Blade: I’ll be back

Legless Olympian Oscar Pistorius, possibly facing life in the slammer for killing his model girlfriend, told cops yesterday that he’ll soon be on the “run.”

The “Blade Runner” disclosed to South African authorities that he’ll resume training while he’s out on bail for the Valentine’s Day shooting of Reeva Steenkamp.

It was the first time Pistorius, 26, had to check in at a police precinct. The terms of his $113,000 bail package say he has to do so twice weekly.

“It’s his wish to continue to practice,” said James Smalberger, a Pretoria corrections official.

Pistorius’ spokeswoman, however, denied that the athlete wanted to resume racing on his world-famous prosthetic limbs.

“Absolutely not,” said Janine Hills.

“He is currently in mourning, and his focus is not on his sports.”

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David Samson: Miami Marlins saw trouble with ticket sales before Day One

The Miami Marlins’ new ballpark was slow to draw fan interest even before a disastrous season led to a collapse in attendance so steep that the front office never contemplated it, team president David Samson said Monday.

“It didn’t occur to us... that the off-field results of last year could be what they were,’’ Samson said during a press conference at Marlins Park. “We didn’t even contemplate in a worst-case scenario that our revenues would be what they were.”

And while Samson said the biggest miscalculation was in just how poorly the Marlins would play, he said lukewarm support was noticeable well before the Marlins’ infamous mid-season dive.

Season-ticket buyers did not respond to the late 2011 signing of Jose Reyes and other star players, months before the ballpark’s debut. His marketing team had hoped to announce a string of sell-outs before the April 4 Opening Day, but even the Boston Red Sox didn’t bring enough demand to sell all 37,500 seats.

“We misread last year on and off the field,’’ Samson said. “We did not have the bump we expected after the winter meetings [when the Marlins signed Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell]. That got us worried. Not panicked, but worried.”

His comments danced around a central question looming over the opening of Marlins Park at the site of the old Orange Bowl football stadium in Little Havana.

Can Miami sustain a Major League Baseball team? Samson said he wasn’t trying to suggest the city couldn’t, noting “fans are always right.”

“I’m not going to say Miami is not a sports town,’’ he said. “Or that there is something wrong with the fans. I would never say that.”

Samson’s comments to reporters was the sideshow to owner Jeffrey Loria defending the Marlins’ stripping the team’s payroll of Reyes and other expensive players — a move he said was needed after the players failed to deliver in 2012.

Loria’s press conference came a day after he published a full-page letter to fans in local newspapers defending the move and the controversial deal that had Miami-Dade borrow nearly $400 million for the stadium’s construction.

Facing heavy fan backlash and the prospect of a season even worse than the one that brought “tens of millions of dollars” in losses last year, Loria hopes Miami will see his new young team as one worthy of support.

“We needed to fix the chemistry, we needed to fix the core of the team,’’ Loria said. “We didn’t draw more people [to the stadium] because the team was losing.”

So far, season-ticket sales are about half what they were a year ago, and the team isn’t sure it can sell out Opening Day on April 8. And the Marlins are facing revived ire over the 2009 stadium deal as the Miami Dolphins pursue their own tax-funded renovation for Sun Life.

Dolphins executives have promised a funding arrangement far more palatable than what the Marlins offered, and Loria on Monday called the Dolphins’ effort a “smear campaign’’ for its implicit slam against his arrangement with Miami-Dade.

A referendum on the Dolphins’ proposal probably will come in May, meaning the debate over tax-funded stadium projects will heat up just as the Marlins try to recover from the worst debut season among all ballparks built since 2001.

In his comments, Samson offered new details on the weak ticket sales, and said the collapse in revenue left the team no choice but to cut payroll.

The season’s announced attendance of 2.1 million was still far better than what the team drew when playing in Sun Life, and put the team at No. 18 in the 30-team league in terms of attendance. But Samson said the internal numbers of actual paid attendance were much worse. He put the so-called “turnstile” attendance for the season at 1.4 million. That’s roughly 17,000 people per game — or not even half of the stadium.

In its worst-case scenarios for the 2012 season, Samson said the team’s forecasts only contemplated for a turnstile attendance of 2 million.

