"Health & Medical News"

A night of living on the street helped motivate recovering addict Felix Middleton to help out some fellow New Yorkers by using his fashion skills to make sleeping bags for the homeless, the New York Times reported Dec. 3.

Middleton, a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate who is receiving addiction treatment at Phoenix House, worked with the rehabilitation program to get a sewing machine and stitch old comforters into 30 sleeping bags, which he recently handed out to homeless people on the streets.

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Even as U.S. lawmakers, jurists and policymakers have eased some mandatory drug sentences, Canada’s Justice Minister is proceeding with a plan to introduce the concept to the Canadian justice system, the Regina Leader-Post reported Nov. 28.

A pair of Canadian government reports concluded that mandatory minimum drug sentences don’t work, with one 2005 study concluding, “Minimum sentences are not an effective sentencing tool: that is, they constrain judicial discretion without offering any increased crime prevention benefits.”

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While physicians in some states will see a break in their medical liability premiums next year, Maryland insurance officials are questioning a proposal by the state’s largest medical liability insurance carrier to issue a credit to its physician policyholders on Jan. 1, 2008.

In a Sept. 13 order, Maryland Insurance Commissioner Ralph S. Tyler halted Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society of Maryland’s plans to pay a portion of a $68.6 million dividend to policyholders as a premium discount. The company allotted some of the money to reimburse the state because it subsidizes Medical Mutual’s premiums under a program set up in 2005 to ensure that doctors have access to medical liability insurance.

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