Conscious Uncoupling and Coparenting: Why Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin Have it Right!

Posted on March 31, 2014 | Leave a comment

Full disclosure

I am a child of divorce. It was not pretty. It was not healthy. It was not done with grace. I felt I had to choose a parent. I couldn’t have both of them. My siblings and I were too little (6 years, 5 years, 4 years) to do more than go where we were told to go, when we were told to go there, but it was clear to me, early on, that being close to our noncustodial parent was a disloyalty to our custodial parent. My noncustodial parent was ostensibly out of my life by the time I was 8 years old.

I swore I would NEVER get divorced!

My husband was a child of divorce. It was not pretty. It was not healthy. It was not done with grace. The hurt lingered. I will not tell his story.

He swore he would NEVER get divorced.

We swore WE would NEVER get divorced.

We GOT divorced.

Our Conscious Uncoupling

In July, 1998, I broke my promise to myself, to my children, to my husband. When together my husband and I told our 9 year old son we were planning to divorce, he said “wow, I never saw that coming”. His words broke my heart. Our 4 year old daughter didn’t understand. She just wanted to be sure we would both still be her mommy and daddy. We reassured her as best we could.

I knew that I didn’t want the model of divorce I’d inherited to be my children’s experience. My husband and I decided our most important responsibility was to continue to parent our children and that they needed this separation to be as painless and smooth as possible.

We decided to forego attorneys and to do the divorce ourselves. We didn’t want an adversarial break. We wanted to collaborate, decide together what was best for our family. We read Nevada law, child support guidelines, reviewed model divorce decrees, got the Nevada do-it-yourself divorce guide, and set to work. Together my husband and I negotiated everything. We both wanted what was best for one another and for our children. After our divorce, we continued to live in the same house for over a year. For many years, we continued to celebrate holiday together.

So, what is my point?

No couple’s conscious uncoupling will be the same as ours. Each couple needs to find their own way. However, far too many couples do not “uncouple consciously”. Out of social norms that tell us that divorce is wrong, that we have been wronged if a marriage ends, out of anger, loss, fear, hurt, frustration, couples lose sight of the fact that they once loved one another, respected one another,  cared for one another for a period of time. Many still do as they divorce. They lose sight of the fact that their children NEED them to separate as smoothly and painlessly as possible. They lose sight of the fact that they are the role models for their children and how they uncouple will resonate throughout their children’s lives, in their relationships, in their beliefs about commitment.

The dominant cultural narrative has it that divorce means failure, that the marriage was a mistake. We need to change that. Marriages are our commitment to our best selves, the selves we want to share with another. This desire for connection is a basic human drive. For many reasons, this commitment may not last a lifetime, but how we choose to end it, and make no mistake, it is a choice, matters.

Divorce doesn’t make a marriage a mistake!

It was not a mistake to marry my husband. We loved one another dearly. We were wonderful together for a long time. However, we started to grow apart. We started to desire different things. Being together quit nurturing us. To have the lives we wanted and needed to live, to have the lives we desired for one another, we could no longer do it together. It was as right for us to divorce as it was for us to marry in the first place. To divorce consciously was a gift to ourselves and our children. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t disagreements, animosities, frustrations. It means we worked through them with the knowledge that we would be co-parents for our lifetimes, that we had made that commitment to our children.

On Chris and Gwyneth

While tabloids speculate on the sins Chris and Gwyneth’s conscious uncoupling is designed to hide, the point is that it is the right way to separate, the good way to separate, the healthy way to separate. I hope they will be able to maintain this commitment in the face of social pressure that prescribes that divorces be ugly, petty, painful. I hope they refrain from airing any dirty laundry, and none of us is perfect, for the amusement of others. Divorces do not need to be that way. We are better than that. For our children, we NEED to be better than that!