Samson said an early sign of trouble was when June match-ups with the Red Sox didn’t deliver at the box office.

“We were very, very worried when the Red Sox games didn’t sell out,’’ he said. As the team turned in a strong performance in May — only the second month in the ballpark -- ticket sales weren’t delivering.

“Our fans I thought would see win after win. Our advanced sales didn’t move,’’ Samson said. “I don’t know the reason. I really don’t.”

He also declined to predict a sell-out for Opening Day – a lack of confidence for only the second year of the stadium’s existence.

“Fans are reticent and upset,’’ Samson said of the fury over dumping the star players. “I am so sorry about that.”

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Archbishop Wenski leads 90-mile motorcycle run

After a blessing, motorcycles roared their engines and drove out of St. Richard Catholic Church in Palmetto Bay to participate in the first Motorcycle Poker Run organized by the Archdiocese of Miami.

Heading the bikers: Archbishop Thomas Wenski wearing a biker’s leather jacket and riding his black Harley-Davidson Street Glide motorcycle.

“Bikers are people that are accustomed to praying because if you’re going to ride a motorcycle, you should know how to pray,” said Wenski, who has been riding his motorcycle for about 10 years. “This is a way to bring some good attention, find financial support for St. Luke’s Center [Catholic Charity] and have a good time.”

Behind him, more than 60 other riders followed for about 90 miles through South Florida roads.

“Today he is not just my spiritual leader,” said Natacha Quiroz, the only woman driving a motorcycle on her own. “He is my road leader.”

At every stop, including Robert Is Here, the fruit and vegetable farm stand in Florida City, Cafe 27 in Weston, and Peterson’s Harley-Davidson in Miami Gardens, the contestants picked up a card, eventually collecting a complete poker hand.

The bikers were also able to interact with the archbishop and others while competing for the $500 Harley-Davidson gift card.

But Wenski’s favorite stop was at the Schoenstatt Center in Homestead, where riders were able to stop at the chapel, say a private prayer and enjoy refreshments.

“It’s always good to ride with good people,” said Bob Borges of Hollywood, who rode with his daughter. “The problem with a lot of other rides is that they all go from bar to bar to bar, and I don’t drink when I ride.”

The Chrome Knights Motorcycle Association and other groups helped the archdiocese organize the poker run and guided the inexperienced drivers. Volunteers from the organization also helped guide the riders and stop traffic at intersections.

For Quiroz, who had never experienced riding in a group, the privilege of riding with the archbishop was indescribable.

“My heart is pounding so hard,” said Quiroz, who took out her motorcycle from her garage for the fist time in more than a year. “My motorcycle is the tiniest among these huge machines, and if you see me I look like a butterfly among eagles. But to know that I’m the only girl makes me feel like an eagle, I am proud.”

The Poker Run, according to the Rev. Luis Rivero, was also a way to show others that following Christ can be fun.

“It’s a way for us to learn to use the tools of today, speak the language of the younger generations and bridge the gap between the ancient and the new,” said Rivero, who has been riding his three-wheeled Spyder for the past three years. “The archbishop makes fun of me and says that because I have three wheels I’m still in training.”

The proceeds of the run will go to programs that help people in the community recover from various types of addiction, and Wenski is hoping to establish the poker run as annual event to support St. Luke’s.

“Many people know I’ve been riding a motorcycle for some years now, so hopefully they’ll support it even if they don’t ride a motorcycle,” Wenski said. “I pray before, during and after I ride my bike.”

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Oscar 2013 Recap

Argo, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence were among the big winners during the star-studded telecast of the 85th Oscars, host by Seth MacFarlane live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Read on for the recap...

CLICK HERE for the complete list of winners.

The Best Picture

Fulfilling its promise of incredible momentum this awards season, Argo was named Best Picture over Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty. Producers George Clooney, Grant Heslov and producer/director Ben Affleck took the stage for an emotional acceptance, with Ben talking a mile a minute. In addition to acknowledging Steven Spielberg, "our friends in Iran" and the "eight great films that have as much a right to be up here as we do," he reflected on his first Oscar win for Good Will Hunting back in 1998: "I was really just a kid, and I went out and I never thought I would be back here," he said, adding of his rise, fall and career rebirth in Hollywood, "It doesn't matter that you get knocked down in life -- all that matters is that you get up."

