Your Health ; In the News
8.8 Percentage of annual spending by people 65-plus that goes toward utilities.
A Guardian Angel of School Libraries
At 89, former teacher Verne Oli- ver has spent almost 25 years
transforming dozens of school libraries in underprivileged New York City
schools. In a second career devoted to
youth literacy, Oliver rescues usable
materials from libraries in schools
about to be torn down, and talks to pupils about the basic concept of a lending library. She also builds new collections or rebuilds older ones. ; In an
overhaul, she says, “you weed a library
the way you weed a garden. You can’t
have a library with books that are out-of-date, ugly and incorrect.” ; Since
her 1987 retirement from teaching,
Oliver has worked as associate director of the Gilder Foundation, a private
philanthropy that funds libraries in
New York parochial schools. The latest
library with her imprint, at St. Brigid
School in the East Village, opened in September. ; In a project typical of her
work, Oliver spent the summer repairing, labeling, organizing and cataloging
books to create St. Brigid’s new library. ; She has no plans to stop her work.
“Our kids are very needy,” Oliver says. “There’s a lot to be done.” —Susan Kreimer
; What an Outrage
No Benefits for Sick Job Seekers
Don Bright lost his job of 23 years as a maintenance engineer for an international
shipping company in Richmond, Va., when his
division moved to North Carolina in 2009. The
69-year-old Midlothian, Va., man collected unemployment for six months while he looked for
a job. ; Then Bright’s life derailed. He was diagnosed with leukemia and needed a year off from
his job search for chemotherapy and recovery.
He informed the state he couldn’t look for work
while undergoing treatment. ; A year later, with
a clean bill of health, Bright applied for unemployment benefits to resume and was turned
down. He had no grounds to appeal. ; He fell
through the cracks because he couldn’t meet
the requirements for an unemployment check:
minimum earnings of $2,700 in recent employment history, weekly job hunting and immediate
; Oliver’s
passion is
libraries.
Lipitor’s Price to Fall, but Slowly
Along-awaited generic version of Lipitor, the world’s top-selling
prescription drug, was due to go on
the market Dec. 1—but consumers
shouldn’t expect the price
of the anticholesterol medicine to plummet instantly.
; Under a negotiated legal
settlement, the manufacturer Ranbaxy will be able to
sell generic atorvastatin for
six months without competition after
Pfizer’s patent on Lipitor expired Nov.
30. During this period, the generic’s
price is expected to undercut Lipitor’s
by only about 10 to 20 percent, says Ste-
phen Schondelmeyer of the University
of Minnesota, a national expert on drug
pricing. Starting in June, when other
generic drugmakers can
compete, prices should fall
dramatically. ; Brand-name
Lipitor typically costs $5 to
$6 per capsule at the phar-
macy when not covered by
insurance. “By next fall, the
[generic] price will be down to about $2
per capsule, and by 2013 it will probably
be down to 50 or 25 cents,” Schondel-
meyer says. —Patricia Barry
; Lipitor, top-selling Rx drug.
; Don Bright
lost a year.
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availability for work. ; “I’m
still seeking employment,”
says Bright, who would
have been eligible for a total of 86 weeks of
unemployment if there had been no break in his
job search. “I am healthy and want to work a few
more years.” ; Joyce Fogg, spokeswoman for
the Virginia Employment Commission, confirms
that unemployment beneficiaries must look for
work weekly, report their efforts and be avail-
able to work at all times. “There are no excep-
tions,” she says. ; Bright wants his case to be a
warning to others. “Something is not right” with
a system that denies people benefits when they
get sick, he says. —Judi Hasson