 

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Sidelined by broken wrists – Part 2 OR Why I LOVE Frontier Airlines! – October 14, 2012:

Posted on March 28, 2014 | Leave a comment

For background to this point, please read Sidelined by broken wrists – Part 1 I became aware that my friends were whispering to one another in the van to the airport and wondered vaguely why, but at this point, my pain meds (second dose) were kicking in, and I felt pleasantly fuzzy, so I really didn’t care about anything much. When we got to the airport, Frontier Airlines had a wheel chair waiting for me. They took care of my luggage, gathered my boarding passes, and we headed to security. At security, the TSA agent asked me if I could take my arms out of my slings for pat down. I laughed hysterically. My friend said, “Are you kidding? How could she take them off? Both arms are in slings! Her wrists are broken!”. The TSA agent stepped back abashed and called her supervisor, clueless about how to proceed. Even though it was their wheelchair, I and the entire chair were swabbed for bio-hazardous materials. Then the Frontier agent and my friend wheeled me to my gate. I finally noticed that my graduate students were nowhere in sight.  I asked my friend if she’d seen them. “No, no one has been able to find them or even talk with them since last night. We’ve left about 30 messages with no response. We have no idea where they are.” “Don’t worry”, I said, “They’ll be here”. The Kindness (and weirdness) of Strangers: As time to board the plane approached, it became clear that my students would not make the plane. My friend started to panic. She didn’t want to leave me alone on the plane. I told her not to worry that Frontier would take care of me and that I’d ask for help if I needed it. That wasn’t good enough for her. I had noticed a woman in the boarding gate who kept staring at me. My friend approached her and told her I was flying to Wichita. She was as well and promised to keep an eye on me. Fortunately, as will become clear later, the airline moved me to the first row of the plane just behind the bulkhead, so they could keep an eye on me, and she was seated elsewhere. The flight attendants, and my seatmates, were very attentive from the outset. The flight attendant asked the gentleman in the aisle seat if he would be willing to help me during the flight if I needed it. He agreed and asked from some water for me, holding the glass while I sipped through a straw. I leaned into the plane wall to sleep. As the plane door was about to close, a final passenger entered and claimed the seat in the middle of our row. The gentleman on the aisle quickly explained my condition and asked the newcomer if he was prepared to help me. He said “certainly” and settled in. He looked to me as the plane was taking off and asked if I needed anything. “No”, I said. He looked at me quizzically and said, “You don’t look comfortable”. I then asked if he’d take the hair tie out of my hair. He said he had 3 daughters and would be pleased to help. After the plane lifted off, he helped me put my seat back and I fell asleep. He woke me gently as we landed and asked me if I would like my hair back up. I said yes, and he put it back up. I was the last person off the plane and we weren’t at a gate, so they had to figure out how to get me off the plane. The airline found this cool wheelchair that fit into the guardrail down from the plane. At the bottom of the stairs was the woman my friend had asked to assist me. I didn’t know why, but she made me nervous. The flight attendant rolled me into the terminal and to a spot by a window to await my next flight, placed my carryon luggage around me, asked me if I needed anything, and then left me. The woman from the plane approached me with a cup of coffee. “You don’t like cream, do you”, she asked. “I don’t (drink coffee)”, I started to say, but without waiting for me to finish, she shoved the coffee cup against my mouth and my choice was to drink (it was scalding) or have her dump it all over me. After the first gulp, I coughed and she pushed it on me again. “It’s hot isn’t it”, she asked, pressing her face into mine. “No more, please”, I managed to say. She pushed the coffee into my mouth again. Thankfully, at that point, a Frontier representative walked up and asked me if I knew this woman. I said “No!” and he said “excuse me” while pushing past her, collected my luggage and wheeled me to a Frontier gate counter where a number of Frontier representatives were preparing for flights. “Can you watch her”, he asked. “She can’t do anything and I watched this woman pour coffee down her throat.” One Frontier employee walked up to me and asked how I got my hair up. I shared the story about the gentleman on the plane. She laughed and asked if she could help me. “That bad”, I asked. She raised her eyebrows and nodded, so I invited her to brush my hair and put it back up. She stayed with me until my second flight. On the second plane, the flight attendants again seated me by the window in the bulkhead. They explained the situation to the young woman who was my seatmate and asked if she would be willing to help me. She said yes, but appeared apprehensive. Her parents were with her and she was on a recruitment trip to Wichita State for basketball. Immediately after takeoff, the flight attendant told her it was almost time for me to take my next dose of pain pills, but that I needed to eat first. She paused to let this sink in. “You want me to feed her?”, the young woman asked. “If you’d be willing, if not, I’ll do it”, the flight attendant replied. “No, I can do it”, the young woman replied. The flight attendant brought her hummus, crackers, almonds and olives. She made me tiny crackers topped with hummus and maybe an olive or an almond and fed them slowly to me, offering me water in between bites. I ate a bit as we talked, and then she gave me my pain pill and reclined my seat for me. I fell instantly asleep, but at one point heard the flight attendant ask the young woman how I was doing. “Sleeping peacefully. She ate, drank some water, and took her pill”, she replied. “Thank you for taking care of her” the flight attendant replied. “No problem”, the young woman said. I felt myself smile and slept until they woke me when the plane landed. I was again last off the plane, my friend waiting for me in the terminal.  I sighed with relief, happy to be home.

