MassDOT schedules Capital Conversations
Boston — The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has scheduled “Capital Conversations,” a series of community meetings to solicit input on potential transportation projects to be included in the agency’s upcoming five-year Capital Investment Plan (CIP) for Fiscal Years 2017-2021.
The CIP will serve as a multi-modal unified plan that identifies and prioritizes five years of capital projects for the Highway Division, the MBTA, statewide rail, transit, and aeronautics projects. Capital investments for the Registry of Motor Vehicles will also be included. Representatives from various MassDOT agencies, including the MBTA, will be on hand at the Capital Conversations to listen to comments and feedback from meeting participants.
MassDOT encourages those who are unable to attend the meetings to join the Capital Conversation online and share their ideas by emailing masscip@state.ma.us. Thoughts and ideas can also be shared via an online form.
The “Capital Conversation” scheduled for Berkshire County will take place on Thursday, October 29 at 6 p.m. in the City Council Chamber of Pittsfield City Hall at 70 Allen St. in Pittsfield.
Meeting locations are accessible to people with disabilities and individuals with limited English proficiency. If you need a reasonable accommodation (such as an American Sign Language interpreter, assistive listening device, handouts in alternate formats, etc.) and/or language assistance (such as translated documents or an interpreter) to fully participate, please contact Trish Foley at (857) 368-8907 or email trish.foley@dot.state.ma.us
–E.E.
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Williams College to host discussion of Iranian nuclear deal
Williamstown — A foreign policy discussion entitled “Debating the Iranian Nuclear Deal: Danger or Opportunity?” will take place at Williams College on Thursday, October 29 with Eugene Gholz and Alan Kuperman. The event will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Griffin Hall, room 3 and is free and open to the public.
Negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program have been controversial. Gholz and Kuperman will debate the merits of the agreement, discussing questions of peace and security and whether the agreement will lead to Iran obtaining its own nuclear weapons capability. After their debate, the speakers will answer questions from the audience about all aspects of the agreement and American foreign policy in the Middle East.
Gholz is the Stanley Kaplan Visiting Professor of American Foreign Policy. He holds a position as an associate professor of public affairs at the University of Texas Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Previously Gholz worked in the Pentagon as senior advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy. His areas of expertise include innovation, defense management, and U.S. foreign policy. Gholz is the coauthor of two books: “Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry,” and “U.S. Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy.” He holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kuperman is also an associate professor of public affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School at the University of Texas Austin, where he teaches courses in global policy studies and coordinates the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project. His research focuses on ethnic conflict, nuclear nonproliferation, and U.S. military intervention. He is the author of several books, including “The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda” and “Nuclear Terrorism and Global Security: The Challenge of Phasing Out Highly Enriched Uranium.” Previously, Kuperman was Resident Assistant Professor and coordinator of the International Relations program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. He has served in both governmental and non-governmental positions. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
–E.E.
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Lyme disease advocates push for stronger healthcare coverage
Boston — Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick) joined his colleagues and more than 100 advocates at the State House this week to testify in support of bills that would require insurance companies in Massachusetts to offer coverage for Lyme disease treatment. Representative Linsky joined Sen. Anne Gobi (D-Spencer) and Rep. Ted Speliotis (D-Danvers) in presenting testimony before the Joint Committee on Financial Services in Gardner Auditorium on Tuesday. Testimony in favor of the bill, which took up most of the day-long hearing, also included physicians, treatment guidelines authors and patient advocates, as well as many patients telling their difficult encounters with the disease and getting approval for adequate treatment.
Rep. Linsky is the lead sponsor of H.901, An Act Relative to Lyme Disease Treatment Coverage, which aims to help bridge the gap between patients being prescribed treatment for Lyme disease and their ability to pay for it through insurance coverage; Sen. Gobi is the sponsor of identical legislation, S.502, in the Senate. Rep. Theodore Speliotis has introduced a similar bill, H.956. The three bills share 140 different co-sponsors of the 200 legislators in the House and Senate. Berkshire County representatives Smitty Pignatelli, Tricia Farley-Bouvier, and Gailanne Cariddi are all co-sponsors of the bill.
Lyme disease is the largest vector-borne disease in the United States, affecting more people than Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) and West Nile virus combined. According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 5,665 new cases of Lyme disease were reported in the Commonwealth in 2013, a 12 percent increase in reported cases over 2012 and the highest incidence rate in Massachusetts history. Cases continue to be high in southern Berkshire County, at a case rate of over 500 cases per 100,000 population. Berkshire County also has the second-highest rate in Massachusetts for the tick-borne coinfection anaplasmosis.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health agree that Lyme disease cases are under-reported, and that actual cases may be 10 times higher than reported, or over 56,000 cases in 2013 and 2014. It is estimated that individuals with chronic Lyme disease have an approximate mean annual cost of treatment of $16,199 a year, with chronic illness accounting for 84 percent of Lyme disease healthcare costs.
According to a 2014 report from the Center of Health Information and Analysis, requiring coverage for Lyme disease treatments by fully-insured health plans would result in an average annual increase, over five years, to the typical member’s monthly health insurance premiums of between a negligible amount and $0.13 (0.02 percent) per year. Both H.901 and S.502 await further action by the Joint Committee on Financial Services.
–E.E.
