Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Today's Globe: child healthcare bill, going the distance, Mt. Auburn gift, out in the cold

President Bush and other critics of a $35 billion spending increase for children's health insurance say they'll support expanding coverage to families of four making as much as $62,000 a year, but they want to limit states' ability to go beyond that level.

Tonight "Nova" shows that anyone can run 26.2 miles. It tells the story through 13 self-described sloths, a group handpicked to test if somebody can go from the couch to the finish line of the Boston Marathon in only nine months. Tufts University former longtime swim coach Donald Megerle and nutrition professor Miriam Nelson got the team ready for Hopkinton.

Mount Auburn Hospital of Cambridge said it received its largest donation ever, from a charity founded by Frank Stanton (left), the legendary CBS executive who died in December at 98. The $6.5 million gift from the Ruth and Frank Stanton Fund was made public Saturday. The hospital will name its new building, currently under construction, for Frank Stanton.

The recommendation barring the sale of all over-the-counter cold medications for children under 6 dramatizes the tension between policy makers and academics who advocated for the ban and rank-and-file pediatricians and parents who have to deal with ill children, Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, a pediatric cardiologist at the UMass Medical School, writes on the op-ed page.

Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 06:55 AM

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