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Just thought I would share my brilliant idea for fixing health care now that our government has passed health care reform. Yes, it will need to be fixed. I am completely stunned that politicians had the nerve to promote this bill by saying that it would reduce the federal deficit and that people actually bought that. Sure it will reduce the deficit because it involves a lot of taxes. A bill that raises taxes more than the money being spent will always reduce the deficit, but that doesn't mean it is a good thing.

The problem with health care reform is how to pay for it. Taxing wealthy people is always a popular idea but here is the problem with that. Rich people would rather pay a lot of money to evil geniuses, called lawyers, to find ways to not pay taxes than to actually give their money to the government. They will find a way too because the lawyers that are evil but not geniuses end up in politics. See the problem? The smarter guys prevail.

At first glance, adding 30 million people to the health care system seems to give some hope that health care costs would be cheaper because of the increased volume. Drug companies and medical equipment companies would be able to manufacture higher volumes which usually means cheaper. But health care reform adds taxes to those companies who will pass it on to patients and the cost will eventually end up with the government. In other words, the more the government taxes medical companies the more the government will have to pay in medical costs.

So how do we end up paying for health care reform when they find out that their current plans won't work? Tom's brilliant solution is to tax food based on its nutritional value to calories ratio. Healthy food would get no tax. Unhealthy food would get taxed in proportion to how bad it is for you. In other words, make it much cheaper to eat healthy. Make it cheaper to eat fruits, vegetables, and high fiber foods that potato chips and hot pockets. We Americans love our junk food and this fat tax would have the government rolling in cash. Talk about reducing the deficit... it would probably be gone in a year or two. Brilliant, isn't it?

It also will have an impact on the use of illegal drugs. We won't be spending our time fighting meth labs anymore. Law enforcement will have divisions dedicated to busting black market potato chip labs. We will see an increase in house fires caused by industrial sized fryers running out of control in people's basements. They will probably have to track the sale of cooking oil. This creation of a new vice may seem like a bad thing but hey, at least they won't be manufacturing meth.

Now of course we might not see such a windfall if everyone changed their eating habits and started eating healthy. But then we wouldn't incur such high medical costs either. And that's really getting at the issue. I can't stand reports that point to life expectancy and mortality rates of other countries and point to more health care as the answer. The real answer is is avoiding the need for medical care altogether. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have good health care coverage for everyone. I'm just saying that prevention efforts have been known to make the biggest impacts for a long, long time now. Ask anyone who works in the health field in developing countries.

So there you go. Develop a system that rewards good behavior. Simple.

Statements

A lot of organizations spend a lot of time on purpose, mission, or vision statements. They even spend a lot of time arguing over the difference between them. This goes for churches just as much as businesses and other non-profits.

The interesting thing is how remarkably similar they all end up being. In fact, I would guess that most of these statements have origins in other entities and have been copied. The thing is, these statements tend to be completely out of the realm of possibility for these entities. So I thought I should give some suggestions for statements that may not sound very good but would really help out the organizations if they actually succeeded in fulfilling the statement.

"Trying to not be a bunch of jerks."

"Striving to care."

"Recognizing the world doesn't revolve around us."

"To your face, not behind your back."

"Still pompous, just not as much."

"Promising to never put another stupid saying on our sign."


This could take forever. Any others you want to get off your chest?

Transformational

"The objective of all of my work is that it is missional. A better word might be transformational, that both people and places are transformed by the work that I do."

That's a quote from Shannon Hopkins.

One of the challenges with so many discussions is defining the language. Over the years I've seen numerous conflicts arise simply because opposite sides were defining key words differently. I've also seen a lot of language change meaning over the years with some words become sharply defined while others seem to grow more and more meanings and thereby adding to the confusion and conflict.

Talk to a lot of people about being missional and you're likely to receive the good old glazed eyes look. Hey, my spellchecker can't figure it out either. I learned quickly to be careful who I used the word around. If I think they will struggle with the word I just don't use it.

I like the comparison in the quote above. I don't think that missional and transformational are interchangeable but I think that used properly, transformational can do a better job of expressing the missional thought.

So I need to ponder this a bit more. Are people and places transformed by the work I do? My first thought is yes, but transformed in what way? I can just as easily have a negative impact on people and places so I want to be careful to think about what kind of transformation my work should help bring about.

I have been on a "Jesus authored..." kick lately so let me try that on for size. Does my work bring about Jesus authored transformation to people and places? Yeah, I know, I just played tricks with the language and am thereby falling into the very thing I railed against at the beginning of this post. Oh well, I'll try it out for awhile and see how it fits.