Profligate
The problem isn’t with employer sponsored health care: the roots of the problem with insuring Americans are the exorbitant charges for drugs, medical equipment, hospital supplies, and anything needed by healthcare providers in order to treat the ills of our populace. Regulation of the drug and hospital supply industry is necessary to alleviate the high prices we are paying for health care in this country, and also to allow the profligate charges by the insurance companies to be obvious.
To do so would require that our current crop of legislators back away from the trough long enough to realize that the economic boundaries are moving up the economic triangle and as we, the lowliest of the poor, are treated, so will they be. Their turn is coming because the economic rape of America and her citizens will not cease until the 1% of the richest are the only inhabitants of our planet: perhaps with a small percentage of the healthiest workers left to sustain the everyday needs of the rich, something akin to the futuristic novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’.
Synopsis
Based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, THE HANDMAID'S TALE presents a harrowing vision of (as the film's opening legend reads) 'the very near future.' In Gilead, formerly the United States, a series of ecological disasters rendering most women infertile has been followed by a coup d’état by puritanical right-wing fundamentalists. Attempting to escape the increasingly unjust and brutal oligarchy, Kate is captured by border guards while her husband is killed and her daughter lost. Because she is fertile, Kate is sent for training as a handmaid, where she meets the defiant Moira. Kate then becomes handmaid to the Commander and is forced to enact a ceremony, based on the biblical story of Rachel, in which she lies between the Commander and his infertile wife, Serena Joy, so he can impregnate her. The ceremony leaves Serena Joy angry, the Commander unfulfilled, and Kate humiliated, rebellious, and desperate for freedom.
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October 26, 2005
Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs
By STEVEN GREENHOUSEand MICHAEL BARBARO
An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.
In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."
The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.
Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.
In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits.
"We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates," she said. "Our benefit plan is known today as being generous."
Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan. "This is not about cutting," she said. "This is about redirecting savings to another part of their benefit plans."
One proposal would reduce the amount of time, from two years to one, that part-time employees would have to wait before qualifying for health insurance. Another would put health clinics in stores, in part to reduce expensive employee visits to emergency rooms. Wal-Mart's benefit costs jumped to $4.2 billion last year, from $2.8 billion three years earlier, causing concern within the company because benefits represented an increasing share of sales. Last year, Wal-Mart earned $10.5 billion on sales of $285 billion.
A draft memo to Wal-Mart's board was obtained from Wal-Mart Watch, a nonprofit group, allied with labor unions, that asserts that Wal-Mart's pay and benefits are too low. Tracy Sefl, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Watch, said someone mailed the document anonymously to her group last month. When asked about the memo, Wal-Mart officials made available the updated copy that actually went to the board.
Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more.
Eager to burnish Wal-Mart's image as it faces opposition in trying to expand into New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Wal-Mart's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., also announced on Monday a sweeping plan to conserve energy. He also said that Wal-Mart supported raising the minimum wage to help Wal-Mart's customers.
The theme throughout the memo was how to slow the increase in benefit costs without giving more ammunition to critics who contend that Wal-Mart's wages and benefits are dragging down those of other American workers.
Ms. Chambers proposed that employees pay more for their spouses' health insurance. She called for cutting 401(k) contributions to 3 percent of wages from 4 percent and cutting company-paid life insurance policies to $12,000 from the current level, equal to an employee's annual earnings.
Life insurance, she said, was "a high-satisfaction, low-importance benefit, which suggests an opportunity to trim the offering without substantial impact on associate satisfaction." Wal-Mart refers to its employees as associates.
Acknowledging that Wal-Mart has image problems, Ms. Chambers wrote: "Wal-Mart's critics can easily exploit some aspects of our benefits offering to make their case; in other words, our critics are correct in some of their observations. Specifically, our coverage is expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant percentage of associates and their children on public assistance."
Her memo stated that 5 percent of Wal-Mart's workers were on Medicaid, compared with 4 percent for other national employers. She said that Wal-Mart spent $1.5 billion a year on health insurance, which amounts to $2,660 per insured worker.
The memo, prepared with the help of McKinsey & Company, said the board was to consider the recommendations in November. But the memo said that three top Wal-Mart officials - its chief financial officer, its top human relations executive and its executive vice president for legal and corporate affairs - had "received the recommendations enthusiastically."
Ms. Chambers's memo voiced concern that workers were staying with the company longer, pushing up wage costs, although she stopped short of calling for efforts to push out more senior workers.
She wrote that "the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart."
