Specialties

So Sheryl Clark is "appalled" ["Epidurals' Costs Should Not Be Paid," Letters, June 27] because a class-action lawsuit has been filed in the case of low-income women who were denied epidurals during childbirth. Seems to me her indignation is misplaced. There would have been no basis for such a lawsuit if certain greedy anesthesiologists (already one of the highest-paying specialties in the medical field) had not demanded hundreds of dollars in cash upfront from these unfortunate women to begin with.

Monday is the last day to begin the process of signing up for insurance under the Covered California statewide health exchange. But even for many of those already enrolled, the challenges are just beginning. Consider, for instance, the work to be done in figuring out your new health plan's coverage for prescription drugs. For people who take medications on an ongoing basis, it's especially important to closely evaluate details of a health plan's drug coverage. For Tina Petrakis, selecting a new health plan through Covered California meant paying close attention to the medications each policy covered.

While politics appears to be the mother-of-all inconsistencies, still it is a stretch to condemn Riordan for becoming a successful businessman. Apparently, one of Riordan's specialties has been salvaging what can be saved from the wreckage of bankrupt companies, businesses where jobs were either already lost or in jeopardy long before Riordan was called in to perform financial CPR. Faced with a sluggish economy and California's hostile business climate, this has been a tough assignment.

DENVER - At 7:59 a.m. on Wednesday, a harried Jay Griffin shouted to the crowd pressed against the roped-off lines leading to his storefront counter: "One minute until we make history!" Sixty seconds later, he and a handful of other pot shop retailers opened a new and closely watched chapter in the national debate over legalizing marijuana as Colorado became the first state in the country where small amounts of recreational pot can be legally sold in specialty stores. Steve "Heyduke" Judish, a 58-year-old retired federal worker from Denver who prefers weed to booze, was the first customer of the day at Dank Colorado, a tiny shop tucked in a Denver industrial district.

Re "Major Cuts at Hospital Urged," Aug. 5 How the closure of King/Drew Medical Center's neonatal intensive care unit and its maternity ward can aid in regaining an accreditation lost because of pervasive problems in internal medicine and other adult specialties boggles the mind. It's just easier to make children pay. Even though the hundreds of thousands of kids in King/Drew's health district really have no other place to go when their terrible asthma, infections, diabetes and traumas hurt them, the Los Angeles County health director, Dr. Thomas Garthwaite, states they can be cared for in any other hospital.

Re "Military ban on gays may soon change," April 17 The Times reports that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates confirmed that Pentagon leadership understood the president's stated policy to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning gays in the military and would do whatever the president asks of them. But how and when will it happen? Gates misses the mark when he suggests that this personnel issue -- directly affecting readiness, retention and recruitment -- should be kicked down the road.

Evelyn De Wolfe recounted (Sept. 8) how in 1912 Lew Zuckerman rented a few rooms for eight days so that three men at the county's facility for the poor could celebrate Passover. Soon thereafter, she reports, he located a house for these men to live in permanently. That house became the first facility of what we now call the Jewish Homes for the Aging. The thought struck me that even Zuckerman's legendary generosity and energy would be challenged by what he would probably have to face today if he wanted to replicate his singular act of charity: --Call his lawyers to create a tax-free corporation and ask his accountants to set up books acceptable to the IRS. --Apply to the county for registration as a charitable organization qualified to solicit funds and the state's Department of Health to be authorized to run a public facility for the aging.

Renee Mohrmann has never been on a safari and doesn't plan on taking one anytime soon. But that doesn't stop the 30-year-old Santa Monica pathologist from browsing through the racks of safari clothes at Banana Republic. "It's interesting," she said of the store's ersatz jungle interior. "I like the travel motif; it's an escape, an adventure, you might say."

Sally Ride doesn't look like a woman outrageous enough to sit on top of a stack of enormous flaming rockets. There's absolutely nothing about her refined appearance or manner to suggest she has the grit to travel into the great, dark, airless abyss strapped to the seat of a hurtling piece of machinery. She's small, reserved, a reluctant heroine uneasy with eminence, a self-possessed but distant star who navigates her rarefied universe with quiet control.

Apropos your publication of a recent letter about the role of specialty care in the overall picture of health care in the United States, the public needs to know some facts! Blue Cross' Wellpoint program takes more than 30% of the premium's dollar for profit in administration. In 1992 this profit amounted to $300 million! Recently, we were notified by Blue Cross of California that they were going to decrease compensation for surgical specialists by 16% because of cost constraints!

