Equality and Opportunity

A new rule from the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), slated to take effect in March, will remove health care debts from credit reports and bar lenders from considering medical debts in loan decisions. Meanwhile, state and local policymakers nationwide are pushing plans to forgive consumer medical debt. Such measures are intende ...

As a nurse in rural Colorado after World War II, Loretta Ford described herself as a lone ranger. "Whatever went on in health, I was called," she said. "I took care of it." Ms. Ford, who died in January at the age of 104, co-founded America's first nurse practitioner program. She believed that nurses were more than doctors' helpers: They were de ...

It's stating the obvious to point out that the world has changed drastically since the post-WWI era. Yet, the government is still clinging to an outdated law from 1920 that is doing far more harm than it ever did good. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, or the Jones Act as it is more widely known, was adopted during a time when the United States g ...

In Newport Beach, surfing instructor Jason Murchison is being treated like "this Jesse-James-style criminal," as he puts it. The city has been in a legal dispute with Jason — a 41-year-old former Navy diver turned business owner — for a decade. He has seen code enforcement officers watching him from a boat. He has received citations in the m ...

California Reparations Legislation Is Back Reparations advocates in the California State Legislature introduced and amended several bills to benefit descendants of enslaved persons. Efforts to implement reparations legislation during the last legislative session largely fell short, particularly with attempts to establish a new Freedmen Affairs Age ...

Workplace discrimination doesn't, well … discriminate; it can happen to anyone regardless of race, gender, or religion. Yet, while it can, and certainly does, happen to anyone, the burden of proof an employee must provide to the courts is not the same for every person. Under the "background circumstances" rule, "majority-group" employees, like wh ...

The Jones Act (officially known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920) was passed in the wake of WWI. In the new, post-war world, the U.S. felt compelled to strengthen its maritime capabilities and bolster national security. So Congress passed the Jones Act, which requires all ships transporting goods between U.S. ports to be U.S.-built, U.S.-owned, a ...

Jason Murchison has been drawn to the ocean his whole life. Surfing is his passion, and for him, there is nothing like the adrenaline rush of a good barrel wave. He also loves that surfing doesn't have to be competitive; it can be just about the synergy of him and the ocean. It's good for the soul. Born and bred in Southern California, Jason beg ...

In a recent column, state Delegate Scot Heckert argues that West Virginia's Certificate of Need (CON) program is needed to protect health care services in rural communities. Unfortunately, his defense ignores clear evidence that these outdated laws reduce access to care and increase patient costs. Health care CON laws make it difficult or impos ...