One Room Schools?

One of the most important difficulties we face in this age of COVID is school.  Today’s children’s education and by extension their future success, is what will keep old guys like me from having to eat cat food in my dotage.

So how do we do it, how do we get school started again?  Mostly I don’t know, but for here where I live, and maybe in a lot of other rural areas, I have an idea.  We use community centers and mobile classrooms, and whatever’s available and go back to the ultra-local school model…what they used to call the one room school.  It limits mixing and therefore spread.  It Isolates any COVID cases to a smaller exposure, so one parent doesn’t bring it home from his construction job in Baltimore over the weekend and spread it through the whole county by Wednesday through the schools.  We can still use distance learning but that’s not a good option for many students, they need at least some interactions with a teacher.

Expensive? Probably but this has been done in the past so we know it can work, even mixing students (many of them family) had the added advantage of older students helping younger students, no better way to learn than to help someone else learn.  We know it works, and consolidation’s advantages don’t seem so shiny now.  So consider, we can do this as cheaply as possible and then do it again, kind of like the quarantine, or we can try to get it right the first time.  Hire the extra teachers, procure or rent the buildings and go one room.

Stop Trying to Make Biden Happen, or Why Not Bernie, Why Not Warren

So it’s pretty obvious that the high muckity mucks of the Democratic party want Biden to happen, just like they wanted Hillary to happen.  It seems like this is swimming the wrong way in a rip current to me.  Why try to take a colorless candidate like Biden, or even like in 2016, an unpopular candidate like Clinton, and back them to the exclusion of all else?

Ok, last time it was at least partially because they arrogantly thought there was no way the other guy could win…maybe, and maybe this time they are again misreading the depth of fed-up-atude in the voters.  Health care, wage gap, student debt, drug cost, energy…Republican or Democrat, all promises and band aids.

Why back Biden?  My bet is that he is the candidate who has the most to lose by changing the status quo.  He’s gotten money from all the major players, he’s been at this a long time and has never really stood up to big lobby. If you let Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren run and they win, the apple cart that has been political funding for decades might get upset.  Make no mistake, both parties are working for their parties not the people, they are competing for who get the most lobby slush, not to clean it up.  So what the Democrats what is a nice friendly, middle of the road, well know face with few scandals and is fully invested in the corporate influence machine of the party…not some reckless reformer who might kill the golden goose…and pay no attention to those torches and pitchforks.

HSA

It’s a new year and one of my resolutions is to give this woefully neglected blog a little more attention.  So what have I decided to write about on this auspicious kick off you ask?  Well I’ve decided to write about:

The shiny new health insurance policy we have been blessed with this year.  My employer, and in their defense this is a national trend,  has switched us to a HSA/High deductible plan.  It saves a little on your premium, it saves a lot on the company’s premium, and you can save up for when you get sick since the HSA or “health savings account” can roll over into next year if you don’t use it.  This sounds good right?  We’re pretty healthy, well here comes the sticker shock.  Since you will be paying 100% of the first $3000 you might be surprised to find out that the doctor visit is between $60 and $90.  Multiply that  times how ever many are in your family and it adds up fast.  Now just suppose you need a prescription every month, thyroid around $160 per month, suppose you have a child with ADD, $330 per month, suppose you have more than one.  You’ll burn through that $3000 pretty fast this year…and next year and the year after.

The move to shift health care costs off of employers is national, and I can’t say it’s bad, but the shift to the employee is awful.  I can afford this, or at least it won’t break me, but what about all the people just getting by?  Obamacare was supposed to fix this but it seems like it just made it OK for employers to shift the costs faster.  Wages are stagnant, costs are going up, this system is going to crash and crash hard.  The sad part is it doesn’t have to be this way.

LISTEN TO US!

Right now, the rich and powerful are trying to marginalize the group called “Occupy Wall Street.”  They are saying that this mix of blue collar and professional, working and unemployed, fearful and the foreclosed, this group of regular people, don’t have a coherent message, that no one knows what they want.  Well it’s true that they don’t have a public relations rep, or a lobby group but they do have a unifying message.  Their message, and it runs through the whole spectrum of people involved is…are you ready:

WE ARE SICK AND TIRED IF BEING POWERLESS!

Yup, that’s it.  As individuals, they feel they have no voice against injustice.  They are:

POWERLESS to stop being abused by BANKS,

To demand an interest rate that approaches inflation instead of 100 times less than inflation (0.01% last time I looked).