The Best Actors

Daniel Day-Lewis became the first-ever actor to win three Best Actor Oscars, the latest for his stirring portrayal of our 16th president in Spielberg's Lincoln. Calling the win a "huge honor," he delivered a stream of rapid-fire jokes and poked fun at his persona, quipping that he had originally been committed to play Margaret Thatcher and Meryl Streep was Spielberg's first choice for Lincoln. "I'd like to see that version," he smiled, adding that he had to persuade Spielberg that "Lincoln shouldn't be a musical." He also thanked his wife Rebecca Miller, "who has lived with some very strange men" over the years (due to his very dedicated acting method) and has been "the perfect companion to all of them." Also acknowledging the "mind, body and spirit of Abraham Lincoln,"
the Brit star bested Bradley Cooper, Hugh Jackman, Joaquin Phoenix and Denzel Washington.

A stunned Jennifer Lawrence stumbled up the stairs to pick up her Best Actress statuette for her incredible performance in Silver Linings Playbook. Declaring, "This is nuts!" she upset tough competition in Jessica Chastain, Emmanuelle Riva, Quvenzhané Wallis and Naomi Watts, and told the standing audience, "You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell, and it's really embarrassing."

Pics: This Year's Oscar Fashion Trends

The Supporting Players

"It came true," said Anne Hathaway after she was named Best Supporting Actress, her second nom and first win, for her emotional portrayal of Fantine in Les Miserables. Telling fellow noms Amy Adams, Sally Field, Helen Hunt and Jacki Weaver, "I look up to you all so much and it's been such an honor," she singled out co-star Hugh Jackman and her hubby, then declared, "Here's hoping that someday in the not too far future, the misfortunes of Fantine will only be found in stories and not in real life."

Christoph Waltz was named Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained, his second Oscar win under the sure writing and direction of Quentin Tarantino. He thanked that creator of Django's "awe-inspiring world," saying with the words of his own character, "You scale the mountain because you’re not afraid of it. You slay the dragon because you’re not afraid of it. And you cross through fire because it’s worth it." Bowing with declared "respect" to his fellow nominees, Waltz out-gunned Alan Arkin, Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tommy Lee Jones.

Other Awards Highlights

Disney-Pixar's Brave won Best Animated Feature; Austria's Amour was named Best Foreign Film; Searching for Sugar Man won Best Documentary; Adele's Skyfall landed Best Original Song; Quentin Tarantino picked up Best Original Screenplay for Django Unchained, while Argo was also honored with Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing; Life of Pi earned Best Director for Ange Lee (who thanked "the movie god"), Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Visual Effects; Lincoln was voted Best Production Design; Anna Karenina got Best Costume Design; Les Miserables won Best Sound Mixing and Best Makeup & Hairstyling; and Best Sound Editing was a tie, going to both Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall.

Pics: Date Night at the Oscars

The Show High Points

Despite the show's epic length, freshman host Seth MacFarlane burst out of the gate cool and confident as he brought some good humor (the story of Argo is so top-secret "that the director is unknown to the Academy") as well as some edgy jokes (Django Unchained is Rihanna & Chris Brown's "date movie," the We Saw Your Boobs song) to his opening monologue. A song-and-dance man, the host also made sure to include plenty of sugar-sweet dance moments, from Channing Tatum and Charlize Theron dancing to The Way You Look Tonight to Daniel Radcliffe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing a little soft shoe to High Hopes.

Other fun moments of the telecast included the usual "band plays 'em off stage" music replaced by the Jaws theme; the 50th Anniversary tribute to James Bond featuring Dame Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger, and later "the unstoppable" Adele singing Skyfall; William Shatner's cameo as Star Trek's James T. Kirk, returning from the 23rd century in a sketch to stop MacFarlane from bombing too bad; the potty-mouthed, animated Ted and Mark Wahlberg quipped that the annual "post-Oscar orgy" will take place at Jack Nicholson's house; the cast of The Avengers (Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson) reassembled – and mocked each other -- to present two awards; and select cast members of the Oscar-winning Chicago, Dreamgirls and Les Miserables also reunited to perform their big hits.

