Hamilton County Florida

Kentucky News Review: Cincinnati studies cost of healthcare for area homeless

June 15, 2011

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports on the cost of care and the availability of health care for the homeless of Cincinnati. Nearly 7,500 people who were homeless in Hamilton County and Northern Kentucky had 45,000 health-care visits in 2010 with the Cincinnati Health Care for the Homeless program. Hamilton County has been asked for $2 million to help pay the cost. A study conducted over the past two years found that it cost local taxpayers upwards of $902,118 to provide services to 10 percent of the chronically homeless adults. The Sacramento Bee reports on Medi-Share, a faith-based health care cost sharing ministry based in Florida. The Kentucky Attorney General has challenged Medi-Share, questioning if the company is operating as an insurance company. Members deposit monthly fees into an account and Medi-Share oversees the money flow to pay other members' health costs. Timothy Jost, professor of health law at Washington and Lee University said, "The concern is that people may not really understand that they are not insurance companies … and they don't have the same regulations or, if something goes wrong, the reserves." The Civil War Memoirs of Erastus Winters is the recently-released diary of a soldier who survived battles at Perryville, Ky., Franklin, Tn., and the sinking of the steamship Sultana, the Rutherford Daily News reports. "His description of Franklin was just chaos. He got pinned down in a crossfire between his lines and the Confederates and got captured by a Confederate soldier," said diary editor Lee Ann Newton. "Winters was taking fire from Union troops, because he was behind Confederate breastworks." The Sultana sank in 1865 with 1,800 prisoners on board a boat intended to carry 300. Winters was one of the 700 who survived the sinking. which was published in Knoxville from May 30, 1864, to Oct. 6, 1864. It includes a description of a convalescent camp about a half mile west of the University of Tennessee where patients were transferred from the crowded hospital to cool tents. It had about 400 men mostly from Kentucky and Tennessee. Robotic arms that could have one day have been in the movies, is in use at the Ford Assembly Plant in Louisville, reports the Los Angeles Times . The company, Equipois, \has applied movie technology to manufacturing, including robotic hands and limbs at manufacturing plants.