To stop them from using fees as a gotcha profit center.

To demand accountability for their actions and for the use of our bailout money for…what?

POWERLESS to demand that our Government represent us instead of Corporations and whoever can buy their time and attention.

Why can’t we have a choice during an election, we are forced to pick who will do the least damage, the leper with the most fingers and then we are told that we are responsible for his actions.

POWERLESS to control the actions of Corporations.

The corporate person has all the rights that we have but is not held accountable for his actions, his only goal is to maximize profits, and he has a lot more resources to achieve his goals.

POWERLESS to stop the Wall Street and Corporate boards from dismantling and corrupting key institutions for short term gain.

POWERLESS to stop the Health Care Industry and the Insurance Industry from preying upon us at our most vulnerable and blocking every effort to reform them with fear, mistrust, and misinformation.

POWERLESS against a media that is more interested in selling the show, or representing a viewpoint (or an owner), than delivering news and information that could be used for informed decision making.

Here’s a real shocker for you, the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the Tea Party crowd are after the same thing, empowerment.  Unfortunately the Tea Party seems to think the problem is Government and want to remove of it as much as possible.  I believe that the Government is the only one with a stick big enough to represent us against the true enemy of individual and corporate greed and power, unfortunately they appear to be uninterested in representing us.

“The Question” and Yo Mama

If our society is to continue with any resemblance to what we think of as traditional American Society, we, as a people, need to start using “The Question.”  The Question is what you should ask yourself when given a choice or opportunity. It’s a simple thing really, you turn to yourself and ask, “Is this the right thing to do?”

I’ve had long talks with one of my more conservative coworkers about this and he tends to get hung up defining answer, but I contend that the important part is that you ask, with heartfelt sincerity, The Question. The answer, born of whatever rationalizations you can convince yourself of, is for you to work out. For instance, we’d like to give you $30M a year to be our CEO…is this right for the company, for myself, for my family, for the country? Can I justify my taking money that could go to hard working employees or for growing the company?

How about this, if I lay off a division of my company my bottom line will be high enough this year to get a big, multimillion dollar bonus. Is this good for the long term life of the company, or will short term gain benefit me at the cost of many. If you can convince yourself it’s right than do it, the answer to The Question is not nearly as important to society as that you asked, wrestled a little and then decided on an answer you believe to be honest. There are too many situations to make rules, but we have to find a way to institute a societal effort to do the right thing, an expectation that everyone is doing what they think is best. Think about this, if we disagree with someone, say a company president, a politician, or and insurance adjuster, but you believe they are doing their best to answer The Question, we are far more likely to cooperated to find a way to work together.

How is this different from what we have now? After all, we have laws and rules. True, but is it legal, or will I get in trouble, are not questions upon which a good society is built. Game theory has shown time and again that cooperation is mutually beneficial to all, individual benefit at the cost of others is a short term, unsustainable approach…unless you have so much power that others are forced to play on your terms. There have always been those who take at all costs, it’s just that now many of these individuals are out of reach of society as a whole. Worse, the example is bleeding down into society in general and the altruistic are seen as chumps.

Hence, part 2 of our problem, the Mama. If you are in a position of power, wealth or authority, and you are using it to acquire more power, wealth, or authority without asking “The Question,” your Mama should be calling you up and telling you, “Son (or daughter), you are shaming me by taking advantage of all those people.” Instead, it’s more like, “we are so proud of our son (or daughter), they are doing so well, look at what they bought me.”

I’ve tried to teach my kids that doing the right thing has a cost. It might be that you don’t take that last dollar for something you’re selling, but instead ask for a fair return. It might be that you give something back that you don’t have to, like the wrong change at the supermarket; the cashier might have to make your “windfall” up out of her pitiful pay. It might be that you don’t take all of that raise you are offered because the gas prices are hitting the lower wage workers harder than you. It might be that you are injured or even killed trying to help someone.

Sure we’ll get hammered by some opportunistic scum from time to time, but eventually they will be found socially unacceptable, instead of being held up as examples of captains of industry. We can’t wait for others to change, we can only change ourselves…and put pressure on those around us.

We, as a people, need to hold those who are willing ask “The Question” and to pay that price in esteem, instead of that they are somehow naive chumps, so our mama can call us up and say good job, I’m proud of you.