Pics: Best Oscar Fashions

In Memoriam

Dearly departed stars and industry artists who left us over the last year were remembered, including Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Celeste Holm, Adam Yauch, Michael Clarke Duncan, Charles Durning, Herbert Lom, Tony Scott, Nora Ephron, Ray Bradbury and Richard D. Zanuck. And prolific composer and EGOT Marvin Hamlisch was saluted by Barbra Streisand, who beautifully sang The Way We Were.

Tune into ET for complete coverage of the 2013 Oscars, before, during and after!

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Exploiting addiction

Andrea Peyser

He’s ringmaster in the Circus of the Damned.

Dr. Drew Pinsky is the nation’s leading huckster for celebrity addicts — the go-to guy for almost-famous faces lost to liquor, sex, ecstasy and crack.

Since 2008, Dr. Drew has glammed up and tarted up B- and Z-list celebs on his hit VH1 show, “Celebrity Rehab” — renamed “Rehab” last fall so as not to exclude folks who’ve yet to make it big by falling on their faces. He’s turned addiction from an affliction to a wise career move.

From Tiger Woods’ Bimbo in Chief Rachel Uchitel — self-diagnosed as addicted to inappropriate men — to plastic-surgery enthusiast Janice Dickinson, no life is too trivial or sad to exploit.

ABC via Getty Images

Dr. Drew and Mindy McCready

Thanks to the good doc, feeling powerless in the face of drugs or, who knows, compulsive, naked tweeting, are not weaknesses. He’s done more to make addiction look hip and trendy since stoned rocker Jimi Hendrix choked to death on his own vomit in 1970 at age 27.

Eight days ago, Dr. Drew lost it. With the passing of country singer and “Rehab” alum Mindy McCready (pictured with him), who died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, folks suspicious of the Rehab Industrial Complex are taking a dim look at Dr. Drew.

It’s about time.

“I think ‘Dr’ Drew Pinsky should change his name to Kevorkian. Same results,” singer Richard Marx tweeted the day McCready died Feb. 17, referring to the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who helped terminally ill patients off themselves.

Marx backed off the next morning. Sort of. “I went too far with the Kevorkian crack.” Then he continued to lay blame at Dr. Drew’s feet. “It is, however, my opinion that what Dr. D does is exploitation and his TV track record is not good.”

“Dr. Drew has lost another one,’’ was the reaction to McCready’s death from Eugene Kovar, grandfather of dead “Rehab” player Joey Kovar.

Five of Dr. Drew’s “Rehab” stars have, to date, succumbed to their demons, including actor Jeff Conaway and Rodney King. Three have died from the 2009 season alone — rocker Mike Starr of Alice in Chains was lost to a drug overdose in 2011, “Real World” star Kovar died in August from opiate intoxication, and McCready. Dr. Drew diagnosed her on the show as suffering from “love addiction.”

This is serious?

Dr. Drew is no killer. But he has reason to fail. He sits at the epicenter of the multibillion-dollar addiction industry, whose existence depends on the relapses of people he’s trying to cure.

“Whenever a celeb overdoses or has an addiction problem, buy Drew Pinsky stock. It’s good for his brand,” said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist and author who says he likes and respects the doctor.

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Miami medicine goes digital

About 10 years ago, Dr. Fleur Sack quit her practice as a family physician to become a hospital department head. Spurring her decision was the need to switch from paper records to electronic ones to keep her private practice profitable. “At that time, it would have cost about $50,000,” Dr. Sack recalled. “It was too expensive and it was too overwhelming.”

But times and technologies changed, and last year, Dr. Sack left her hospital job to restart her medical practice with an affordable system for managing electronic patient records. She agreed to a $5,000 setup fee and a subscription fee of $500 per month for the system. Her investment also qualified her for subsidy money, which the federal government pays in installments, and to date, her subsidy income has paid for the setup fee and about two years of monthly fees. “So far, I’ve got my check for $18,000,” she said. “There’s a total of $44,000 that I can get.”