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Sidelined by Broken Wrists – Part 1

Posted on March 20, 2014 | Leave a comment

Sidelined by broken wrists – Part 1

October 13, 2012:

I was at the annual Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender Conference in Tacoma, WA, October 13, 2012. Earlier that day, I had been awarded the OSCLG Teacher/Mentor Award (to be honest, an award I had coveted my entire professional career). The evening event for our conference was a dance and karaoke party on the University of Puget Sound’s campus. I had purchased and shipped glass for family and friends that day at the glass museum and had dinner with wonderful friends.

At the dance party, I was in line to sing karaoke and dancing to a Madonna song with some friends. A friend came up and decided to spin me. At the height of the spin when I was backwards, she pulled her hand from mine and I went sailing backward, off the small dance floor, went airborne and put my hands behind me to catch myself as I fell. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.)

When I landed, it hurt, a lot, but I wasn’t thinking about my wrists. My first comment to my friend as she apologized and pulled me up by my hands from the floor was “Oh my God! I fell on my ass in front of the Foss sisters!” (top scholars in my discipline). Then I realized that I was really hurt. I turned white and my friend helped me to a chair. I had never felt pain like the pain that was emanating from my hands (that was how I identified it at that point).

I laid my head on the table and asked for ice. My friend got me a large pack of ice and I rested my wrists and hands on it. The pain was getting worse. I asked for more ice to put on top of my hands.  She brought me a smaller bag and I cried as she put it on my hands. It was excruciating. She knelt down next to me and asked, “Do we need to get you to the emergency room?”  I nodded yes and said “But there’s no way I can walk”.

Another friend got a van and 4 friends lifted the chair I was in to carry me to the van. I adopted what was to become a familiar pose over the next several months, my hands pointing upward and across my chest. At the hospital, the nurse who met our van at the emergency room asked, “Was there alcohol involved?” I quipped, “Clearly not enough”. She said, “Good, you have a sense of humor.”

As we sat in the waiting room, my two friends and I, I kept joking about hurting my wrists dancing. That became a pretty popular story that evening in the ER. Through the pain, there was a lot of laughter. When we were finally led back to the examination room, I realized that my fingers were swelling. “Oh my gosh! We have to get my rings off”, I exclaimed. “I’ll cry if they have to cut them off”. All of my rings have stories and are very meaningful to me. My friend took them off and put them in her purse. It was an evening full of waiting, but I was fully present. My friends and I talked and laughed and then one of them would disappear for a while to call and update our friends at the conference about my progress. I don’t know why, but I kept making people laugh. I don’t normally think I’m especially funny, but that night, I guess I was. One of my friends told me the next year at the conference that the nurses told her: “Your mom is a hoot!” She thought I might be offended the nurse thought I was her mom. I’m wasn’t, of course, she’s tall, gorgeous and looks like a model.  I was far from offended. 🙂

We spent from roughly 9:30 p.m. until 3 a.m. in the emergency room. The verdict, a bilateral fracture of my left wrist, a trilateral fracture of my right wrist. After they gave me major pain pills, which they held off on doing until they were sure I didn’t need surgery, they splinted my wrists and put me in slings, my arms across my chest. We went back to the hotel so I could rest a bit before my flight.

My friends tried to get ahold of my graduate students. I was at the conference with 2 of them. We were to leave the next morning for home and had to be at the airport by 6 a.m. for our flight. My friend wanted me to stay with her in Tacoma, but I knew I’d rest better at home, so I declined. After all, I had 2 students with me to assist. What could go wrong?!

