Health Care

GLENDALE— A Glendale man was sentenced Monday to five years in state prison for running a health-care fraud and money laundering scheme that affected more than 800 Medicare patients in the Los Angeles region, officials said. U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow ordered Manuk Karapetyan, 46, to serve five years in prison after being convicted in March of multiple counts of health-care fraud and money laundering, officials said. "It was a serious offense that had a number of aggravating circumstances," Assistant U.S. Atty.

NORTHEAST GLENDALE — Dental billing and coding may not sound exciting to most, but the latest degree program to be offered at Glendale Community College this fall is in high demand, administrators said. The up-to-20-unit course that gives students skills to succeed in a growing division of the health-care industry was created after consulting with community dentists, said Mary Mirch, vice president of instructional services. "[Staff members] literally went from dental office to dentist office in the area to see what they needed," she said.

Commutes to Northern California three days a week may seem excessive to the average Glendale resident, but for Robert Issai it's a simple duty. Issai was elected to the Catholic Health Assn. of the U.S. Board of Trustees June 15. Although his work as president and chief executive of Daughters of Charity Health System is in Los Altos, he commutes to and from the Northern California city to Glendale, where he and his family have lived for 31 years. Issai will now be responsible for overseeing more than 600 U.S. hospitals under the Catholic Health Assn.

CITY HALL — The City Council tonight is expected to approve spending $1.2 million to cover the cost of rising employee health-care costs — a trend that is weighing heavily in contract negotiations as the city continues to grapple with its own budget woes. Each year, the council approves amendments to employee contracts to cover insurance rate adjustments, which have continued to grow. "We've been hitting close to double-digit increases every year for several years now," said City Manager Jim Starbird.

I just read the April 27 article “Apples of their eye.” What a dedicated teacher Keppel Elementary School has in fifth-grade teacher April Faieta. Our future as a nation depends on our children — education should come first and at the top of the list of priorities, and a teacher like Faieta is dedicated, capable, hardworking. I remember my fifth-grade teacher and the positive impression she made on me because she cared about her students their futures. Why are we cutting education?

The myth is that lemmings are mindless creatures that jump off cliffs to their deaths because they are, ironically, rodent copy-cats, each following the being in front of them even to their own demise. But that’s not exactly true. Scientists tell us that many Republicans and virtually all “tea party” followers probably have the same follow-the-spin, mindless propensity that biologists used to think caused the lemmings to march to their own ends. Turns out, lemmings self-thinned their own herds when their groups became overpopulated.

As for Rick Caruso’s trolley going up and down Brand Boulevard on his dime — thank you, Caruso, for your imagination and the workings of your marketing department (“Trolley to roll in April,” March 19). You have not failed me and the many supporters of your project, the Americana at Brand. The same critics of the past still go before the City Council today criticizing and speaking ill of your “Dream for Glendale.” One critic gets upset when told to keep off the “public grass” for lawn maintenance and also criticizes the new special “signage” for our two premier malls.

Robert Buniatyan had a letter published recently (“Bill takes away freedoms,” March 26) in which he stated his opposition to passage of the health-care-reform legislation. I found the constitutional logic he utilized to be quite interesting. According to Buniatyan, the health-care legislation was unconstitutional in that nowhere in the Constitution is it mentioned that health care is a right. According to his interpretation of the Constitution, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all unconstitutional because none of them are mentioned in the Constitution.

Health care has been a dominant issue everywhere we go. What is health care? Who is going to pay for it? Who really gets health care? What is each political party?s stance on the new law? Is the president right or wrong? How does all this affect us at home? The Lions Clubs International saw all this debate as a great opportunity to challenge our high school students. The Lions? 73rd annual Student Speaker Contest set ?Universal Healthcare ? How Will It Affect Us?? as the topic for students to speak about in their contests.

This letter is in response to Scott Lowe (“One day we’ll all have health care,” March 25) and Gary Durrett’s comments (“Writer needs to quit finger-wagging,” March 25). Have these two gentlemen stopped to consider the cost of health care? I don’t think so. The hardest hit will be seniors, no matter the spin. Also, health care is not a right . Where does everyone get that idea and misinformation? JANET LANGLEY La Crescenta   Write to college officials instead In reply to Robert Morrison’s piece in the Glendale News-Press on March 19, “Where’s officials’ response on smoking?