The Florida Highway Patrol and a local nonprofit, Rosie’s Adventures, are getting results for children battling cancer.
With the help of OneBlood, a blood drive was hosted outside FHP Headquarters in Orlando in honor of Rosie Ramirez. She is the daughter of FHP Traffic Homicide Sgt. Jose Ramirez.
The little girl lost her battle with an aggressive cancer last year.
During her treatment, Rosie received 150 blood and platelet transfusions.
Her mother, Nikki Ramirez, who runs a nonprofit in her honor, said donating blood is a huge help for other children battling cancer.
“There’s a national shortage of blood donors and blood basically. So we want to collect as much blood as we can so the hospitals have them when the kids, and even adults, that need them for accidents and cancer treatments or anything, they have them, so the families don’t have to wait and hope there’s blood or platelets available for them,” Ramirez said.
She said Rosie truly cared about the other children battling cancer and would put together toy drives for her birthday each year and then donate all the items she collected to the oncology floors at various children’s hospitals.
Rosie would’ve turned 8 years old on Feb. 27.
Rosie’s blood drive runs until 3 p.m. Friday outside FHP Troop D Headquarters on 11059 International Drive.
Total Doses Distributed = 963,131,415. Total Doses Administered = 671,582,379. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 269,459,752. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 229,996,296.
The housing crisis across Central Florida appears to only be getting worse and residents tell us in many ways it’s impacting their mental health.
Mena Alexis, 30, said she’s reminded of her current eviction notice and the reality that she and her five, soon to be six, children may be left homeless.
“I’m just like, ‘Can I get some kind of relief from everything because everything has been so hard,’” Alexis said. “I’ve just been so stressed out, it’s really hard.”
She lives in Parramore and said her rising rent is no longer affordable, especially as a single mother.
“It went from $875 to $975 up to $1,159,” she said.
She’s the latest resident across Central Florida who said her housing situation is affecting her mental health.
“I’m not going to sit here and say I haven’t fallen into depression. I have fallen into depression,” Alexis said.
She’s now employed again after losing at least one job recently after missing too many workdays to care for her sick child.
She admits though she’s received some housing help in the past from organizations, she’s still trying to make ends meet.
“Right now with unaffordable rent, it is just tragic,” Orlando City Commissioner Regina Hill said.
She knows the stress rising rent can have on residents but said there’s help out there, like the RAPID rehousing program and the RISE Employment and Training program, which in some cases will pay residents for job training while providing child care and housing assistance.
“No one really in their guts wants to be on the streets of any city experiencing that especially with children,” said Hill, who represents District 5 in Orlando.
Traci Blue works for Bright Community Trust, which helps connect residents in Orange, Osceola, Lake, and Seminole counties with resources to find affordable housing.
She said she’s seen the housing crisis affect people’s mental health.
“I’ve been on the phone with people who are crying, and they don’t know what to do and they don’t know where to go and I’m trying to hold back the tears myself,” Blue said. “I Just let them know that I’m here for them. I want to share whatever resources I can.”
Blue went on to say it’s important not to give up because “it’s never too late.”
Alexis said she’s trying not to give up, all as she continues working and looking for resources to make sure she and her kids have a place to call home.
Bright Community Trust, the city of Orlando and other community organizations are holding events this weekend to encourage more homeownership, provide affordable housing options and teach financial literacy courses.
Total Doses Distributed = 961,155,285. Total Doses Administered = 670,987,625. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 269,332,266. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 229,914,797.
China says more than 200 million of its citizens have been diagnosed and treated for COVID-19 since it lifted strict containment measures beginning in November.
With 800,000 of the most critically ill patients having recovered, China has “decisively beaten” the pandemic, according to notes from a meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee presided over by President and party leader Xi Jinping.
China enforced some of the world’s most draconian lockdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions and still faces questions about the origins of the virus that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Heavy-handed enforcement prompted rare anti-government protests and took a heavy toll on the world’s second-largest economy.
The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Xi as saying that policies to control the outbreak had been “entirely correct.” The abrupt lifting in November and December of the “zero COVID” policy that had sought to eliminate all cases of the virus led to a surge in infections that temporarily overwhelmed hospitals.
Case numbers have since peaked and life has largely returned to normal, although international travel in and out of China has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.
