A report broadcast last Sunday on 60 Minutes brought into stark detail alleged abuses in the insurance industry. CBS News found a pattern, which it believes is replicated nationwide, of insurance giants failing to pay life insurance policies despite knowing that the insured person had died. The report quotes Florida’s…
The Oregonian reports that a Beaverton nurse was allowed to continue working with patients while under investigation for sexual misconduct on the job and allegedly committed a similar offense during that time. The incident, if the facts are as reported, raises serious questions about how the nurse’s employer, Kaiser Permanente,…
With pedestrian and bicyclist deaths on the rise here in Portland, something I wrote about earlier this month, safety questions are increasingly becoming part of our city’s political agenda. As The Oregonian noted in a recent article, 2016’s “year-to-date death toll is nearly twice the seven fatalities recorded during the…
According to a recent article in The Oregonian “the city had, as of Friday (April 1), tallied 12 traffic fatalities so far in 2016, compared with seven over the same period last year. Five of those killed were walking when they were hit by a car, and one was riding…
It is an election year, so between now and November we can expect to hear many politicians at the national, state and local levels complain about trial lawyers and call for “tort reform.” As an article published this week in Slate outlines, however, an often disingenuous campaign designed to ‘protect’…
Last week marked a significant moment in the ongoing discussion about football, especially professional football, and concussions. As the New York Times notes, “after years of denying or playing down a connection, a top NFL official acknowledged at a hearing in Washington that playing football and having CTE were ‘certainly’…
Two separate Oregon truck crashes involving three semi-trucks on the same stretch of eastbound Interstate-84 last week left one driver dead, the other two seriously injured and forced state officials to clean up a hazardous waste spill. In the process, these Baker County truck crashes highlighted the continuing danger large…
A recent article in The Oregonian outlines a quiet revolution that has been taking place among first responders here in Oregon. According to the newspaper, in the months since Multnomah County EMT teams began using CPR machines as an everyday part of their work officials say the results have been…
Pedestrian deaths around the country rose sharply last year, according to data compiled by the Governors Highway Safety Association and recently published by CityLab, a blog that is part of The Atlantic magazine. The news is troubling, and perhaps even a little counter-intuitive and should prompt officials at every level…
A recent article in the Salem Statesman-Journal highlighted a popular hiking area near the town of Pacific City that has become increasingly dangerous. The newspaper solicited feedback from readers about the best way to make the area around Cape Kiwanda safer. According to the newspaper, “seven people have died in…