On Healthcare

It’s a familiar joke:

Patient: Doc, it hurts when I do this!

(Patient stabs himself in the eye)

Doc: Well then don’t do that!

What’s left out of the joke is the two hundred-dollar price tag that the doctor tacks on to those five words.  This country has a problem, and it’s healthcare.  It’s unavailable to some, and completely unaffordable to far too many.

Fortunately, the Senate is working hard to pass the biggest healthcare reform that this country has seen in decades.  The bill will mandate that all American citizens have healthcare, and support this by “Healthcare Exchanges” in 2014, from which Americans can choose from similar healthcare plans from many different providers and compare prices.  The bill will also increase medicare coverage to around fifteen million more Americans, and adds restrictions on insurance companies that prevent them from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions.  The combination of all of these factors leads experts to believe that 94% of Americans will have health coverage by the end of the next decade.

Unfortunately, the bill has plenty of flaws.  The first one is that it lacks a central, Federally controlled and nation-wide public option.  The fact is, even with the new healthcare exchange opening up, there will still be a lot of people who will not be able to afford health insurance.  This is exacerbated by the fact that coverage will be mandatory, and just like many states have instituted monthly fines for those who lack automotive insurance, people who lack health insurance can look at a fine of about $500 per month.  That hardly seems like a solution to increasing healthcare coverage and lowering costs.  A second issue with the bill is that it does not go far enough to regulate insurance corporations.  While they do now have to give anyone a policy, regardless of preexisting conditions, there is no legislation to stop them from charging exorbitant rates to those people who do have some sort of major health issue.

I firmly believe that a complete overhaul of the system is necessary, and this bill is a good start, but it’s really not enough.

Article: Click Here

The White House Stance: Click Here

House Resolution 3590 (2076 page Healthcare Bill): Click Here

University Budget Cuts

Because of the current economic crises, universities like many companies and state agencies are facing significant budget cuts . How these cuts are imposed on academic units (colleges, departments) and non-academic units (physical plant, student services) will have a major impact in both the short-term and long-term on the ability of the university to carry our its core missions of teaching and research. How universities make their budget cuts is not only of great concern to their faculty and staff, but increasingly to students and their parents.

To deal effectively with budget cuts, the central missions of the university, teaching and research, need to be preserved at all costs and even enhanced, if possible. In descending order of importance, these two missions require:

a. Tenure-track and other faculty,

b. Undergraduate and graduate students,

c. Classrooms, laboratories and other facilities,

d. Academic colleges, departments and programs, and

e. Support staff and facilities.

University administrators when facing budget cuts typically will claim that these cuts will be made strategically, that is, in such a way that the core missions of the university are preserved. However, internal and external politics often make this very difficult to do. Nevertheless, many universities have developed guidelines or principles for dealing with them. The following guidelines or principles were gleaned from budget-reduction plans developed at a number of universities.

(1) Conserve core academic programs.

(2) Preserve the university’s ability to recruit and retain students.

(3) Ensure that students can graduate on time.

(4) Target budget cuts with a view to improving academic programs and units.

(5) Suspend filling administrative and support positions whose loss will not affect the short-term operation of academic programs or units.

(6) Eliminate administrative and support positions with minimal impact on academic programs.

(7) Lower administrative/operating costs of colleges and other units.

(8) Consolidate the duties of administrators and support staff.

(9) Adopt alternative methods for delivering courses.

(10) Use internal resources (teaching assistatns, postdocs, or lecturers) to fill open faculty lines until conditions improve rather than closing lines.

(11) Eliminate course duplication among departments and colleges.

(12) Consolidate small or similar departments into larger units to save on operational and administrative costs.

(13) Eliminate off-campus academic programs.

(14) Eliminate unneeded committees and task forces to free up faculty and staff time.

(15) Have qualified administrators teach.

(16) Eliminate or outsource support programs.

(17 ) Make better use of the summer session to generate revenues.

(18) Encourage staff and faculty to take unpaid leaves with a guarantee that they will have their positions and salaries back when they return.

(19) Offer early retirement incentives.

(20) Defer building maintenance.

(21) Reduce building and grounds upkeep.

Unfortunately, many administrators are, in reality, not making strategic budget cuts. Instead, across the board cuts in faculty and staff benefits are common, as is indiscriminately closing open faculty and staff lines. Cuts in staff or faculty lines, however, are not suppose to result in cuts in services, including the number of courses being taught. Administrators seem to believe that staff and faculty are not “fully employed” and that they can easily take more duties without adversely affecting the performance of their duties. As any faculty and staff member knows, this is not true. University faculty typically work over 60+ hrs per week.