Connecticut Health Investigative Team (https://c-hit.org/)
When Said Nedlouf’s wife, Mary, was terminally ill with metastatic breast cancer in late 2006, Nedlouf was willing to do anything to save her. He found Dr. Jarir Nakouzi in Bridgeport, a homeopathic doctor who said he could cure Mary’s cancer. During Nakouzi’s treatment of Mary, her husband racked up over $40,000 in charges. The treatment -- which involved a variety of pills and supplements and “bioresonance” therapy, a technique that measures electrical activity at the skin—failed. In early 2007, Mary passed away at the age of 42. When he sought Nakouzi’s help, Nedlouf’s wife was “in and out of consciousness,” he said in a recent interview. Desperate for a cure at the time, he “didn’t think much. I wanted to help her. She was dying.” Nedlouf said that, in the end, he believed he was “taken for a ride.” So he filed a complaint with the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH), in hopes the board would punish Nakouzi for his misrepresentations.
Health care reform, new Wall Street regulations and outrage over large pay packages are likely to put pressure on compensation for health insurance executives. But it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. Continue Reading →
Ten-year-old Joey Smith shared a celebratory high-five with Heather Kunkel, a mental health professional who was visiting the boy’s Thomaston home. “Things are great, spectacular even,” he said, as the two chatted at the kitchen table. It’s a dramatic turnaround for Joey who met Kunkel when she was summoned to Thomaston Center School because he had threatened to harm himself. Now Joey, who has autism, is back at school with a modified curriculum to suit his individual needs and his parents have access to an educational advocate and community resources. Continue Reading →
Selenia Velez remembers the near-daily phone calls from the pre-school, alerting her that her 2-year-old son had acted out aggressively and needed to be picked up immediately. The calls went on for months, as Velez, 27, of Hartford, and her husband bounced between the pre-school and their son’s pediatrician, who recommended that they take him to a psychiatrist for an evaluation. But the psychiatrist was booked and held them at bay, as Velez watched her son’s behavior deteriorate. “We just felt hopeless,” the mother of four recalls of her oldest son, now 7. “It was one of the most heartbreaking things you can go through as a mother. Continue Reading →
Roberta Baxter, a 78-year-old retired instructional assistant for the Killingly school system, dislocated her kneecap after a fall in her bathroom last September. Following treatment at a local hospital, she spent seven weeks at a nursing home for rehab so that she could walk again. While she was recovering, she and her husband Bill received the first of several bills from the nursing home. That’s when the couple learned Medicare wouldn’t cover the $16,000 cost because Roberta didn’t spend at least three consecutive days in the hospital as admitted patient, or inpatient, as Medicare requires. Instead, the four days she spent in the hospital was for “observation care.”
“I thought it was surely a mistake,” she said. “Nobody ever said I wasn’t admitted.”
Wethersfield resident Patrice Gilbert knew that compact fluorescent bulbs contained mercury, so as they burned out, she put them aside until she could find out where to properly dispose of them. One day, she accidently knocked one off the counter and it broke. “I scooped that broken one up, put the other three in a paper bag, put that in a plastic bag and put it in my recycling bin,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do with them.”
Gilbert’s action is typical. Nationally, only an estimated 2 percent of household CFLs are recycled properly, the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers says. In Connecticut, only 4 percent of households participate in hazardous waste collection days – where mercury-containing CFLs, thermostats and thermometers should be recycled. Continue Reading →