That kind of cash flow is one reason why so-called EHR software systems for electronic health records have been among the hottest-selling commercial products in the world of information technology. EHR system development is a growth industry in South Florida, too. Life sciences and biotechnology are among the high growth-potential sectors identified by the Beacon Council-led One Community One Goal economic development initiative unveiled in 2012; already, the University of Miami has opened a Health Science Technology Park while Florida International University has launched a program in its graduate school of business oriented toward biotechnology businesses.

For many young businesses in the area’s IT industry, government incentives are paving the way. The federal government is pushing doctors and hospitals to use electronic health records to cut wasteful spending and improve patient care while protecting patient privacy — sending digital information via encrypted systems, for example, rather than regular email.

Under a 2009 federal law known as the HITECH Act, maximum incentive payments for buying such systems range up to $44,000 for doctors with Medicare patients and up to $63,750 for doctors with Medicaid patients. Hospitals are eligible for larger incentive payments for becoming more paperless. The subsidy program isn’t permanent; eligible professionals must begin receiving payments by 2016. But by then, the federal government will be penalizing doctors and hospitals that take Medicare or Medicaid money without making meaningful use of electronic health records.

“What the government did is, they incentivized, and now they’re going to penalize,” said Andrew Carricarte, president and CEO of IOS Health Systems in Miami, one of the largest South Florida-based vendors of online software service for physician practices. He said insurance companies also may start penalizing physicians for failing to adopt electronic health records because “the commercial payers always follow Medicare and Medicaid.”

It’s all part of the growth story at IOS Health Systems, which has more than 2,000 physicians across the nation using its online EHR system. Carricarte said many of the company’s customers buy their second EHR system from IOS after their first one flopped. “Almost 40 percent of our sales come from customers who had systems and are now switching over to something else,” he said.

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Miami Dolphins hopeful on stadium referendum date

The Miami Dolphins are hopeful the Miami-Dade County Commission will approve a May 14 date for a referendum on the $400 rehabilitation of their stadium, time enough to get South Florida in play for Super Bowl 50, a Dolphins spokesman said Saturday.

Spokesman Ric Katz said the language of the proposed referendum has yet to be decided, and ultimately the commission decides the date.

But, he said, “we’d be very happy with” May 14 because “that gives us a week to communicate to the NFL before they make the important decision of Super Bowl 50.”

NFL owners are slated to meet on May 22 to pick the site of the 2016 Super Bowl — seen as a tourist revenue prize for whichever host city gets the 50th anniversary contest.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez met Friday with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and CEO Mike Dee to discuss the proposed stadium rehabilitation.

From the mayor’s side, there has been no agreement on a date and Gimenez does not plan to bring the proposed May 14 referendum to the commission at this time, said spokeswoman Suzy Trutie.

Friday’s was a “first meeting” at which “many things were discussed,” including the Dolphin’s preference for May 14.

But, “We continue negotiating with the Dolphins with regards to finances.”

One proposed financing plan would increase the bed tax in mainland Miami-Dade by 1 percent and increase the sales tax rebate the team already gets at the stadium in Miami Gardens. Ross had initially offered to pay at least $201 million in his financing plan. But Katz, a Miami publicist representing the team in the stadium campaign, said the two sides were still in negotiation on what the mayor would ask the commission to put to taxpayers in a referendum.

Trutie said the proposed referendum would gauge public opinion on increasing hotel taxes from 6 to 7 percent to fund the stadium renovations.

Of the commission, Katz said, “We do not take them for granted. They have the prerogative.”

Attorney Kendall Coffey did not return calls asking whether the Dolphins had hired him to write the ballot language.

Dolphins lobbyist Marcelo Llorente had said in recent weeks that the team was considering May 7 and 14 as possible referendum dates.

Any activity by the Florida Legislature would likely have to be undertaken before then. The regular session is slated to end May 3.

Miami Herald staff writers Patricia Mazzei and Doug Hanks contributed to this report.