Health insurance revisited

I read an article on CNN online and they had an estimate for the money wasted on processing claims.  Keep in mind that at least when you get an unnecessary test you at least get a test.  Claims processing produces nothing!

Health Care, What’s Broke? (Besides me I mean)

We are in the midst of what some call a health care crisis in this country.  The insurance companies say the medical costs are rising too fast.  The employers say the insurance costs are rising too fast.  We just see the cost of our health care rising, in many cases, out of reach.  We seem to pay more and more for less and less.

Is there anything in the system that we can fix?  Hmmm, well let’s take a stroll through the system and see if we can see what’s broke.

We take our child to the doctor, the doctor looks at him and prescribes some treatment.  If we are lucky, it works and our child gets better.  Seems like that part of the system works ok, even though sometimes with a serious illness a doctor is only about one step removed from shaking a rattle.  Still there is an honest effort to make the patient better.  A service is provided

Now in most every doctors office there is a person behind a desk whose whole function is to figure out how to get paid by the patient’s health insurance company.  They submit the bill and sometimes the insurance company pays it.  Or sometimes the insurance company pays some of it, or rejects it.  Then it’s this person’s job to bill you for the balance of the bill, SURPRISE!

In your mailbox you get a bill from the doctor that tells you how much the insurance company paid and how much you need to pay, only wait, this was a covered expense and you already paid the copay so what’s up with this.  So you pick up the phone and call the insurance company, maybe for an hour or more, at work!  Finally you think you have resolution, only to find out someone has dropped the ball and you get another bill, this one overdue.  So on the phone again, at work!

This has gotten so bad that there are companies whose whole function is to deal with your insurance company for you.  Yup, you or maybe if you’re lucky, your company (who is probably tired of all that time on the phone) pays someone to make the insurance company do what you pay them to do.  Kind of like hiring someone to watch the kid you hired to mow your lawn, hey kid you missed a spot.

So let’s see, we have a doctor who provides a service and you who, in a roundabout way, pay for it.  You pay for it with your premium, and with the portion you employer pays, which is really just another form of your wages.  So don’t let anyone say you don’t pay your own health care.  The only advantage you get by having it through your employer is he gets a better deal per person than you can ever get by insuring the whole company.

History Lesson, insurance was invented to spread risk.  If 100 ships go out to sea and in a year 10 are lost, all 100 owners will put a small amount into a fund and whoever happens to own the 10 lost ships splits the fund.  Next year you do it all over again.  If a trusted company holds these funds and invests them or loans them they can make a profit with the money, until they have to pay the owners of the lost ships.  It used to be that way for health insurance until some smart guy realized that if we only insure healthy people, or only insure cheap stuff, we get to keep all the money not just the return on the investment.

Today we have an insurance company who wants to maximize profits.  They collect all your premiums in the form of money deducted from your wages and the wages you never see in the form of EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION.  Then their goal is to keep as much of this money as possible.

Wait, wait, the doctor performed the service, you got the service, why should the insurance company get to keep all that money, what did they do?  On top of that they are difficult enough to deal with that the doctor has to hire a specialist.  They are difficult enough to deal with that you have to hire a specialist, and for what?  In the end, doctors get paid by all of us.  Sometimes I pay for your child’s ear infection, sometimes you pay for my wife’s heart attack, but WE pay for EVERYTHING!  Insurance companies just skim off all they can and then pass through what they have to.  Insurance companies could evaporate tomorrow and if it was done right, we wouldn’t even know they were gone.

So why does it seem like we so intent on keeping this bloated parasite of an industry intact?  Well, of course there is the obvious answer that they have bought considerable interest in our government but that isn’t the only answer.  Take a look at your retirement fund, I bet it’s pretty heavily invested in health care industry.  HMO’s and insurance companies own a good portion of your retirement, and of grandma’s as well.  If we dismantle the insurance industry we hurt a lot of people in fixed income.

They are kind of like the parasitic worm that causes river blindness, if we leave it alone it destroys our eyes, but if you kill it, it can drive you mad.  So we leave it in place, root hairs wrapped tightly around some of the most economically vulnerable, and in the mean time the industry subverts our government with millions of dollars and pays the high level insiders even more millions in annual salary.

You know what?  I think I’d rather be mad than blind.