If I had it my way
John E. Peterson, Special to the Gazette
Thursday, January 22, 2009
As one drives about, reads the mail or other things, listens to people, the radio or TV, one often is stimulated to have a trivial thought. Perhaps that does not happen to us all, but it certainly does to me. I would, therefore, tell you about some of those thoughts, if I had my way.
I often drive past the former Emporia Surgical Hospital on 15th Avenue. When I do, I usually think about it. And wonder about it. How did it come into being? Why was it vacated? What will happen to it? It is a beautiful building in a nice location. Why does it just keep sitting there unused, I ask myself?
Whenever I pass the Howe House, I think about the Welsh. Why did they choose Emporia? They also started the little town of Arvonia, there at the west end of Melvern Lake. Why did Arvonia fade away? It is such a beautiful location.
And I ask myself questions every time I pass a Baptist church. That is pretty often because we have eight or nine of them here in Emporia. Why so many? How do they differ from each other? Or is it just that we have lots of Baptists in our town? Hence, many places for them to meet are needed.
The tremendous publicity about our economy and Wall Street often brings another thought. Actually it is a memory, but it comes often enough these days that I would tell it, if I had my way.
A close friend on the University of Missouri faculty, an economist, had a summer place in Dubois, Wyo. We often visited there. One time, he wanted to show me what a young man was doing in his basement. This fellow had turned his basement into a little factory and was making beautiful little gadgets there. I cannot recall what they were, but they were so nice that they were being sold to big New York City stores and to several other big city stores. He and two men he had hired were doing it all in the basement.
My friend told me they were forming a company. He, as an economist, was the treasurer and he was investing several thousand dollars in it. Other people in the area were buying stock in the company, too. I ought to get in on it, he told me.
I put in $3,000. In a couple of years, it had gone to $5,000. Things were going so well that a big Minnesota bank put so much money in it that it took control. The bank moved it to another Wyoming town and into a bigger building. Soon after that, my friend told me I should sell my shares quickly. He was doing it with his.
I did not take his advice. Just too dumb to move on it. Before long, it was down to 10 cents a share. My $3,000 was just worth a few dollars. It even dropped further and I never got anything back. So goes my memory of my only experience of playing in the stock market. I find it a bit sad, but also funny. Even stupid.
This next thought was precipitated by a mass of mail coming to us. It all had to do with Medicare. The mass was so great that it makes me think of bureaucracy, complexity, duplication, cost and, unfortunately, a lack of understanding. Perhaps that is because I am dumb. Regardless, I would tell you about my thought, if I had my way.
Permit me to make these two comments. First, I used to think that Medicare was a single, simple thing. I was wrong! It is definitely not simple. Second, we pay for Medicare. It comes out of our Social Security.
Now to the complexity I see in Medicare. Mail came from KHPA, which stands for Kansas Health Policy Authority. It is in Topeka. More mail came from CMS, in Iowa City, Iowa. That is Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Then, SilverScript, in Nashville, Tennessee, handles the prescription part of Medicare coverage. There is Delta Dental, located in Wichita, for the dental work.
So what mail did we get over a couple of weeks? What was it that caused my thought? Two letters came from CMS about our address change. They were similar, but one said our old address was new, the other actually accepted the new address. Both were addressed to me.
Two letters came from KHPA. One was addressed to me, one to Merle.
They were exactly the same. A report came to each of us from Delta Dental. They were about our recent routine exams and made reasonable sense.
The mail from SilverScript was overwhelming. And there were two of all of them, one for Merle and one for me. Beautiful, two-part, shiny-paper, big pamphlets. Another was a 16-pager telling me all about my prescriptions and new possibilities. A 13-pager for Merle. I could not understand most of it. Even PhD’ers are dumb!
There, then, you have my thoughts on bureaucracy and complexity. There are lots of things besides Medicare which come to us that are costly, not understandable and duplicated. We would improve all that, if I had my way.
Happiness09 (anonymous) says...
I think you have too much time to think.
January 23, 2009 at 10:28 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )