least common denominator

One of Atlanta’s more venerable institutions, Atlanta Medical Center, closed down today amidst a huge public outcry. Accusations have been flying and finger-pointing is happening in all directions; the political implications are significant. There’s no doubt that many in the community are upset. That said, a closer look at the situation leaves me scratching my head. Despite claims, this situation has been developing for years; and further, the hospital really wasn’t providing that much of a public service anymore.

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Are we ready for an end to employer-sponsored group health insurance?

Mike Markland, the CEO of an employee benefits consulting firm, certainly thinks so. In a recent viewpoint piece written for Employee Benefit News, he opined that employers that “want to attract talent in this new world will need to offer individual choice of health insurance the same way they now need to offer remote work.” He believes this so strongly, in fact, that the primary focus of his consulting involves showing employers how, exactly, to accomplish this; and in his opinion piece, he presents the idea as something cutting-edge and new.

While his presentation is good, experienced benefits professionals will easily recognize that this is far from a new idea. It has been tried before, more than once. It didn’t work then, and — unfortunately — it’s not going to work now. It’s going to be tried again in the future sometime, and it should be, because hopefully someday we will see an extinction of the dinosaur that is employer-sponsored group health. But we’re not to that point yet. Neither employers nor employees are ready.

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Bill McKibben’s liberal use of humor in The Only Way to Have a Cow disarms the reader and suggests a friendly-but-informative approach about vegetarian eating. Unfortunately, beyond appeals to emotion and worn-out clichés, he doesn’t deliver on the promise of that humor: instead, the essay is a trivial addition to the ongoing debate. Worse, his approach makes assumptions about a reader’s background that may or may not actually be correct. Ultimately, in terms of calories, this essay is like sugar candy: delightful, but empty.

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Will & Catherine with Parents and Siblings
January 26, 2019

Happy anniversary to us! We were married on January 26, 2019, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Although both of us lived in the Atlanta metro at the time, we chose to get married there so that our parents and siblings could attend, and we were also joined by some special friends.

There are days I think, “has it only been three years? It sure feels as though it were longer.” On other days I think, “wow, has it really been three years already? That sure went quickly!” I’m pretty sure that dichotomy means things are going well overall.

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The second week of 2022 has certainly had its ups and downs, and my goal work has reflected that. I did end up going back to work this week, but I was only able to manage two days in-person, although I was able to work the other three from home. My bout with COVID-19 is not quite over, despite the fact that I’ve been officially asymptomatic. It seems that my tendency toward extremely long recoveries from respiratory diseases is definitely still in place.

I also had a rather personally painful experience as a result of the online reactions to the very poorly reported comments by Pope Francis on January 5th. Fortunately, though, I was able to go to Adoration the day after it happened, and my experience there was much better than usual. It helped me work my way through it mentally and come to a resolution about my feelings and how I intend to react (or, more properly, not react).

There are also some significant wins in the goals work, too, even if they’re not as much as I’d hoped for. Today is a day I’m having to remind myself that sometimes, any win counts.

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One of the lesser-known provisions of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 is stricter disclosure requirements for group health plan broker commissions. On the surface, this seems like a great idea, especially in light of documents such as the oft-cited 2019 ProPublica/NPR report about broker compensation. What employer wouldn’t want to save more on healthcare costs by making sure that their broker isn’t making too much money off of them?

After reading the report, though, I’m left with more questions and concerns than I am with answers.

The report itself admits that its data is incomplete, stating that the investigating journalist only queried ten broker agencies, none of whom answered his questions. This makes almost no sense to me, considering that as of mid-2021, industry statistics showed 1.2 million insurance brokers in the United States — and even that figure omits the huge number of brokers who, like myself, work as independent contractors. Anyone with any level of statistical knowledge understands that this means the sample size was far too small.

That’s not the only problem with the ProPublica report. ( Keep Reading... )

Welcome to Second Row, a place for Catholic women who are orthodox and faithful but who don’t quite fit the “mold” of the normal Catholic lifestyle. We may be single career women who never met the right person; we may be converts or reverts who have a not-so-savory past; we may even be lesbians who are choosing to live consistent with the teachings on chastity and celibacy. We might be widows with grown children; or married but childless and done with fertility treatments; or even just the sole Catholic amidst a family of non-Catholics.

Whoever we are, we’re working out our relationships with God and the Church as best we can; but we often feel invisible and excluded simply because there are so few of us and our parishes don’t have the resources to minister to such a small population. While we recognize that, it doesn’t cure the loneliness that comes at times or help us find our place within the parish and the Church.

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Happy New Year! 2022 has already started out fairly decently in my world, in that both Will and I woke up this morning with clear indications that we’re getting toward the end of our respective bouts of COVID-19. Our vitals are mostly back to normal, and aside of still being quite tired we’re both starting to feel that way too. We’re taking the rest of the weekend to let our bodies finish their recoveries on their own times, instead of attempting to force schedules onto them.

In the meantime, though, it’s still New Year’s Day and that means it’s a time for goal setting. I actually wrote most of these out this past October and have been fine-tuning them since then. I’m going to be using this blog as a way of keeping myself accountable, because if I can meet these goals this year, then I’ll be well on my way toward finishing my larger overall plan of self-improvement between now and the time I reach the half-century mark. So, without further ado, here’s the list of goals I will be working on:

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I’ve spent parts of this weekend revamping and updating my web site, which is now located at https://collingwest.com. Unfortunately, at the moment I have run into a snag with WordPress Multisite. I have a ticket in with my web host and they’ve promised an email as soon as they get it figured out, but until then I’m not able to move forward with setting up the sub-sites.

One thing I’m not prevented from moving forward with, though, is writing content since I do that primarily offline. That, then, is what I’ll focus on until I get the snag untangled. Watch this space for more!

Originally posted at https://collingwest.com/2021/site-re-setup-continues/.

Writing with a Purple Pen
Credit: Amanda Truscott via Pixabay

I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month off and on since about 2001, albeit at different levels of involvement. I’ve always enjoyed it and have come to look forward to November when I can work on a fiction project. This year, though, I won’t be participating; and I don’t expect I’ll be doing so ever again.

Don’t misunderstand: I’m still going to do a November challenge every year, including this year. I’m just not going to formally affiliate with NaNoWriMo. When it first began, NaNo — and the now-defunct Office of Letters and Light — had many admirable goals, all related to writing. I was particularly supportive of the Young Writers Program, as well as associated the laptop loan program for classrooms.

But their recent foray into Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has left me out in the cold; and their explicit support of on-demand abortion has turned my opinion from ambiguous to negative. These forays into non-writing issues suggest a corporatization that detracts from the original intent and purpose of the project, in addition to (at least in one case) explicitly discriminating against me. At this point, after a lot of thought and prayer and not without some pain and regret, it’s time for me to bow out.

Wait a minute, you might be asking. What’s so awful about DEI, corporatization, and politics? Don’t you realize that everything is political? ( Keep Reading... )