The Office Curmudgeon

Is the over-inflated cost of health care in the United States an instance of capitalism gone bad?
Is it the role our government to intercede when anything goes bad?

These were a couple of questions that went through my mind the other night as I was doing a poor job at falling asleep. I think I ended up generating more questions than opinions.

There is money to be made off the sick. Doctors are highly paid, and hospitals have boards and stake holders that receive compensation in non-profit and for-profit organizations. When the actions of a non-profit hospital become about maximization of surplus, (non-profit lingo for ‘profit’,) and inflated reimbursement to executives rather than providing health care for the community, I think they put their 501(c)(3) status in jeopardy. The government collects taxes, and if your organization’s purpose is to provide charitable services, they can waive those taxes.

The previous paragraph aside, and assuming everyone agrees that all people deserve access to medical care, how do you build a system that allows equal access to that care regardless of a persons station in life? Some may measure equality by the cost of the service. I think we should measure equality by the access to the service. On the surface, it doesn’t seem fair that someone with great wealth should pay more for health care than someone with little wealth. I can see how someone would look at that and say, “That’s clearly not fair,” and I suppose they would be right. It is not equitable in value, but it is honorable. I think it is a morality failure for those with more to not help those with less. It is a morality failure to abuse health care for personal gain rather than using it to care for humanity.

We need more incorrupt people managing health care rather than more legislation attempting to regulate moral behavior. Maybe the former is just a pipe dream?

Carol Johnson, over at Lee’s Summit United Methodist Church sent me a link to her article that was published yesterday at Church Solutions. If you are have one of these projects in your future, I recommend reading the article. It provides some first steps to anyone managing a web project:

So, you have secured a line item in the church budget for “Website Improvements,” now where do you begin?

I had the opportunity to work alongside Carol in raising up Lee’s Summit’s current website on the TYPO3 / WEC platform a couple years ago. The project took 9 months and cost just over $14,000. Aspects of the strategy mentioned in the article were adopted from Sprint, which as you can imagine is an enormous company that manages massive technical projects.

In 2006 the website project won an “Award of Excellence” at Church of the Resurretion. Although I’m horrible at accepting compliments for my work, it was pleasurable for some of my work to be recognized.

Last night I sat up quite late to watch the numbers come in, listened to both speeches, and watched responses on twitter. People were emotional at Obama’s speech; many admitted to tears. I watched it and was simply satisfied without much emotion at all. I wondered last night if I just wasn’t getting what was happening? I wasn’t emotional. I did get one chill, but that was it. I understood the significance of it all, but I must have been tired.

This morning driving in to work the radio announced, “Last night Barak Obama made history and became the first black person to be elected US president.” I immediately got teary eyed, and chills swept over me. :p Today is a new and unique day. Regardless of Obama’s performance over the next four years, I am very proud of my country today. I never thought this day would come so early in my lifetime.

Well, I haven’t blogged nearly as much anymore, and I never followed up from the CITRT event either. As it ended up, hardly anyone there blogged the event, and everything we discussed was over Twitter. If want to see our stream of conciousness on this, do a search for #citrt.

I have a good exucse for my busyness though. My wife and I began attempting pregnancy, rather than avoiding it, back in July of 2008. We were successful right out of the gate! Pania is 16 weeks along. Along with that news, I’m announcing babyslezak.com, where we will keep extended family and friends up to date.