The memo noted that Wal-Mart workers "are getting sicker than the national population, particularly in obesity-related diseases," including diabetes and coronary artery disease. The memo said Wal-Mart workers tended to overuse emergency rooms and underuse prescriptions and doctor visits, perhaps from previous experience with Medicaid.
The memo noted, "The least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart."
The memo proposed incorporating physical activity in all jobs and promoting health savings accounts. Such accounts are financed with pretax dollars and allow workers to divert their contributions into retirement savings if they are not all spent on health care. Health experts say these accounts will be more attractive to younger, healthier workers.
"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."
Ron Pollack, executive director of Families U.S.A., a health care consumer-advocacy group, criticized the memo for recommending that more workers move into health plans with high deductibles.
"Their people are paying a very substantial portion of their earnings out of pocket for health care," he said. "These plans will cause these workers and their families to defer or refrain from getting needed care."
The memo noted that 38 percent of Wal-Mart workers spent more than one-sixth of their Wal-Mart income on health care last year.
By reducing the amount of time part-timers must work to qualify for health insurance, Wal-Mart is hoping to allay some of its critics.
One proposal under consideration would offer new employees "limited funding" so they could "gain access to the private insurance market" after 30 days of employment while waiting to join Wal-Mart's plan.
Such assistance, the memo stated, "would give us a powerful set of messages to use in combating critics. (For instance, 'Wal-Mart offers associates access to health insurance after they've worked with us for just 30 days.')"
Steven Greenhouse reported from New York for this article, and Michael Barbaro from Bentonville, Ark.
__________________________________________________________________
October 26, 2005
Editorial
Stalking the Poor to Soothe the Affluent
Impoverished Americans are being set up as targets this week in Congress's desperate attempt to find budget cuts after four straight years of tax cuts for the affluent. House Republicans propose harmful cuts in Medicaid access and benefits, while forcing another 10 hours of work from welfare families and giving states free rein to pile more draconian reductions onto the most vulnerable citizens.
This gross political posturing does not even translate into true savings. While imperiously proclaiming cuts of $50 billion over five years, Congressional leaders are determined to fiddle more harmfully with the revenue half of the budget and to pass an additional $70 billion in upper-bracket tax cuts.
The proposals would have the federal government - supposedly the protector of the neediest - give the states broad leeway to restrict current benefits; to require co-payments by the poor for medicine and for care by doctors and emergency rooms; and to cut preventive care for children, who represent half of the Medicaid roll. The food stamp program would probably also be hit with a $1 billion cut, and even welfare payments to elderly people who are sick would be crimped by using federal bookkeeping tricks.
One particularly boneheaded proposal would severely cut the funds for child support enforcement by $4 billion. This program currently returns $4 in benefits from natural parents for every dollar invested.
The proposals are so appalling that moderate Republicans are even said to be considering a show of life on the floor. In contrast, Senate Republicans are shaping cuts that would spare the poor's Medicaid and other safety nets, while finding savings in Medicare overpayments.
The Senate approach is obviously preferable, but it is also rooted in the G.O.P.'s pre-election fiction that overspending is the basic problem. The tax cuts should be scuttled and the poor protected.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
__________________________________________________________________
October 26, 2005
Editorial
A Ban on Voter Registration
Hurricane Katrina made it politically necessary for Republican Congressional leaders to tone down their effort to kill off federal programs for affordable housing. But it has not stopped them from dragging their feet on an important bill to create a valuable housing fund by tapping into a small portion of the after-tax profits of the federally backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The fund would initially be aimed at the hurricane-ravaged gulf states, but would eventually help to house poor, elderly and disabled people nationally.
Not satisfied with just delaying the bill, House ideologues are advocating an outrageous and potentially unconstitutional provision that would bar the nonprofit groups that build most affordable housing from participating in the fund if they also participate in even nonpartisan voter registration. This would force such nonprofits to choose between their historically important roles: promoting civic engagement and providing housing and other services for low-income people. The provision would conflict with state laws that require housing grant recipients to do things like register voters and would put the federal government in the unacceptable position of actively discouraging political participation.