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Hunger is a public health problem – Kansas Public Health Association, Virginia Lockhart Health Education Award, 9/19/13

Posted on September 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

Dr. Deborah Ballard-Reisch’s remarks upon receipt of the Virginia Lockhart Health Education Award from the Kansas Public Health Association, September 19, 2013

 I NEED TO BEGIN BY SAYING THANK YOU

1) I wish to thank Pamela O’Neal a former student, constant friend and support, and public health cliff jumper for nominating me for this award

2) I am thankful to the KPHA for honoring me with an award named after a true KS public health pioneer, Virginia Pence Lockhart

3) I am eternally grateful to the Kansas Health Foundation for endowing Wichita State University and the Elliott School of Communication with the gift that funded the Kansas Health Foundation Distinguished Chair in Strategic Communication which I have been honored to hold since August 2007. This position has allowed me to follow my passions in support of community-based approaches to research & health promotion 

4) I would like to thank my students, friends and family who both jump off cliffs with me and show me other cliffs to conquer

5) I would like to especially thank my son Stefan who is with me today and my daughter Alyssa who is a junior at UNLV for their constant love, support, and adventurous spirits. 

 WHAT IS MY PERSPECTIVE ON PUBLIC HEALTH?

 I would like to build on the perspective of Virginia Pence Lockhart – who stated in 1965 “Health cannot be given to the people, it demands their participation – beneficial action follows self education”. From my perspective, individuals and communities need to educate themselves on public health issues, while public health educators need to educate themselves on communities. Effective public health initiatives must be appropriately tailored to contexts.

 WHO AM I IN PUBLIC HEALTH?

 In the words of Rick McNary, founder of Numana Inc. of El Dorado, KS, I am in the hunger space. 

1) It gives me PAUSE that in 2012, 14.5% of US households were food insecure – 72% of them families with children. Food insecurity impacts more than 49 million Americans.

2) It gives me PAUSE that the US House of Representatives is considering a proposal to cut the SNAP program while millions of Americans are struggling to find good jobs and to afford healthy food for their families.

In public health, we talk about obesity epidemics – 1/3 of adults and 17% of children – 25.5% of the total U.S. population are obese – that’s 79 million people.

We talk about a diabetes epidemic – 8.3% of the U.S. population, 25.8 million people have type 2 diabetes.

However, it gives me PAUSE that we often overlook the potential role food insecurity may play as an underlying contributor to these problems.

 While these issues give me pause, 

1) I am INSPIRED that there are legislators who “get it”. More than 30 legislators took the SNAP Challenge to eat on $4.50 a day during August. I am grateful for the insights they gained.

Congresswoman Robin Kelly  IL stated – “You can’t get the healthiest foods because they’re too expensive”. 

Congressman Jim McGovern MA concluded – “People in this country should have a right to food, to have enough to eat, to have access to nutritious food. 

2) I am INSPIRED by Numana, Inc. and Stop Hunger Now and their food packaging efforts that allow people to “get their hands dirty” to “feed the starving” people around the globe. Empowering people leads to sustainable change.

3) I am INSPIRED by my students who even today are planning what has morphed from a WSU Hunger Awareness Day in 2010 to a month long campus-wide collaboration.

4) I am INSPIRED by our community and university partners around the world who have shared their experiences with us and invited us to speak on their campuses using our experiences as a model to help them form their own initiatives.

SO, WHAT CAN WE AS PUBLIC HEALTH PROVIDERS DO?

 1) We can educate ourselves:

Join the Wichita State University Hunger Awareness team and me. Take the SNAP Challenge and live on $4.50 a day for food! We’ll be doing this over the next two weeks. We want your blog posts, facebook posts, tweets, emails.  We understand people best when we can walk in their shoes.

2) We can take steps in our daily lives to make a difference:

Shop the Feed USA Target/ Feeding America collection sponsored by Lauren Bush at local Target stores.

Take part in the No Kid Hungry Campaign – You eat at their restaurants; they donate. Participating restaurants in the Wichita area taking part are Arby’s, Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt, Cici’s Pizza.

Join me for the 4th Kansas Hunger Dialogue – which will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Wichita on February 26, 2014. Join university and community partners to discuss strategies to wipe out hunger here in Kansas and talk about model programs we have already developed.

Lobby Congressional representatives! Critical decisions that impact the most vulnerable Americans are under consideration now. We must make our voices heard.

In closing, I would like to quote Bob Dole & Tom Daschle in their LA Times article published September 19, 2013. “As a nation blessed with a bounty of food, we are a nation with a duty to fight hunger”.  

Food insecurity is a public health problem.  

Food insecurity is a public health problem that impacts many other public health problems.

ImageEducated, we’ve got the power to end hunger and food insecurity, perhaps not by 2015 as the UN Millennium Goals outlined, but in our lifetimes. 

Thank you again for bestowing this prestigious award on me. 

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Who am I on this Hunger Awareness journey?

