Bob Collins
Could you choose which of your kids to save if their lives depended on it? Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Health
Millennials, you’ve got a problem ahead. Two-thirds of you say you expect your partner will handle the child-rearing in your family, according to a recent survey from Harvard. About half of the Millennial women expect bringing up baby will fall on them. See the math, there? Read more →
Inside every person is a snow angel longing to come out. Read more →
The Affordable Care Act appears to be doing what it was supposed to do, a new report says.
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It’s not possible to find a sadder story today than the Star Tribune report on Kendrea Johnson, the 6-year-old girl who was found dead in her foster home in Brooklyn Park. Read more →
If you get your health insurance from your employer, the chances are pretty good that last week your co-pays — the amount you pay just for showing up — went up. So did your out-of-pocket maximum and your deductible. In short, it’s going to cost you a lot more to use your health care.
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Jenna Langer Vancura, who died on Saturday, wrote her own obituary, which has just been published as the final entry on her blog, The Redhead Report, which documented her 12-year battle with cancer.
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Between 2010 and 2012, 16.4 people per million population died in Minnesota from alcohol poisoning, the Centers for Disease Control said today. Only seven states are worse. Read more →
The world’s most effective Petri dishes — schools — have reopened after the holiday break and that should make the flu season here worse than it already was. Read more →
Jenna Langer Vancura, whom I wrote about in September, died on Saturday. She was just 28. The Woodbury and New Ulm native chronicled her life with cancer on her blog, The Redhead Report, and visited MPR’s Daily Circuit a few times too. She had three bouts with cancer, then announced in September — 11 years Read more →
Lauren Hill, the Cincinnati woman who is dying from a brain tumor, has reached another goal. The basketball player wanted to raise a million dollars for cancer research by the end of the year. In the last minutes of a telethon, someone threw $100,000 in. Read more →
The worst job in the world? Might we suggest NPR has it covered with this morning’s video on the people who collect the bodies of ebola victims.
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2014 was a tough year for Audra Daniloff, 17. The Saukville, Wisc., teen spent much of it at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin fighting Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis, which stimulates the immune system to attack the body. Read more →
If there was must-viewing in Minnesota over the weekend, Cathy Wurzer’s interview with Bruce Kramer on TPT’s Almanac was it. Read more →
Over the weekend, my wife helped NAMI MN deliver Christmas presents to a few mental health units at area hospitals and dropped this bombshell on me afterwards: At one hospital alone, there were 52 children inpatients. But there is a waiting list of 13 kids who are in mental health crisis. There aren’t enough beds to allow them to receive the help they need. Read more →