The long-overdue housing fund contains numerous safeguards that would prevent grant recipients from using federal dollars for advocacy. A measure that would bar them from nonpartisan activities has absolutely no place in a democracy.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
__________________________________________________________________
prof·li·gate
'prä-fli-g&t, -"gAt
adjectiveLatin profligatus, from past participle of profligare to strike down, from pro- forward, down + -fligare (akin to fligere to strike); akin to Greek phlibein to squeeze
1 : completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness
2 : wildly extravagant - prof·li·gate·ly adverb
__________________________________________________________________
To do so would require that our current crop of legislators back away from the trough long enough to realize that the economic boundaries are moving up the economic triangle and as we, the lowliest of the poor, are treated, so will they be. Their turn is coming because the economic rape of America and her citizens will not cease until the 1% of the richest are the only inhabitants of our planet: perhaps with a small percentage of the healthiest workers left to sustain the everyday needs of the rich, something akin to the futuristic novel, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’.
Synopsis
Based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, THE HANDMAID'S TALE presents a harrowing vision of (as the film's opening legend reads) 'the very near future.' In Gilead, formerly the United States, a series of ecological disasters rendering most women infertile has been followed by a coup d’état by puritanical right-wing fundamentalists. Attempting to escape the increasingly unjust and brutal oligarchy, Kate is captured by border guards while her husband is killed and her daughter lost. Because she is fertile, Kate is sent for training as a handmaid, where she meets the defiant Moira. Kate then becomes handmaid to the Commander and is forced to enact a ceremony, based on the biblical story of Rachel, in which she lies between the Commander and his infertile wife, Serena Joy, so he can impregnate her. The ceremony leaves Serena Joy angry, the Commander unfulfilled, and Kate humiliated, rebellious, and desperate for freedom.
__________________________________________________________________
October 26, 2005
Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs
By STEVEN GREENHOUSEand MICHAEL BARBARO
An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.
In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."
The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.
Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.
In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits.
"We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates," she said. "Our benefit plan is known today as being generous."
Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan. "This is not about cutting," she said. "This is about redirecting savings to another part of their benefit plans."
One proposal would reduce the amount of time, from two years to one, that part-time employees would have to wait before qualifying for health insurance. Another would put health clinics in stores, in part to reduce expensive employee visits to emergency rooms. Wal-Mart's benefit costs jumped to $4.2 billion last year, from $2.8 billion three years earlier, causing concern within the company because benefits represented an increasing share of sales. Last year, Wal-Mart earned $10.5 billion on sales of $285 billion.
A draft memo to Wal-Mart's board was obtained from Wal-Mart Watch, a nonprofit group, allied with labor unions, that asserts that Wal-Mart's pay and benefits are too low. Tracy Sefl, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Watch, said someone mailed the document anonymously to her group last month. When asked about the memo, Wal-Mart officials made available the updated copy that actually went to the board.
Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more.
Eager to burnish Wal-Mart's image as it faces opposition in trying to expand into New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Wal-Mart's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., also announced on Monday a sweeping plan to conserve energy. He also said that Wal-Mart supported raising the minimum wage to help Wal-Mart's customers.
The theme throughout the memo was how to slow the increase in benefit costs without giving more ammunition to critics who contend that Wal-Mart's wages and benefits are dragging down those of other American workers.
Ms. Chambers proposed that employees pay more for their spouses' health insurance. She called for cutting 401(k) contributions to 3 percent of wages from 4 percent and cutting company-paid life insurance policies to $12,000 from the current level, equal to an employee's annual earnings.
Life insurance, she said, was "a high-satisfaction, low-importance benefit, which suggests an opportunity to trim the offering without substantial impact on associate satisfaction." Wal-Mart refers to its employees as associates.
Acknowledging that Wal-Mart has image problems, Ms. Chambers wrote: "Wal-Mart's critics can easily exploit some aspects of our benefits offering to make their case; in other words, our critics are correct in some of their observations. Specifically, our coverage is expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant percentage of associates and their children on public assistance."
Her memo stated that 5 percent of Wal-Mart's workers were on Medicaid, compared with 4 percent for other national employers. She said that Wal-Mart spent $1.5 billion a year on health insurance, which amounts to $2,660 per insured worker.
The memo, prepared with the help of McKinsey & Company, said the board was to consider the recommendations in November. But the memo said that three top Wal-Mart officials - its chief financial officer, its top human relations executive and its executive vice president for legal and corporate affairs - had "received the recommendations enthusiastically."
Ms. Chambers's memo voiced concern that workers were staying with the company longer, pushing up wage costs, although she stopped short of calling for efforts to push out more senior workers.
She wrote that "the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart."
The memo noted that Wal-Mart workers "are getting sicker than the national population, particularly in obesity-related diseases," including diabetes and coronary artery disease. The memo said Wal-Mart workers tended to overuse emergency rooms and underuse prescriptions and doctor visits, perhaps from previous experience with Medicaid.
The memo noted, "The least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart."
The memo proposed incorporating physical activity in all jobs and promoting health savings accounts. Such accounts are financed with pretax dollars and allow workers to divert their contributions into retirement savings if they are not all spent on health care. Health experts say these accounts will be more attractive to younger, healthier workers.
"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."
Ron Pollack, executive director of Families U.S.A., a health care consumer-advocacy group, criticized the memo for recommending that more workers move into health plans with high deductibles.
"Their people are paying a very substantial portion of their earnings out of pocket for health care," he said. "These plans will cause these workers and their families to defer or refrain from getting needed care."
The memo noted that 38 percent of Wal-Mart workers spent more than one-sixth of their Wal-Mart income on health care last year.
By reducing the amount of time part-timers must work to qualify for health insurance, Wal-Mart is hoping to allay some of its critics.
One proposal under consideration would offer new employees "limited funding" so they could "gain access to the private insurance market" after 30 days of employment while waiting to join Wal-Mart's plan.
Such assistance, the memo stated, "would give us a powerful set of messages to use in combating critics. (For instance, 'Wal-Mart offers associates access to health insurance after they've worked with us for just 30 days.')"
Steven Greenhouse reported from New York for this article, and Michael Barbaro from Bentonville, Ark.
__________________________________________________________________
October 26, 2005
Editorial
Stalking the Poor to Soothe the Affluent
Impoverished Americans are being set up as targets this week in Congress's desperate attempt to find budget cuts after four straight years of tax cuts for the affluent. House Republicans propose harmful cuts in Medicaid access and benefits, while forcing another 10 hours of work from welfare families and giving states free rein to pile more draconian reductions onto the most vulnerable citizens.
This gross political posturing does not even translate into true savings. While imperiously proclaiming cuts of $50 billion over five years, Congressional leaders are determined to fiddle more harmfully with the revenue half of the budget and to pass an additional $70 billion in upper-bracket tax cuts.
The proposals would have the federal government - supposedly the protector of the neediest - give the states broad leeway to restrict current benefits; to require co-payments by the poor for medicine and for care by doctors and emergency rooms; and to cut preventive care for children, who represent half of the Medicaid roll. The food stamp program would probably also be hit with a $1 billion cut, and even welfare payments to elderly people who are sick would be crimped by using federal bookkeeping tricks.
One particularly boneheaded proposal would severely cut the funds for child support enforcement by $4 billion. This program currently returns $4 in benefits from natural parents for every dollar invested.
The proposals are so appalling that moderate Republicans are even said to be considering a show of life on the floor. In contrast, Senate Republicans are shaping cuts that would spare the poor's Medicaid and other safety nets, while finding savings in Medicare overpayments.
The Senate approach is obviously preferable, but it is also rooted in the G.O.P.'s pre-election fiction that overspending is the basic problem. The tax cuts should be scuttled and the poor protected.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
__________________________________________________________________
October 26, 2005
Editorial
A Ban on Voter Registration
Hurricane Katrina made it politically necessary for Republican Congressional leaders to tone down their effort to kill off federal programs for affordable housing. But it has not stopped them from dragging their feet on an important bill to create a valuable housing fund by tapping into a small portion of the after-tax profits of the federally backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The fund would initially be aimed at the hurricane-ravaged gulf states, but would eventually help to house poor, elderly and disabled people nationally.
Not satisfied with just delaying the bill, House ideologues are advocating an outrageous and potentially unconstitutional provision that would bar the nonprofit groups that build most affordable housing from participating in the fund if they also participate in even nonpartisan voter registration. This would force such nonprofits to choose between their historically important roles: promoting civic engagement and providing housing and other services for low-income people. The provision would conflict with state laws that require housing grant recipients to do things like register voters and would put the federal government in the unacceptable position of actively discouraging political participation.
The long-overdue housing fund contains numerous safeguards that would prevent grant recipients from using federal dollars for advocacy. A measure that would bar them from nonpartisan activities has absolutely no place in a democracy.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
__________________________________________________________________
prof·li·gate
'prä-fli-g&t, -"gAt
adjectiveLatin profligatus, from past participle of profligare to strike down, from pro- forward, down + -fligare (akin to fligere to strike); akin to Greek phlibein to squeeze
1 : completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness
2 : wildly extravagant - prof·li·gate·ly adverb
__________________________________________________________________
posted by FancyRage at 11:38 AM
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