Posted on October 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Each of our journeys with hunger is unique. What brought us to passionately want to eradicate hunger is equally so. For me, in the autumn of 2009, I was finding my land legs in my new home at Wichita State University. I joined the faculty here in August 2007 as a professor in the Elliott School of Communication, and the Kansas Health Foundation Distinguished Chair in Strategic Communication. After more than 20 years in Nevada, I had forgotten that it takes a while to acclimate to a new place, but after 1 ½ years, I was feeling pretty settled. My daughter was doing well in school. I was learning the university. It was time to look outside our personal journeys and find something that would feed our souls, something that would allow us to make a positive difference.

The door that opened that autumn was to Numana, Inc.  and I have been committed to this organization ever since.  A colleague asked me to review some early press releases and media articles and offer suggestions. Not being a journalist, I agreed, hesitantly, but also offered to run it by my journalism colleagues. (This is one of the benefits for a social scientist of working in an integrated school of communication. If I don’t have the skills, someone else does.) I gave my feedback on content and my colleague Eric Wilson gave his on format. I was hooked. Rick McNary, founder and CEO of Numana told a compelling story of hungry children in Nicaragua and the idea of starting a “feed children in schools program”.  Children, schools, food… I was in.

My daughter, her youth group, my son, some of my graduate students,  and I took part in the first ever Numana packaging event in El Dorado, Kansas. Almost 4000 volunteers packaged more than 285,000 meals for Haiti that weekend. It was fun, exciting, and invigorating! What was unique about Numana’s effort to “empower people to save the starving” was the hands-on nature of their events. Volunteers rolled up their sleeves, donned plastic aprons, gloves and shower caps and mixed, packaged and prepared the food for shipment to Salvation Army schools in Haiti.  At tables of 12-14 volunteers, rice, soy, freeze dried vegetables, and a 21 vitamin/mineral tablet, a diet specifically designed for the metabolism of people who are starving, were measured into 6-serving bags, vacuum sealed, packed 36 to a box, and loaded on a truck, The truck would carry the food to Norfolk, Virginia, where it would be shipped by boat to Haiti. The food was expected to arrive in 6-8 weeks. Then the earthquake hit and the situation was so much more severe. Our food was airlifted in by the U.S. 82nd Airborne as some of the first food to reach Haiti following the earthquake.

Superbowl weekend, 2010, I hosted WSU Feeds Haiti, again with my daughter and a group of amazing students. Over 3000 volunteers packaged more than 641,000 meals that weekend. I continued to go to events, to offer my support, and in the first year, more than 125,000 volunteers nationwide packaged over 21 million meals at Numana events.

People want to do things that matter, that make a difference, just as I did.

Now my focus has expanded. After the Kansas Hunger Dialogue last March, I also want to understand hunger on the local level. I wanted to know if there’s a problem here on the WSU campus. I believe there is. Again, I brought together students, this time in a Health Communication Seminar, to understand the nature and scoop of hunger and food insecurity on our campus. The response has been phenomenal. Campus-wide support and interest has simply poured in.

On our website, http://wsuhunger.wordpress.com, you will be able to follow the journeys of each of the 8 students in our class. Our goal is to understand and to empower the change that is needed on our campus. This class is, for me, a way to teach what I practice, to use communication capacity, and skills, to empower others. Personally, it also keeps me on my journey to choose to do things that make a difference. I invite you to join us on this journey!

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Communication Strategies to Keep Marriages Strong

Posted on November 28, 2009 | 2 comments

My colleague, Dr. Dan Weigel and I have been conducting research with committed married and romantically involved couples for over two decades.  The article attached is a compilation of the findings of our research condensed into 10  Communication Strategies to Keep Marriages Strong.  http://www.communicationcurrents.com/index.asp?bid=15&issuepage=165&issue=45

Some folks using MAC computers are having trouble getting to the above link. Try copying it, opening it in a new browser and accessing from there. Sorry for the inconvenience!

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Responses to questions on health care reform

Posted on November 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

First, thanks for all the feedback on my prior blog with powerpoint on health care reform. Below I’ve tried to address some of the remaining issues that have arisen.  I am more committed than ever to REAL reform and this this ongoing conversation is critical to that end. Our health care system is broken. Worse yet, it is destroying businesses and individuals. It must be fixed now! I’m not convinced we yet have THE answer. I am convinced ongoing dialogue is critical to getting us there. Special thanks for my friend Chris Purk for constantly challenging me. Much of the response below was culled from an ongoing conversation we are having on facebook! Please join in! A great source for discussion on the health care needs of our nation, check out the nonpartisan National Coalition on Health Care at: http://nchc.org.

