When Angelica Hernandez received a letter from the state telling her to pick a Medicaid managed-care plan for her daughter, the Naperville woman chose one that included the doctor’s office where she had always taken the 10-year-old girl.

After selecting the plan, Hernandez learned it didn’t cover the audiologist who had fitted her daughter, who is partially deaf, with a hearing aid. A Spanish speaker, Hernandez said through a translator that she was told it would cost at least $400 to see the audiologist under her new plan, and she has not gone back.

Officials at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services say they have tried to avoid disruptions of care as the state shifts 2.2 million of its 3.1 million Medicaid patients to managed care, a system in which the state pays a fixed amount for each patient instead of reimbursing providers for each test and treatment.

Pension checks will shrink 6.7 percent for 12,000 Detroit retirees beginning in March. Making matters worse, many also must pay back thousands of dollars of excess interest they received.

It’s a bitter outcome of Detroit’s record $18 billion municipal bankruptcy for David Espie, 58, who will repay the city $75,000 in a lump sum while his $3,226 monthly pension is cut by $216.

As retirement costs swallow larger portions of U.S. city budgets, Detroit’s bankruptcy plan resolved a pension crisis with creative strokes, though at a cost to retirees who thought their benefits were untouchable.

A “zombie” sanitary district was discovered, with no apparent purpose. A defunct fire district operated almost entirely on paper, having to contract with a nearby department for services.

Those were local units of government that DuPage County officials moved to eliminate as part of an initiative they project will save taxpayers more than $100 million over the next 20 years. Advocates say it’s a model for how other Illinois counties can cut costs through consolidating government too.

“It’s very difficult, tedious work, but it has the potential to pay huge dividends for tax payers,” said DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin.

It took an absurd length of time, but in January 2015, America finally finished recovering the 10.3 million FTE* jobs it lost to the recession. Keep the champagne corked, however. In the time since the last FTE jobs peak in November 2007, our working age population grew by 16.6 million. On the margin, only 19.7% of these people entered the labor force, and only 4.2% of them landed FTE jobs.

Still, Friday’s “Employment Situation” report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was solid. The economy moved 288,000 FTE jobs closer to full employment. If this rate were to be sustained, we would reach full employment in early 2019.

By the way, it’s not true that the financial markets did not like the BLS report. While the nominal Dow fell by 0.34% on the day, the “Gold Dow,” which is the Dow divided by the price of gold, rose by 2.18%.

GOP gubernatorial newbie Bruce Rauner gave his State of the State address this week, telling his constituents that he’d “leave no stone unturned as we look to bring good government, good management practices, here to Springfield.” “Good government, good management”…in Illinois? Good luck. What the new state chief didn’t include in his speech, notable for its attacks on public and private union power, was a plan that will have dramatic repercussions for municipal governments: the removal of a hurdle they have to jump in order to declare bankruptcy. The Chicago Tribune reports that it was hidden in “a list of talking points…distributed to lawmakers”:

From the very first time (September 28, 2010 to be exact) I saw the little town car icon crawling across the map coming towards my little green dot, I knew taxi cabs, airport car services, and parking lot attendants in downtown SF were going to see a whole lot less of me.

Tens of millions of riders around the globe love this service so much it has become its own verb.  And at a $40 billion valuation, it’s no wonder that it has become cliché to describe other on demand mobile services (ODMS) as the “Uber for X”.  Any offline service that can be reserved, or delivered to you physically, or transmitted to you virtually through your smartphone seems to have a startup or several trying to become the Uber for that particular vertical.

A few of these will turn into very large and successful global internet brands, grabbing major market share and even greater market capitalization from the offline rivals they out innovate.  Most, however, will succeed on a much more limited scale, making only a small dent in their industry and servicing limited geographic markets.

Gov. Bruce Rauner on Sunday shot back at critics who’ve characterized him as being “anti-union.”

During a speech at the Westin hotel in Lombard, Rauner said he has heard the accusation since suggesting last week that voters be allowed to decide if they want their municipality or county to become what he’s calling “employee empowerment zones,” or right-to-work areas where workers wouldn’t be required to join a union.

“People are saying, ‘Oh Bruce, you’re just anti-union,'” Rauner told a crowd of about 200. “Let me be clear: I am not anti-union. I do believe you should be able to join a union or not join a union. You should have the freedom to choose.”