Yearly Archives: 2005


A Modest Health Care Proposal

Is a single payer national health care system inevitable? John Cole thinks so:

I think the fight over some form of nationalized health care is over, and that we will one day have a European-style system in place. The only question is when big business will successfully pressure the government to take over and how much of their current health care funding responsibilities they can manage to lay at the feet of government.

A couple of thoughts. First, it is not at all clear that business will really come out ahead if they push all health care costs onto the government. Government will expect businesses to contribute pay taxes in an amount similar to what they are already paying for employee health care. And, you can expect this amount to continue to rise.

Second, and this leads to the modest proposal, businesses do not really have any health care funding responsibilities today. Many, especially large, businesses do include the cost of some or all of a health insurance maintenance plan in their compensation packages. But what they include they can take out. It is simply a matter of providing a competitive compensation package that allows them to hire the quality of employees they need to be successful.

A better way to get out of the health care funding bind than inviting the government deeper into their revenue streams would be for businesses to eliminate health maintenance plans from their compensation packages. This will be easier in non-union businesses but should still be achievable for all that see these costs as a problem.

How does a business make this step. Take the total cost per employee that is going toward a health maintenance plan today and make that part of the employees cash compensation. The new total becomes the forward going salary. The employee then may purchase what ever type of maintenance or insurance plan they choose.


Friday Ark #67

HAPPY NEW YEAR

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders. And do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (41 shouts as of 12/29)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 93rd edition will be hosted this week by Elms in the Yard. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff’s Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. T13th edition edition is up and hosted by Wood Song.

New for the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The third edition is up at Urban Dragon Hunters. The 4th edition is scheduled for December 31 and will be hosted by bootstrap analysis. Mail submissions to nannothemis AT gmail.com

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn’t Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted “too rapidly” by the same host. I don’t know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I’m sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh….