Your Health ; In the News
Percentage of current veterans who served during World War II,
the Korean War or the Vietnam era. 51.3%
; What an Outrage
Protector of Pensions on Shaky Ground
A Portable
Alternative
To Nursing
Homes
; Kenneth Dupin’s
MEDCottage offers living space and a medical
monitoring system.
On Sundays, the Rev. Kenneth Dupin of Salem, Va., delivers
sermons to his congregation, and
now he is delivering an alternative
to nursing homes. ; Recognizing a need for aging adults to be
closer to their loved ones, Dupin, 55, invented the MEDCottage,
a portable 12-by-24-foot high-tech hut with living quarters and a system to transmit an oc-
cupant’s vital health information to offsite caregivers. The cottage may be placed in the back-
yard of the primary caregiver. ; Cities from Santa Cruz, Calif., to Seattle to Faribault, Minn.,
are allowing or expanding zoning for cottages like Dupin’s. Virginia has passed legislation
to supersede local zoning laws for the dwellings on single-home properties with a doctor’s
order. ; Dupin plans to start selling the MEDCottages—which will go for $65,000 to $75,000,
depending on outfitting—this fall. —Tauren Dyson
Crime Reporting,
The Quick and Easy Way
These days, reporting crime is only a mouse click away.
; More than 200 police depart-
ments from California to Mas-
sachusetts have installed on-
line crime-reporting systems.
“Our ‘online officer’ frees up
more [human] officers to be on
patrol,” says Robert Friel, a de-
tective with the Aurora (Colo.)
Police Department. ; Randy
Burkhammer of Coplogic Inc.,
a provider of a software sys-
tem used by many police de-
partments, counts the 50-plus
crowd among online reporting’s
biggest fans. Filing is easy, since
the system guides users step-by-
step. Enter who, when, where
and what happened, and click to
send. ; Online reporting can’t
replace a beat cop, but it works
for small-scale, nonviolent
crimes like theft when there is
no identifiable suspect, officials
say. It also reduces costs for po-
lice departments and saves time
when you need to file a police
report before sending an insur-
ance claim. —Laura Daily
(((
Listen to the Bulletin on NFB-NEWSLINE, a free service of the National Federation
of the Blind. Call 1-866-504-7300 toll-free or go to www.nfbnewsline.org.
(((
The federal program designed to insure workers’ pensions when companies fail
is facing financial and security troubles of its
own. ; The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
insures pensions for more than 44 million
Americans. Trouble is, a series of audits and
security breaches suggest the agency itself
could soon need a bailout. ; An audit last fall
found the organization “did not have effective
internal control over financial reporting (
including safeguarding assets) and compliance
with laws and regulations and its operations.”
The finding amounts to a failing grade in the
accounting world. ; Meanwhile, the PBGC is
chronically underfunded, with shortfalls in
the billions of dollars. ; Several members of
Congress are alarmed by the situation. In a
letter this spring to the PBGC’s acting director, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, called out
the program for making“false statements” to
Congress and federal auditors. In particular,
Grassley highlighted several instances where
the PBGC told auditors that steps were
taken to correct problems with contractors
when auditors reported that they were not.
; The Senate Special Committee on Aging
is awaiting its own report on the PBGC. “Our
efforts to improve the oversight and governance of the PBGC cannot be taken seriously
enough,” said committee Chairman Herb Kohl,
D-Wis. “The pensions
of one in six Americans are potentially on the line.”
—Michelle Diament
