.7 million contract to overhaul the city's publicly owned hospital is poised to pass the D.C. Council on Tuesday, after a four-hour hearing last week during which several council members appeared to have made up their minds and others expressed uncertainty as to why the contract is necessary in the first place.
It has been nearly a year since Marion Barry and fellow D.C. Council member David A. Catania got into a profanity-laced sparring match over the fiscal health of United Medical Center, and here we are, approaching another Valentine's Day and troubles have escalated.
The D.C. Council chairman will hold a hearing to look into concerns about the legitimacy of a contract award to overhaul a troubled city-owned hospital before a Feb. 19 vote on the deal.
D.C. officials awarded a $12.7 million contract to overhaul chronically troubled, city-owned United Medical Center to an out-of-town firm that failed to meet minority subcontract requirements, according to local competitors citing city law.
If you support health care reform, stay away from the D.C. model.
As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Mohammad N. Akhter will no longer be the District's health director.
D.C. Council member David A. Catania announced his Committee on Health has found $20 million to restore hospital and specialty funding to about 20,000 city residents — almost all of them immigrants — who are not eligible for Medicaid.
The D.C. Council on Tuesday failed to pass a midyear spending plan that would have compensated city workers for four furlough days in 2011 after it deadlocked on a patchwork of funding priorities and whether it made sense to put the District's payroll over its other responsibilities.
D.C. Council member David A. Catania put forth game-changing proposals Thursday intended to save money in the District's public health care framework — one to scrap the city's managed care system and another that requires many low-income patients to start paying monthly premiums for services "so that everyone is pulling the wagon."
A D.C. Council committee approved legislation Tuesday to increase the monitoring of troubled youths, fast-tracking the measure on the same day that five young men went on trial for a mass shooting in Southeast that prompted the bill.
The John A. Wilson Building may cast a reddish glow next week to signal a series of efforts aimed at increasing awareness of HIV/AIDS in the District.
An influx of $77 million into the District's coffers will not be enough to fund even two of the nine spending priorities the D.C. Council settled on for any additional money the city collects, according to revenue projections released Wednesday.
A D.C. council member introduced ambitious legislation to stem truancy among youth and recognize behavioral issues that could lead to violence one year after several youths were gunned down in front of a house on South Capitol Street.
