After a one-year delay due largely to union snarls, Kaiser Permanente Hawaii is poised to assume control of three Maui County hospitals, marking the most ambitious privatization move in state history.

Here’s hoping that, starting July 1, Kaiser can make good on ambitious plans to expand services, update technology and keep all three — Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital & Clinic and Lanai Community Hospital — open to the public while slashing the state’s burden to fund operating losses, which have climbed to more than $30 million annually.

Any health care provider/insurer that can pull off such a to-do list successfully and swiftly is surely an HMO superhero.

DOE bureaucracy not so big, Census Bureau says

The surprising statistic from the Census Bureau runs counter to common perceptions of Hawaii public school financing. The argument against the state Department of Education has been that it’s too top-heavy, with bureaucracy siphoning off money from student needs.

Not so: Hawaii spends roughly $70 per pupil on “general administration,” compared to the national average of $218. Of course, there may be economies of scale at work here: The cost of administration is divided among a much larger student body in a statewide school district.

Still, we’ll take good news where it comes.