 

Premise #1:

If this health care bill isn’t the answer, our representative MUST craft one that IS! The power of special interests and lobbyists in the realm of health care reform have stopped the process of real reform for decades. We have been trying to take small steps for a very long time. PPOs, HMOs, managed care have all been stop gap efforts to control costs and increase the quality of care. They haven’t done so.

Premise #2:

There is simply no incentive for insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, or health care providers to lower rates. It’s in their best interests to keep the run away price increases going. Bottom line: They make more money this way!

Premise #3:

Any cost estimates on either side: that health care reform won’t cost a thing OR that it will cost trillions are flawed. NO ONE can anticipate the contingencies that will ACTUALLY lower costs. The capitalist model says if you increase competition, costs will drop. That’s what a public option would do.

Premise #4:

This issue is NOT just about the un and underinsured. Health care costs are hurting EVERYONE!  We are already paying for the un and underinsured. They go to emergency rooms sicker and take longer to regain health (if they do at all) than those with insurance. They are less likely to get standard preventative care than those with insurance. They pay all they can and we (taxpayers) shoulder the rest. Insurance and preventative care are BETTER options than emergency room visits. Emergency rooms visits, the most expensive health care in the country, should not be the first line of health care for anyone.

BUT, the current health care system is NOT hurting only the un or underinsured. It’s hurting everyone – BUSINESSES that can’t afford to pay premiums are cutting benefits to employees and many are cutting insurance benefits all together or anticipate significantly reducing them in the near future. Business leaders are arguing that the single biggest factor in reduced R&D and their inability to expand the workforce are health benefits. We can’t get jobs for people if employers can’t afford to hire them.

EMPLOYEES are paying higher health care premiums and finding themselves with less coverage. People can’t afford to change jobs due to the fact that they may not be able to get insurance coverage, especially if someone in the family has a chronic or preexisting condition. People are losing their homes to cover medical costs; a large percentage of both personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures are linked to health care costs. And all this for a health care system that is ranked 37th in the world!

My personal “out-of-pocket” costs for health insurance doubled for next year, my co-pays on everything increased at least 20% and more medications are not covered at all. Fortunately except for my daughter’s issues with migraines, we don’t need any medications on an ongoing basis. As you know my daughter has been having problems with migraines. My COPAY for 10 migraine tablets (which she could use up in 5 days) was $90 last week. This is nothing compared to the costs of medications many pay for chronic conditions. On a related note, I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but the very same drugs that cost so much here cost much less in other parts of the world. We subsidize American pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs overseas by paying more for medications here at home. We attach taxes on international pharmaceuticals so they don’t compete with American makers here in the U.S. hurting the American taxpayer all the way around for the benefit of big business.

I’m LOVING the content ideas many of you have discussed. A number of them are part of the current discussion including not being able to drop people who get sick or refuse to insure them when they have preexisting conditions. None of them, at this point, will reduce costs by increasing competition.  The system is broken! We need to fix it now before it permanently sinks our entire economy! Those we elected to represent us need to get the job done. It’s time!

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Help with conversations on health care reform

Posted on November 18, 2009 | 2 comments

Last week I was at the National Communication Association Convention in Chicago. As I rode the shuttle from one location to another, I overheard a gentleman pontificating about the “fact” that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose health care reform. He continued in this vein the whole trip back. I sat there, struggling with myself.  One side of me said “It’s been a long day…This guy isn’t going to listen anyway… If he’s going to blatantly make up statistics that are totally contrary to the findings of actual polls with actual people, there’s no room for discussion….They’re not talking to you anyway and it would be rude to interrupt.”  The other side of me was saying “Seriously, if you don’t challenging these uninformed blowhards at every opportunity, people will accept what they say with such confidence even if it IS blatantly inaccurate”….”You’ve got the stats, call him on this!…. “Seriously, speak up!!!!!”  The tired side won out.

However, that means that you, dear readers, who may have found yourself in similar circumstances and chose not to speak might benefit from the attached powerpoint.  Tammy Allen, Lynn Stephan and I developed this for The Group in Wichita and thought we might share it here. Let us know what you think. Agree…. disagree…. whatever you think.  For us the critical issue is that we engage….which I regret to say I did NOT on the bus ride in Chicago.  

