pennsylvania posts

This is enough to make me want to move to Pennsylvania. The state will give you a loan of up to $60,000 to pay your mortgage and taxes to keep your house if you lose your job.

Whoever thought of this program, I am sending you cyber hugs. No, no, actually, I am nominating you for president. You feel the pain of the unemployed, the uninsured with the audacity to get sick, the recently divorced trying to stand on one financial leg in the greatest recession of all time.

When we reported on the likely prospect (which has since become reality) of California handing out IOUs while lawmakers tussled over how to close the state's budget gap, we didn't think "work now, get paid later" was going to become a common way for states to handle short-term cash crunches.

Looks like we were wrong. We're sad to say another state has resorted to making state workers pay the price for its inability to produce a workable budget.

According to CNNMoney.com, Pennsylvania has frozen the pay of its state workers as of July 1. This means that the paycheck employees got on July 17 only includes the hours they worked in June, while the paycheck they would ordinarily receive on July 31 will be replaced with a big, fat goose egg. Worse yet, whenever they are reimbursed, the state's not even going to throw in any interest for their trouble. (California is at least throwing its creditors a bone with 3.75% interest).

The state of Pennsylvania is looking into the possibility of creating a new type of four-year degree-granting institution which would offer a low cost accelerated bachelor's degree on a no-frills campus. State Board of Education chairman Joseph Torsella says that there should be a no-frills offering in the marketplace, comparing the proposed college to, "a Yugo or a Ford." Among the "missing" items at this school would be sports teams, extracurriculars and the fancy dorm rooms that many students have come to expect after watching Greek.

For now, the option of a super cheap utilitarian state school is nothing more than an idea, but if the recent statistical profile of a college freshmen is an indicator it deserves action. The annual survey of freshmen taken in the fall of 2008 (pdf) indicates that over half of the students have some concern about their ability to finance college and 10.9% express major concerns regarding their ability to secure enough money to finish college.

In all, 64% of students express concern of some kind, a 3% increase from the fall 2007 report. While the 3% increase is noteworthy, the most troubling aspect of the survey is that the percent of concerned students have remained more or less unchanged for the past 10 years!

Clearly there is a need for lower cost four-year degree-granting intuitions in America. If Pennsylvania and other states can successfully trim the extracurriculars and focus dollars on high caliber teachers, institutions like these won't only succeed but will thrive as more young people understand the burden of a student loan. These low cost schools would also provide needed competition to traditional schools to remain competitive on pricing and academic quality improving the higher education landscape as a whole.

Even though I graduated from and work at a "Toyota" institution, the prospect of a "Yugo" next door excites me and buoys my hope for higher education's future!

When my sister Ella first started having liver problems in December 2007, I went out to visit her. When I got to her hospital room, she was trying to be brave, but was deeply worried. In addition to her fears about treatment, Ella was terrified about her finances. As a graduate teaching assistant, she didn't have very much money, and she wasn't insured; frankly, she had no idea how she was going to pay for the drugs and medical care that she needed to save her life.

A few days later, when the hospital released Ella, they gave her prescriptions for Ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic, and Percocet, a painkiller. While we were in Wal-Mart picking up a huge pile of assorted health-care paraphernalia, she dropped off her order at the pharmacy counter. When we picked it up a half-hour later, we had a huge surprise: Ella's medications came to less than $15.

Later on, discussing this with Ella's doctors, we realized that the low cost of her meds wasn't an accident. Understanding her financial situation, her health-care team had carefully chosen Ella's drugs. Taking into account both efficacy and cost, they had determined that Cipro and Percocet would not only do the job medically, but would also minimize the strain on my sister's wallet. Apparently, the Geisinger clinic had consulted with Wal-Mart, determined which medications were less expensive, and was careful to prescribe them whenever possible.