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Independent Spirit Award Winners 2013

The 2013 Film Independent Spirits Awards were handed out in Santa Monica, CA today and lots of Oscar frontrunners cemented their status by dominating in their categories once more.

Check out all the winners below:

Best Feature

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Bernie

Keep the Lights On

Moonrise Kingdom

Silver Linings Playbook

BEST FEMALE LEAD

Linda Cardellini, Return

Emayatzy Corinealdi, Middle of Nowhere

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Smashed

BEST MALE LEAD

Jack Black, Bernie

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

John Hawkes, The Sessions

Thure Lindhardt, Keep the Lights On

Matthew McConaughey, Killer Joe

Wendell Pierce, Four

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE

Rosemarie DeWitt, Your Sister's Sister

Ann Dowd, Compliance

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Brit Marling, Sound of My Voice

Lorraine Toussaint, Middle of Nowhere

BEST SUPPORTING MALE

Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike

David Oyelowo, Middle of Nowhere

Michael Pena, End of Watch

Sam Rockwell, Seven Psychopaths

Bruce Willis, Moonrise Kingdom

BEST DIRECTOR

Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom

Julia Loktev, The Loneliest Planet

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On

Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

BEST SCREENPLAY

Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom

Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks

Martin McDonagh, Seven Psychopaths

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On

For the full list of winners, click here.

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And the Oscar goes to...?

Can you ace this Academy lesson?

Winners 1927-1977

Winners 1978-2012

In honor of the 85th AcademyAwards, airing tonight at 7on ABC, British graphic artist Olly Mosswas commissioned to design this puzzle poster of every Best Picture winner.

Each film is represented by an Oscar statuette tailored toaplot point or actor’s performance. We’ll give you this one to start: last year’s winner was “TheArtist,” the silent film represented here in black-and-white.

“The hardest one was ‘Gentleman’s Agreement.’Wenever heardof themovie,” explains Jensen Karp, co-curator of the California-based Gallery 1988, which oversawthe project.

“Agreement” stars Gregory Peck as a reporter who pretends to be Jewish in order to cover a story on anti-Semitism. We’ll leave you to figureout how the film is represented—and the year it won.

What will fill in the 2012 Oscar statue? The nine best picture nominees are “Lincoln,” “Lifeof Pi,” “ZeroDarkThirty,” “Amour,” “Argo,” “Les Miserables,” “Silver LiningsPlaybook,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “DjangoUnchained.”We’re scared what an Osama bin Laden Oscar might look like.

If you’re stumped by the statuettes, the answers are:

1927-28: “Wings”; 1928-29: “The Broadway Melody”; 1929-30: “All Quiet on the Western Front”; 1930-31: “Cimarron”; 1931-32: “Grand Hotel”; 1932-33: “Cavalcade”; 1934: “It Happened One Night”; 1935: “Mutiny on the Bounty”; 1936: “The Great Ziegfeld”; 1937: “The Life of Emile Zola”; 1938: “You Can’t Take It With You”; 1939: “Gone With The Wind”; 1940: “Rebecca”; 1941: “How Green Was My Valley”; 1942: “Mrs. Miniver”; 1943: “Casablanca”; 1944: “Going My Way”; 1945: “The Lost Weekend”; 1946: “The Best Years of Our Lives”; 1947: “Gentleman’s Agreement”; 1948: “Hamlet”; 1949: “All the King’s Men”; 1950: “All About Eve”; 1951: “An American in Paris”; 1952: “The Greatest Show on Earth”; 1953: “From Here to Eternity”; 1954: “On The Waterfront”; 1955: “Marty”; 1956: “Around the World in 80 Days”; 1957: “The Bridge On The River Kwai”; 1958: “Gigi”; 1959: “Ben-Hur”; 1960: “The Apartment”; 1961: “West Side Story”; 1962: “Lawrence of Arabia”; 1963: “Tom Jones”; 1964: “My Fair Lady”; 1965: “The Sound of Music”; 1966: “A Man for All Seasons”; 1967: “ In the Heat of the Night”; 1968: “Oliver!”; 1969: “Midnight Cowboy”; 1970: “Patton”; 1971: “The French Connection”; 1972: “The Godfather”; 1973: “The Sting”; 1974: “The Godfather Part II”; 1975: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”; 1976: “Rocky”; 1977: “Annie Hall”; 1978: “The Deer Hunter”; 1979: “Kramer vs. Kramer”; 1980: “Ordinary People”; 1981: “Chariots of Fire”; 1982: “Gandhi”; 1983: “Terms of Endearment”; 1984: “Amadeus”; 1985: “Out of Africa”; 1986: “Platoon”; 1987: “The Last Emperor”; 1988: “Rain Man”; 1989: “Driving Miss Daisy”; 1990: “Dances with Wolves”; 1991: “The Silence of the Lambs”; 1992: “Unforgiven”; 1993: “Schindler’s List”; 1994: Forrest Gump”; 1995: “Braveheart”; 1996: “The English Patient”; 1997: “Titanic”; 1998: “Shakespeare in Love”; 1999: “American Beauty”; 2000: “Gladiator”; 2001: “A Beautiful Mind”; 2002: “Chicago”; 2003: “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”; 2004: “Million Dollar Baby”; 2005: “Crash”; 2006: “The Departed”; 2007: “No Country for Old Men”; 2008: “Slumdog Millionaire”; 2009: “The Hurt Locker”; 2010: “The King’s Speech”; 2011: “The Artist.”

