It’s called insurance, but this beat is really about people and the bad things that they hope won’t happen. Paige St. John, from the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, explains ways to approach the beat with extra skepticism and very good sources.
Mother Nature is having her way with the economy again, but this time via a microscopic virus rather than a gargantuan storm, earthquake or tidal wave. Ominous headlines about the magnitude of this year’s flu season are spilling onto business pages, and you might want to take a run at several financial angles to influenza [...]
It’s a pretty safe bet that health care and health insurance will be among the hottest business stories of 2013, with new provisions of the Affordable Care Act kicking in, as well as some of its limitations getting more scrutiny now that the Supreme Court has upheld the law. For example, check out the Sunday [...]
It doesn’t appear that the topic of gun control, sales and ownership is going away any time soon following the December mass shootings in Connecticut and other gun-related killings in the weeks since. Some state and local lawmakers have pledged to introduce new bills in 2013 regulating the ownership and sale of firearms, and President [...]
Well, it’s hardly the story anyone wants to report, ever, and particularly the week before Christmas. But realistically, the Connecticut school shooting is going to be top of mind for many audiences the next few weeks, and with it the question of guns and safety. Leaving aside the contentious politics and public policy issues, business journalists [...]
Pending health care changes are creating a plethora of story options for health care reporters. Jenny Gold, a Kaiser Health News reporter, found one of them – NPR: Hospitals Gamble On Urgent Care Clinics To Keep Patients Healthy. As part of a trend towards coordinated care, hospitals are adding urgent care centers. “It’s a small [...]
At this festive time of year, one of the downers is the prevalence of drunk or impaired driving, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says causes one death every 48 minutes in the United States. And the National Highway Transportation Safety last year told the Wall Street Journal that Thanskgiving weekend had topped [...]
The re-election of President Obama has brought a number of fiscal and policy issues into focus, one of which is the fate of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The preservation of the health insurance reform law, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in June, clearly has myriad [...]
Small businesses faced not only damaged inventory from flooding and power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy, writes Suzanne Sataline in her story for the New York Times. With tight cash flows and customers outside the area, they also had to find ways to get employees to work, handle shipments and meet payroll, she writes. [...]
With the last and highly anticipated pre-election Employment Situation report due out Friday, updating the national unemployment rate, the jobs topic is at the forefront this week. And with tens of billions of dollars in damage estimates coming out of the huge swath of states scoured by Hurricane Sandy, it’s an interesting moment to look at [...]
