Recent editorials from South Carolina newspapers:
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Jan. 14
The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg on a tool to compare health care costs:
Health care is listed as a top priority by just about every American. As much as access, quality of care and safety are key concerns, cost is a critical for all, whether through direct payment for services or cost of insurance, deductibles and co-payments.
New federal rules mean hospitals nationwide now have to make cost information available online.
The South Carolina Hospital Association has a service to help consumers in determining the cost of medical care. Called South Carolina PricePoint, the website found at www.scpricepoint.org is a consumer-friendly database of hospital charges, utilization and payer-mix information.
PricePoint offers accurate and timely information about charges and services provided by the state’s hospitals. The information is from the S.C. Office of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs, a state government agency charged with collecting this data from hospitals.
SCHA says the data can be used to compare hospital costs - generally.
“It is important for consumers to understand how to use the data provided by PricePoint. For instance, most insurers negotiate discounts with individual hospitals, and the charges reported on PricePoint do not reflect these discounts,” according to SCHA. “Therefore, to accurately compare charges from hospital A with hospital B, each consumer needs to talk with his or her insurer and ask for an estimate of out-of-pocket expenses at each hospital. It’s possible that a consumer will pay less at a hospital with higher average charges, depending on the contract the hospital and insurer have negotiated.”
Importantly, and as SCHA notes, cost is not all of the value equation.
That’s why more than a decade ago the SCHA partnered with the Wisconsin Hospital Association to launch My SC Hospital, a website found at www.myschospital.org that shares reliable information about the quality and safety of care provided by South Carolina hospitals. Crucial comparable information for Americans on Medicare can also found at www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare .
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Being competitive in health care is vital to the future of any institution…
Online: https://thetandd.com/
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Jan. 15
The Post and Courier of Charleston on class sizes and teacher shortages:
Smaller class sizes don’t automatically translate into better student performance, but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that a healthy student-to-teacher ratio can help boost educational outcomes - particularly for children at struggling schools.
That’s why it’s so concerning that South Carolina hasn’t enforced its statewide caps on classroom size since 2010. And even if state officials were to start cracking down again - which they should - it might not be enough.
Under state law, schools must maintain a maximum average student-teacher ratio of 28-to-1 and most classes are capped at 30 or 35 students depending on the grade and subject matter.
According to a recent report by The Post and Courier’s Paul Bowers, at least 110 schools statewide had an average of more than 28 students per teacher in 2018. And even South Carolina’s more manageable statewide median class size of 21 students is about 40 percent higher than the national average.
It’s difficult to study the specific impact of a smaller class size on student performance, since there are so many other variables at work in any school, district or state education system. But a handful of notably rigorous studies suggest that substantial reductions in class size can produce positive results, especially for younger students and minority or low-income students.
The reasons seem obvious enough. With fewer students to manage, teachers can provide more individualized attention and instruction, better control behavioral problems and adjust teaching methods more easily.
The obvious challenge, however, is finding enough well-trained teachers to take on all the new classes created by enforcing a smaller maximum student population. The beneficial impact of smaller class sizes is significantly reduced if under-prepared teachers fill in the gaps, for example.
And South Carolina is already facing a severe teacher shortage.
At least 621 teaching positions were vacant across the state at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year, according to a recent Winthrop University report, and 7,340 teachers left their positions at the end of the last school year - many of them permanently.
In other words, reducing class sizes would require South Carolina schools to not only fill all of their existing teaching vacancies but to hire many more instructors as well.
Fortunately, state lawmakers have vowed to make education reform - including addressing teacher requests for pay hikes, reduced paperwork and testing burdens and other improvements - a top priority during this legislative session.
Gov. Henry McMaster also included hundreds of millions of new dollars for education in his executive budget, released on Tuesday. Key priorities would include a 5 percent teacher pay raise and more than $100 million to recruit and train educators for rural schools.
South Carolina’s education shortcomings are complex and longstanding, and resolving them will be challenging. But meeting the state’s standards for basic metrics like class size and cutting down on teacher shortages and turnover rates are an obvious place to start.
Students can’t excel without good teachers, and teachers can’t do their best work without manageable classrooms.
Online: https://www.postandcourier.com/
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Jan. 13
Index-Journal of Greenwood on medical marijuana:
Please, leave the references to the 1936 film “Reefer Madness” at the door; people’s health and well-being are at stake.
That South Carolina lawmakers are on the cusp of giving the OK for medical marijuana is a good thing and is nowhere close to opening the door to the trumped-up effects of marijuana that film would lead one to believe.
And while some might argue that progress is moving much too slowly on this front, credit is due to the lawmakers who are first and foremost wanting to open more research on the medical benefits that can be derived from cannabis. Other states have been criticized for too readily legalizing the use of medical marijuana; here, the emphasis has been put on testing, procedures and caution, as proposed by state Sen. Greg Hembree, an Horry County Republican.
Out of the gate with the start of this legislative session, a panel of lawmakers is moving forward with a resolution that will urge Congress and the U.S. attorney general to expand research on the benefits of medical marijuana, urging lawmakers to “take immediate and additional steps to promote and actively pursue scientific research and testing into the potential use of cannabis to treat other medical conditions and illness by removing the federal statutory and regulatory barriers that prevent these scientific endeavors.”
State Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, is another proponent of opening the doors to legalizing medical marijuana. He succeeded in getting passed in 2014 a law that allows patients with severe epilepsy to possess CBD oil.
Speaking with the media ahead of the legislative session opening on Jan. 3, Davis spoke passionately on the issue, which he promised to pursue yet again, noting that medical science has already shown that cannabis is therapeutic.
He referenced people with multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder, such as veterans. “It is inhumane to leave them with no way to relieve and live a normal life,” Davis said. We agree.
Doctors, Davis said, should not be so controlled by the state regarding what they can and cannot prescribe to patients. So many pharmaceuticals turn patients into zombies, he said, “but CDB oils prove to work.”
“I’d go on the black market for my kid,” Davis said. “Thirty-three states have passed (legalized medical marijuana), and poll numbers show people in favor upwards of 77 to 80 percent. Democrats, Republicans, independents across the board want to empower doctors to be able to prescribe.”
For far too long, “marijuana” and “liberal Democrats” were lumped together, as if we were stuck in the heyday of Woodstock, Monterey, free love, sex and drugs, and Cheech and Chong comedy. That’s not the case, nor is that what our state’s lawmakers are advocating for. Perhaps the state’s best chance at giving needy patients the relief they need and can derive from medical marijuana lies ahead, thanks to the support of staunch Republicans. In other words, closeted supporters can now safely throw open the door.
Medical marijuana never should have been treated as a political party issue in the first place; it’s a medical issue, plain and simple.
Online: http://www.indexjournal.com/
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