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The faces of Florida’s Medicaid system

MEDICAID

MiamiHerald.com/healthcare

The tea party governor now says he wants to expand Medicaid. The Republican Legislature isn’t so sure.

Hanging in the balance?

Access to healthcare for 1 million or more poor Floridians.

Billions of dollars in federal money.

The state budget, which already pumps $21 billion a year into care.

Florida’s Medicaid system today serves more than 3 million people, about one in every six Floridians. The decision whether to expand the system by a full third will be made by men and women in suits in Tallahassee’s mural-filled chambers this spring.

But the impact is elsewhere, in children’s hospitals in Tampa and Miami, in doctors’ offices in New Port Richey and in the home of a woman who recently lost her full-time teaching job.

The Suddenly uninsured

This was not how she envisioned her 60s.

Jean Vincent dreamed of turning her five-bedroom home into a bed and breakfast. She painted murals on walls, created mosaics on floors and let her imagination guide the interior decorating. There is a “garden” room, a “bamboo” room and a “canopy” room.

In 2010, Vincent lost her full-time job teaching in Citra north of Ocala. Her mother became sick with cancer and needed around-the-clock care before dying in August. Then, doctors began prescribing Vincent costly medications to treat osteoporosis and early-onset diabetes.

“I started getting a little behind with my mortgage,” said Vincent, 61. “All of a sudden, I found out I had to have an emergency retina eye surgery.”

Today, Vincent is searching for roommates to move into her home and help pay the bills. She begs Gainesville’s Sante Fe Community College and City College to schedule her for as many classes as she can handle as an adjunct geography professor; this semester’s four is the most she’s ever had.

But her biggest worry? Not having comprehensive healthcare.

Vincent — who is too young for Medicare — is enrolled in CHOICES, a health services program the Alachua County government created for the uninsured. It covers preventative care like her flu shots and helps with her drug therapy. But if Vincent ever got so sick she needed to go to the hospital, she’d be on her own.

Under current Florida law, adults with no dependents are not eligible to participate in Medicaid no matter how little they make. Vincent’s four children are all grown, which means even as her income has dwindled she can’t become eligible for the health insurance program run jointly by the federal and state governments.

If Florida decides to expand the Medicaid system, people in Vincent’s position for the first time could be covered.

The expansion would allow any single adult making about $16,000 a year eligible for Medicaid.

On the matter, Vincent has become an activist. She joined with patient rights group Florida CHAIN and traveled to Tallahassee to lobby lawmakers.

“When I gave my testimony, that’s all I wanted them to do was see there were people out there that weren’t just trying to take advantage of the system,” she said.

This summer, she expects to only be assigned one class at Sante Fe. That will provide about $2,000 for her to live on for three months. Meanwhile, her retirement dreams are put on hold.

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