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Health care reform and the role of insurance companies “why we NEED a public option”!

Posted on October 27, 2009 | 2 comments

I wrote my first speech about the need for health care reform and the contributions insurance companies were making to skyrocketing medical costs when I was a freshman in college.  Very little has changed in the 3 decades since.  … Except in the negative direction.

What I’m sure about:

1)  I am sure that relying on big insurance companies to monitor themselves hasn’t worked in decades and that our health care costs have continued to skyrocket. In the last decade alone the increase in health care costs has been – 119% which is 3 times as fast as wages and 4 times as fast as inflation (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2009).

2) I am sure that these increases is unsustainable and hurt American families. In 2007, nearly 2/3 of personal bankruptcies were linked to medical expenses; 80% were people with insurance (Journal of American Medical Assn., 2007).  1,500,000 American families lose their homes each year due to medical costs (Health Matrix, 2008).  In 2008, about 57 million Americans were in families that had problems paying medical bills, and nearly three-quarters had health insurance coverage (National Coalition on Health Care, 2009).

3) I am sure that these increases are unsustainable and hurt American businesses. The current system decreases American manufacturers’ competitiveness. We spend: $2.38 per worker /per hour for health care costs   vs.$0.96 per worker /per hour for US trading partners (Heritage Foundation, 2008). While some would say the problem is that we pay benefits that are too high to labor union workers, this misses the point! Passing on the costs to workers hurts workers (see numbers above) and does NOTHING to make the cost of health care sustainable. The problem isn’t workers, it’s that COSTS ARE TOO HIGH!  Health care costs are the fastest-growing business expense in the U.S. (National Coalition on Health Care, 2009). They drag down earnings and wages, slow job growth,  and decrease dollars available for research and development.

4) I am sure that shifting the burden of health care insurance and health care costs to American families is NOT the answer (see #2 above). For those firms providing coverage, nearly 3/4ths of those surveyed (73 percent) say they are struggling to continue to provide coverage due to high insurance costs (Small Business Majority, 2009). In the Hewitt Associates 10th annual health care report, results of surveys with 343 executives “found that over half (52%) of employers believe the economic downturn will affect their health care programs in 2010. In addition, 19 percent of these employers are planning to move away from directly sponsoring health care benefits in the next 3 to 5 years, which is almost 4 times as many who reported this in 2008” (National Coalition on Health Care, 2009).

5) I am sure that increased competition is critical. From where I sit the provision of health insurance in many states looks a lot like a monopoly and one that rapidly is growing.

In 2007,  the American Medical Association reported that a single insurance carrier controlled at least 30% of the insurance market in more than 95% of insurance markets.  For 15 of the 44 states reporting, the top two insurance providers controlled 75% or more of the market. Twenty-two more states have 50%  to 74% of the market controlled by the top two insurance companies. For a breakdown of the percentage of the market is controlled by the top 2 insurance providers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, see  Health Care for America Now, available at http://hcfan.3cdn.net/dadd15782e627e5b75_g9m6isltl.pdf

A look at the Government Accountability Office report on Small Group Health Insurance Carriers by State released in February, 2009 comparing 2002, 2005 and 2008 results illustrates how the dominance of a few insurance companies is growing:

In 2008,

•   The median market share of the largest carrier in the small group market was about 47%, with a range from about 21% in Arizona to about 96% in Alabama. In 31 of the 39 states supplying market share information, the top carrier had a market share of a 1/3rd – 33% or more.
•   The five largest carriers in the small group market, when combined, represented 3/4ths – 75% or more of the market in 34 of the 39 states supplying this information, and they represented 90% or more in 23 of these states.
•   Thirty-six of the 44 states supplying information on the top carrier identified a Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) carrier as the largest carrier, and in all but 1 of the remaining 8 states, a BCBS carrier was among the 5 largest carriers.
•   The median market share of all the BCBS carriers in the 38 states supplying this information was about 51%, with a range of less than 5% in Vermont and Wisconsin and more than 90% in Alabama and North Dakota.