China is now transitioning to a post-pandemic stage after a fight against the outbreak that was “extraordinary in the extreme,” Xinhua said.
The government will continue to “optimize and adjust prevention and control policies and measures according to the times and situations with a strong historical responsibility and strong strategic determination,” Xinhua said.
Millions of Americans mired in medical debt face difficult financial decisions every day — pay the debt or pay for rent, utilities and groceries. Some may even skip necessary health care for fear of sinking deeper into debt.
To address the problem, an increasing number of municipal, county and state governments are devising plans to spend federal coronavirus pandemic relief funds to eliminate residents’ medical debt and ease those debt burdens.
The City Council in the Boston suburb of Somerville last month unanimously passed a resolution to spend $200,000 of the city’s $77 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding that could clear as much as $4.3 million in medical debt, said Willie Burnley Jr., one of the city councilors behind the effort. As many 5,000 of the city’s 80,000 residents could benefit.
Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, and Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Toledo, Ohio, are among more than a dozen communities that have set into motion or are considering similar plans. Democratic Connecticut governor Ned Lamont last week proposed spending $20 million in ARPA funds to eliminate as much as $2 billion in state residents’ medical debts.
Unlike credit card or loan debt, medical debt is not a choice, advocates said.
“Medical debt is something that people can’t help and it’s not their fault,” Burnley said. “No one chooses to get hurt or to get sick.”
Somerville resident Virginia Faust has health insurance, but she still fell several thousand dollars into debt in 2021 when a mental health emergency required a weeklong hospital stay. The debt affected her credit, and in a cruel irony, put additional stress on her mental health.
“This would have a tangible effect on my life and relieve a lot of stress,” Faust, 25, said of Burnley’s plan. “It would mean I would be more likely to go to a doctor and get regular checkups.”
In Toledo, a combined $1.6 million from the city and Lucas County will eliminate as much as $240 million in medical debt for as many as 41,000 residents, according to Ohio state Rep. Michele Grim, who drove the effort when she served as a Toledo city councilor.
“It’s such a great return on investment,” she said. “I really couldn’t think of a better way to use dollars that were meant to aid in the economic recovery of our citizens.”
The cities and states are teaming up with RIP Medical Debt, a New York-based nonprofit that since 2014 has used donations to buy huge bundles of debt from hospitals and other health care providers at pennies on the dollar and pay it off. A single donated dollar erases an average of $100 of debt.
More than 40% of American adults have medical debt and about two-thirds of personal bankruptcies in the nation cite medical debt as a leading cause, said Allison Sesso, president and CEO of the nonprofit.
The money is coming from the federal government’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which included $360 billion for local, state, territorial and tribal governments to provide economic relief.
“This is one of the most impactful and direct ways we can use this money and it would have incredible and quantifiable benefits,” Burnley said.
Eligibility requirements can vary, but to be eligible in Somerville for the debt relief through RIP Medical Debt, individuals or families can have a household income of up to 400% of the federal poverty — that’s $111,000 annually for a family of four according to federal statistics — or have medical debts that exceed 5% of their annual income.
There is no need to apply. RIP Medical Debt determines eligibility and the beneficiaries get a letter informing them that their debt has been acquired and canceled. Not everyone will benefit. People whose debt continues to be held by for-profit collection agencies may miss out.
Unlike federal student loan debt relief, medical debt relief has more widespread and bipartisan support. According to a recent survey by Tulchin Research, more than 70% of Americans support medical debt relief, while only about half of Americans support student loan debt relief. The survey of 1,500 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Since it’s founding, RIP Medical Debt has raised enough money to eliminate more than $8.5 billion of debt for nearly 5.5 million people. But that’s barely a dent in the total number of people facing tough money choices.
A 2021 study that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association determined that Americans have $140 billion in unpaid health care bills at collection agencies alone, and that debt disproportionately affects the poor.
Although it’s a good cause, using ARPA funds to discharge medical debt does not address the underlying systemic problem, said Ray Kluender, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and one of the study’s co-authors.
Medical debt is a “byproduct of the patchwork way we pay for health care,” he said.
“While relieving debts after they have gone through the provider collections process won’t address the issues driving the accumulation of these unpaid bills in the first place, it may nevertheless help people who are struggling to pay back their bills,” he said.
