Letters to the Editor
Nequals1
Published Letters: 332 Editor's Choice: 7
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@ RMP
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We, the American people, are such fools to not see the defense and health con games that only fatten the wealthy. I admit that the loss of jobs if we stopped wasting so much money on health and defense would not be easily offset.
While an industry transition would be awkward, given the extant critical healthcare provider and healthcare provider educator shortages (nurses and physicians - almost one million short combined and continuing to increase), the skill sets and education of those in the healthcare insurance and military industrial industries would be similar. Why not begin to transition incrementally by opening Medicare enrollment to those from birth to 21 and from 50 and up in age, transitioning the first wave of health insurance workers to take up healthcare provider and public health support positions, and then continuing that type of program until all persons have health CARE coverage, whilst the insurance industry has time to ratchet out of the health insurance market and focus on the boutique elective healthcare markets (cosmetic surgery and concierge medicine, for example).
On the military industrial side, why not transition warriors into peacemakers and diplomats? Why not transition military occupations into humanitarian occupations? Look at the success of the US Naval ship, the Comfort, as an exemplar.
Every other industry which as become outmoded (steam locomotives, mills, etc.) has transitioned or failed outright, but they didn't continue to wield enough power to demand to continue on unimpeded, financed by the people's taxes.
We must make no exception for the parasitic healthcare insurance and military industrial industries.
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Transforming industries @ Ondelette
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But what of the con artists, RMP? They won't go willingly into the night, nor will the insurance companies Nequals1.
I heard an interesting idea yesterday, that citizens (voters) need to create a form of collective bargaining, to approach the government with the aggregate clout that the corporations now do. Would something like that work?
Without going much too far afield, I have been interested in figuring out how this could be accomplished in some arenas of healthcare, particularly for nurses and professional nursing.
I also am increasingly interested in figuring out how to work around the worker-disempowering rulings of the NLRB. And in so doing, I have become interested in journalists and air raffic controllers as two other professional groups who work primarily as employees and not as fully independent practitioners.
So my major idea is to move to iterations of professional practice groups made up of qualified members of respective professions as the voting members. These PPGs would s/elect their own leaders, contract their services with traditional employers as well as with new market customers, and they would also control the education, hiring and firing of their members in order to comply with regulatory, credentialing and oversight agencies, legislation, and organizations. The key is that they control their own practice, and they can impose their professional ethics upon their scope of practice and service.
On my dormant blog, Universal Health, you can see several proposals for accomplishing this for nurses by searching on the tag, nursing self-governance organizations. (You can click on my username here to get to the blog.
This model would also use unions in transformed capacities of exerpt contract and service negotiators outside the usual union/individual member relationship. In my proposed model, unions would serve client self-governed organizations and would market their services of contract negotiations and organizing skills.
Going back to providing incentives to health insurance industry to transform: this might take the shape of providing offsets to develop new markets, to transitioning and downsizing workers into other fields, in re-training and re-tooling, and in partial buyouts and subsidies.
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I'm with your friend
[Read the article: Just follow the map ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The holidays are solely for the "haves" to be able to separate themselves even farther from the have-nots.
For those of us who have only loss or who lack essential resources, the lights, sounds and smells of the holidays are cruel taunts.
Even the advice, although you deem them small things - are all things for which I lack.
A car? A long road trip?
With what vehicle, fueled by what?
The make and model would have to be a full size imagination. And mine has been running on empty for far too long.
If only those holiday taunts were in the rearview mirror.
Right now I have to imagine an orange in the toe of the stocking.
I'd have to imagine the stocking, too.