Word: florida
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Welcome to Florida, the land of no income taxes - and killer property taxes. Whether it's a nightmare for someone who just purchased a Florida foreclosure or a tax hike that proves the last straw for some struggling homeowner, it's bad news for the individual, and increasingly for the state. It's also a painful reminder of the halcyon days when Florida's economy could lazily rely on soaring real estate prices - and related taxes - to pour ever more money into government coffers. Now local governments say they're broke, thanks to the housing bust, and many are trying...
...Truth is, a dysfunctional property-tax system has been haunting Florida, if not many other states, far longer than the recession has. Over the past generation, Florida's explosive but fecklessly managed growth drove up real estate values, and therefore property taxes, beyond the reach of more and more families. In the 1990s the state adopted a "homestead" measure which, when homeowners become eligible for it, caps their assessed property-value increases at 3% a year (part-time residents don't qualify). But when houses are sold, a far higher base assessment usually applies, creating absurd situations in which neighbors...
...enough before Tigran died, she would be deported. "To hit you with that when you've lost someone you loved and you're feeling desperate, to not consider me a spouse because my husband had died," says Natalia, now 24 and an accounting student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, "it seemed the coldest bureaucratic thing ever." (See information on the immigration divide...
...some on Capitol Hill don't think a temporary measure goes far enough. On June 23, Florida Senator Bill Nelson and Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern introduced legislation, the Fairness to Surviving Spouses Act, that would nix the widow penalty for good. To leverage their message, they were joined by both Goukassian and another military widow, Diana Engstrom, whose husband was killed in Iraq in 2004 in a rocket-propelled-grenade attack. Engstrom, a Kosovo native, found out afterward that she, too, would be deported because she'd been married for less than the two years required for an immigrant spouse...
...evidence-based protocols to reduce the use of intensive care, lower valve-replacement costs and avoid unneeded transfusions. It's standardizing a handoff protocol that reduced errors after shift changes at its Arizona branch, as well as a program that boosted patient satisfaction by teaching doctors at its Florida branch to listen better. Mayo even has its own registry to track artificial joints, which are expected to increase fivefold by 2030 as baby boomers seek spare parts. Reducing the failure rate for artificial hips and knees 10% could save taxpayers $500 million a year...