Unlike Prop B, Mr. Adachi's new plan wouldn't modify employees' health-care costs, which are also skyrocketing.

WSJ: San Francisco's Pension Fog

Put bluntly, the bill does too little to modify the underlying drivers of health inflation.

ECONOMIST: Health reform takes a step forward

The Board is legally barred from proposing anything that will ration health care, restrict benefits or modify the eligibility criteria for beneficiaries.

FORBES: GOP Returns To 'Death Panels' Narrative In Desperate Effort To Change The Medicare Story

Similarly Bairbre De Brun, the province's new health minister, may soon have to modify Sinn Fein's previously blanket opposition to any consideration of hospital and ward closures.

ECONOMIST: North meets South

But they are also a reflection of the hard graft of public-health workers in many countries, who have persuaded millions of people to modify or abandon risky behaviour, such as having unprotected sex, as they have also created the medical infrastructure needed to distribute anti-retroviral drugs that can keep symptoms at bay in those who do become infected.

ECONOMIST: AIDS

In the cases of both GM and Chrysler, the administration's Auto Task Force was not impressed that the companies haven't been able to modify their agreements with the UAW on compensation reductions, severance pay and a union-managed health care trust.

FORBES: Unions