Attention, whiskey buffs: The MGM Grand in Las Vegas has recently purchased a single barrel of Woodford Reserve that will be available starting later this month in the property's restaurants and bars. All 228 bottles carry labels stating that the Woodford Reserve was selected exclusively for the MGM Grand . It is part of MGM Resorts' expanding effort to provide “personalized spirits” to customers seeking “an exclusive experience,” said Dan Adams, director of food and beverage at the MGM Grand.

When Maggie Heim had a recurrence of ovarian cancer about a year after her initial treatment, her oncologist suggested that she take what he believed could be a lifesaving drug. There was just one problem: Her insurer wouldn't pay for it. The 59-year-old Hermosa Beach resident inquired about the cost of the treatment at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she received care. To her alarm, she was told that the cancer-fighting drug, Avastin, would set her back as much as $50,000 a month.

Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper have proven their box-office mettle over the past few years but what about Derek Cianfrance? The indie director, who astonished audiences in 2010 with his debut feature "Blue Valentine" starring Gosling and Michelle Williams, is becoming a box-office brand in his own right. This Easter weekend the 39-year old director dominated the new releases at the specialty box office with his sprawling 15-year epic "The Place Beyond the Pines. " Opening in just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, the film earned an estimated $270,184, for a per-theater average of $67,546.

It was a balmy late-autumn Sunday in L.A.'s historic West Adams district, during what Henry James would've called "the perfect middle" of the afternoon. Nattily dressed visitors strolled through a hedge-rowed Italianate garden bathed in ocher light. Some paused to admire the facade of a handsome Baroque red-brick building, inspired by Sir Christopher Wren's Hampton Court in London. Yet the prime attraction was taking place inside, not outside, UCLA's William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

In L.A., grocery shopping is an extreme sport. Weekly, I threaten my husband that I'm going to start keeping a log detailing how many miles and how much time I spend shopping. I can tell you right now the carbon footprint is not pretty. When I was a kid, we shopped at the neighborhood supermarket once a week, where we bought bags and bags of groceries, always the same. When I was very young, a neighbor's husband was transferred to Paris for a year. When his wife came back she gathered all the women around to recount the horror - the horror!

WASHINGTON -- People need to monitor more than just the three largest credit reporting companies, and some specialty firms that track rent payments, employment history and insurance claims aren't providing a free annual report as required by law, a federal regulator Thursday. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sent a bulletin to those smaller companies reminding them that they have to make it easy for consumers to obtain those free reports, including providing a toll-free number for requests.

I was thrilled to see an African-American bestseller list. As a visitor from New York City, I was glad to see the Times acknowledge the cultural diversity of Los Angeles readers. As previous letter writers have stated, we are all Americans, but I might add that our cultural differences add spice to the "melting pot." In future, you might have a Latino section. I find it quite interesting that some of your obviously white readers were offended by the small amount of print given to the African-American section.

Brian Gruhkle might have briefly thought that he was in a real-life episode of "The X Files" as he sat in a desolate Santa Clarita field Monday night. But the blinding light that descended upon his stuck pickup truck was all too terrestrial in origin. It was a helicopter with a ticket-writing sheriff's deputy who handed him a misdemeanor citation for trespassing.

At midnight on Thanksgiving night, Narine Anton and her regiment of 10 workers will welcome shoppers into Body Basics at the Glendale Galleria. That's if she doesn't decide to open the specialty shop even earlier. Anton, manager of the store stocked with pajamas and cotton basics, is considering moving the time up to 10 p.m. on Turkey Day. "If we open earlier, then maybe we can get the traffic from Macy's or Target and make more money," she said. "If we don't open with the big stores, they have extra hours with customers and we miss out on that.

It's no easy task finding just the right holiday gift, especially one made in the USA. "I'd like to buy handmade items or presents made in the U.S., but it's a challenge to find anything," said Denise Stark, a salesclerk from Redlands. "It's not as easy as going to the mall. " Shopping experts offer some tips for hunting down the perfect gift: • Look online: A simple Internet search will turn up plenty of sites selling made-in-the-USA items, and refining the search further with keywords can swiftly deliver the right Web retailer.