In comparing what states reported in 2008 to what they previously reported to GAO in 2005 and 2002, they found:
•   The median market share of the largest small group carrier has increased to about 47% in 2008 from the 43% reported in 2005 and the 33%  in 2002. Twenty-four of the 29 states providing information in both 2002 and 2008 saw increases in the market share of the top carrier that ranged from about 2 to 39 percentage points. In contrast, the top carriers in 5 states lost market share with decreases ranging from about 1 to 16 percentage points.
•   The number of states with a combined market share of the 5 largest carriers of 75% or more has also increased since 2002. The combined market share of the five largest small group carriers represented 75% or more of the market in 34 of 39 states, compared to 26 of 34 states reported in 2005 and 19 of 34 states reported in 2002.

The full report can be found at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09363r.pdf

6) I am sure that it’s time we stand up to insurance companies who DO NOT have our best interests at heart – as evidenced by CEO compensation packages. Below from the Seton Hall University School of Law, Health Law and Policy Program website http://www.healthreformwatch.com/2009/05/20/health-insurance-ceos-total-compensation-in-2008/ are the total compensations for CEOs of insurance companies for 2007 & 2008.  Following is a “humorous” analysis of just how much money this is!

“Perhaps a slight bit of context is in order, however: it has struck me that Aetna’s Ronald Williams received $24,300,112 last year. That’s $467,309.85 per week. That’s a house. Maybe not a house that Mr. Williams would live in, but a house nonetheless. The man makes a house a week. And interestingly enough, if Mr. Williams were to eschew the purchase of a house on any given week and instead look to deposit the money in a bank– in order to remain FDIC insured (up to $250,000)– he would actually need to open more than one account–every week. Lest we lament the fate of the other CEOs on the list, in 2008 Ms. Braly had to get by on $189,311.76 per week, and Mr. Hemsley had to somehow manage on $62,327.73 per week (but perhaps he was able to save a little from last year when he made $253,164.02 per week).  May 20, 2009 by Michael Ricciardelli Health Reform Watch weblog Seton Hall University.”

Ins. Co. & CEO With 2007 Total CEO Compensation

  • Aetna Ronald A. Williams: $23,045,834
  • Cigna H. Edward Hanway: $25,839,777
  • Coventry Dale B. Wolf : $14,869,823
  • Health Net Jay M. Gellert: $3,686,230
  • Humana Michael McCallister: $10,312,557
  • U.Health Grp Stephen J. Hemsley: $13,164,529
  • WellPoint Angela Braly (2007): $9,094,271
    L. Glasscock (2006): $23,886,169

Ins. Co. & CEO With 2008 Total CEO Compensation

7) I am sure that a public option that will offer competition to private insurance companies, and if properly formed, will help bring the cost of health care insurance down.

The following video by Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, Professor at UC Berkeley outlines succinctly the points that it’s not too late to get a public option and that insurance companies want it to fail.

http://pol.moveon.org/call/oneoffs/index_1165.html?cp_id=1165&tg=FSKS_1.FSKS_2&id=17692-17258418-IqgG0_x&t=1

8 ) I am sure that it is up to us, the American people, to hold our Congressional leaders accountable and to demand that this decades old problem be addressed, that a workable solution be found, before we permanently damage the economic viability of families and business nationwide. Phone, tweet, blog, email, write your Congressional representatives and demand that they get the job done on health care reform.

Health care should be a right, not a privilege!

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Dear Senator Reid – GET A GRIP!

Posted on October 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

As a long time Nevadan and recent transplant to Kansas, I would like to express the sincere and deep displeasure of myself and many Americans with the sorry state of the U.S. Congress. For the first time in a long time democrats have the majority, have the capacity to make real change to benefit the American people, and have failed to show the leadership necessary to carry that change through. Unfortunately, historically this has been too often the case.

The opposition utilizes clear, concise (often blatantly erroneous if not flagrantly false) statements to support their positions. The democratic response is to pretend these are reasonable claims and to try to answer them – illegal immigrants covered under the reform plans, euthanizing your granny, the list seems endless. What the democratic leadership and the democratic members of Congress NEED to do is state clearly what they stand for and work for real, quality, necessary change, not chase phantoms designed to distract, dissemble and disable quality initiatives.

The democratic desire to compromise on basic principles is flawed and futile as evidenced by the Senate’s inability to support a public option in health care reform. The American people gave President Obama a clear mandate by both electing him and giving both houses democratic majorities. The American people in poll after poll have told you they want a public option in health care reform. You are squandering that mandate to the disadvantage of the American people. You are not acting in the best interests of the American people.

Get it right, Senator Reid. You are wasting the capacity you have as Senate Majority Leader and it is the American people who will ultimately pay for this.

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