Here’s a look at the health insurance expansion efforts in Massachusetts and Tennessee.

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Massachusetts:

POPULATION: 6.5 million.

LAW SIGNED: April 2006.

ADDITIONAL PEOPLE COVERED: 432,000.

COST TO STATE: $628 million in fiscal year 2008, about 42 percent of that reimbursed by the federal government.

HOW IT WORKS: Uninsured adults must pay tax penalties if the state says they can afford insurance. Employers with more than 10 workers must offer insurance or pay penalties of $295 per worker.

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Lingling WeiMarket enthusiasm for the Federal Reserve’s plan to help the commercial-real-estate market was doused Tuesday after Standard & Poor’s warned that billions of dollars of top-rated bonds backed by commercial mortgages could face downgrades.

The financing drought in commercial real estate is threatening to cause major damage to the economy, so the sector was cheered when the Fed announced in March that it would expand one of its main rescue programs to help resuscitate the $700 billion market for bonds backed by mortgages on office towers, strip malls and other commercial property. The market for commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS, rallied on the news.

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When Elizabeth Romanaux was laid off from the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J. on Feb. 27, she was hired back almost immediately to work three days a week doing grant writing and public relations for the museum, located just outside New York City.

“I’m grateful for the work; it’s still fun to do even though the circumstances have changed,” said Romanaux, 53. That included a loss of her health insurance benefit, a “painful blow” for the science center’s former vice president of communications.

But thanks to a new law, Romanaux enjoys the same medical and vision benefits as before — and pays just $140 a month, meaning she will save more than $2,300 over the course of 2009.

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Malls, those ubiquitous shopping meccas that sprang up in the 1950s, are dwindling in number, with many struggling properties reduced to largely vacant shells.

On the low-income east side of Charlotte, N.C., the 1.1-million-square-foot Eastland Mall recently lost a slew of key tenants, including a Dillard’s and, next month, a Sears. Sales per square foot at the venue fell to $210 in 2008 from $288 in 2001.

The Metcalf South Shopping Center in Overland Park, Kan., is languishing after plans to redevelop it into an open-air shopping district fizzled. The stretch of shops that connects the two largest tenants — a Sears and a Macy’s — stands mostly vacant, patrolled by security guards.

With their maze of walkways and fast-food courts, malls have long been an iconic, if sometimes unsightly, presence in the American retail landscape. A few were made famous by their sheer size, others for the range of shopping and social diversions they provided.

But the long recession is helping to empty out the promenades. Some analysts estimate that the number of so-called “dead malls” — centers debilitated by anemic sales and high vacancy rates — will swell to more than 100 by the end of this year.

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A long-awaited federal law that shields people from genetic discrimination will plant its first layer of protection Thursday.

The measure will prevent health insurers from denying coverage, adjusting premiums or otherwise discriminating based on genetic information, a term that includes family history. The law does not apply to life insurers.

Genetic tests can help tell whether a person has – or is at risk of developing – an inherited disorder or medical condition. They identify variations in a person’s genes, which determine an array of hereditary characteristics.

These tests also can help doctors determine which treatments may be most effective for diseases like cancer or how a patient’s body processes a drug.

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Value-conscious, first-time buyers have become key to the housing market’s recovery, and they are snapping up priced-right foreclosures despite the warts-and-all, sold-as-is condition of the properties. Half of the sales made in the year’s first quarter were to first-time buyers and almost half of all these sales were distressed properties, the National Association of Realtors reported. Distressed properties include foreclosures and short sales, which are private transactions in which a homeowner sells the property for less than the amount owed on a mortgage.

The glut of foreclosures has pushed down home values, so heightened interest in buying them benefits the immediate neighborhood and the overall housing market.

“It’s a very good first step,” said Lance Ramella, a principal at RW Real Estate Advisors in Oakbrook Terrace. “The first step is selling the most value-conscious units and those are the foreclosures. We’re not going to see any real sustainable price appreciation until we move the foreclosures off the inventory list.”

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After testimony from parents who had depleted their savings to provide treatment for their autistic children, New Jersey Senate and Assembly committees yesterday advanced a bill that would require insurers to cover screening and therapies related to the disorder.

“If my child had cancer, diabetes or fetal alcohol syndrome, she would be covered,” testified a tearful Hilary Downing of Readington, Hunterdon County. “The college savings of my older daughter is gone.”

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by repetitive movement and severe deficits in communication and social interaction. Researchers have found New Jersey to have a high prevalence of autism, for which there is no known cure.

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Distressed properties prompt multiple offers, can lead to sales in traditional market

Orlando and Aminah Burns became first-time homeowners last December when they bought a foreclosed two-flat in Bronzeville that they are now turning into a single-family home for themselves.

Now they are in the market again, looking for another bargain-priced foreclosure to rehab into apartments or condos. And while the first two floors of a Grand Boulevard building two-flat gave them hope, the steep descent into the illegal basement apartment revealed dark, dank, mold-stained walls and water-damaged floors.

“That mildew will ward off someone else that is brand new into it, but I’ve seen so much worse. I’m like, that’s nothing,” said Orlando Burns, who after thinking about it for a few days decided to offer $50,000 for the $39,900 property.

Taking those few days to think cost him the building. Less than a week later, the lender accepted a $59,000 offer from another couple of first-time buyers who plan to convert the foreclosed building into their own single-family home.

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Good news for young men and women between the ages of 21 and 25 having trouble affording health insurance.

A new law recently passed during the 2009 Idaho Legislative Session allows for men and women to qualify for coverage on their parents’ health insurance plan as long as they are still considered dependents.

This means they are unmarried, and still rely on their parents for 50% of their annual income.

Before, the maximum age for youth to qualify for their parents’ plans was 21, unless they were full-time students. In that case, they were eligible until the age of 25. This new law essentially drops the condition of being in school.

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U.S. mortgage application demand slid to the lowest level since mid-March, driven by a drop in requests to refinance loans even as borrowing costs dipped toward record lows last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday.

Applications for loans to buy homes rose marginally in the week ended May 8, holding slightly elevated levels in the midst of the keenly watched spring selling season.

U.S. housing continues to stumble in its deepest slump since the Great Depression.

But near record-low mortgage rates and a 30 percent price drop by some measures from the 2006 peak are luring buyers — mostly those who benefit from a first-time buyer federal tax credit and those secure in their jobs.

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