New data from Mercer shows that employers say they will be forced yet again to offset their rising premiums on the wallets of their employees:
Well over half (59 percent) of employers taking action to reduce their 2009 cost increase will raise deductibles, copayments, coinsurance or employee out-of-pocket spending limits. Employee cost-sharing has risen sharply over the past five years: Between 2003 and 2007, the median family deductible for in-network services in a PPO (the type of plan offered by the most employers) rose from $1,000 to $1,500.
How much more can employers take or employees endure?
We’re almost to the end of a great American tradition - two weeks of partisan political posturing - and I’m growing less and less certain there’s any help at hand for our business friends.
Here are the worries I hear from the Wichita retail and service sector: Energy, energy, energy and the ramifications of high energy prices.
From skyrocketing delivery bills to doubling food prices to customers cutting back on restaurants, movies and clothing, the cost of energy is eroding a tough-to-kill Wichita economy. It gets your attention when Dillard’s, a longtime Wichita retailing stalwart, reports publicly it’s losing money and closing under-performing stores. Yet after two weeks of listening to pols from both sides of the aisle, I hear relatively little to change what’s dragging down our economy.
Alternative fuels? Great idea 30 years ago. Off-shore drilling? Puh-leeze. Ten years away and of minimal impact at a time when we need to get off of oil. Reel in the speculators? OK, where’s the action? Tax cuts for businesses? Swell, but how does that put more money in the hands of customers who are growing more afraid by the day for their jobs? A cool grand in a government check? That’s nice. My house will be warm for two months, but I won’t have enough left for a steak or a shirt.
It’s a complicated problem with no easy solutions. I’m interested to hear yours. What can be done short-term to strengthen Wichita’s retail economy?
OK, perhaps a smart employee wouldn’t admit this, but … I did just have the kind of power nap Andi Atwater wrote about.
I had a 7 a.m. speaking engagement this morning. And though I was grateful for the opportunity, I’m more of an evening person, so the early hour completely disrupted my schedule. I planned my evening around going to bed earlier, but that didn’t work. I set three alarms but still woke up at 3:30 a.m. worried that I wouldn’t get up in time. Then, since I was up, I started worrying about other things.
All this to say by the time I made it into work following my talk, I was toast. I was in a fog staring at the computer screen not accomplishing much. So I retreated to a ladies lounge we have here at The Eagle for a quick nap.
I don’t often sleep on the job. But since I did, I’m a new woman. Rested, refocused and ready for my noon meeting.
Sarah Palin probably doesn’t take power naps, but for those of us who aren’t superhuman, they do seem to work.
Harvard Men’s Health Watch says a quickie power nap in the afternoon at work is very good for alertness, performance and mood.
Those wiley researchers don’t recommend a two-hour nap, of course. A simple 20 to 40 minute nap sometime between noon and 4 p.m. should suffice. And make sure to give yourself 10 to 15 minutes to wake up fully before you resume a demanding task, Harvard pros say.
And just to shore up your argument when your boss asks where the heck you are, Harvard says this:
Voluntary napping … is not a sign of sleep deprivation, illness, or aging. In fact, a “power nap” can be helpful as well as enjoyable. Many studies of shift workers and other volunteers have reported that a nap as brief as 20 minutes can improve alertness, psychomotor performance, and mood.
Now get up and go nap! Harvard said so!
I’m sick of passwords.
More specifically, I’m sick of having to change them every three months.
I’ve got passwords for the ATM, for online banking, for my voice mail and a gazillion other things at work and home.
The experts say that you should never write them down. That’s to protect you, they say, from bad guys gaining access to your private stuff.
I say it’s to protect them from any liability they would have from you when their systems get hacked, and your information stolen.
Problem is, there are so many cotton-pickin’ passwords that you have to remember, and in variations that require digits, upper-case and lower-case letters and x number of characters, that you can’t use just one password for all the things that you need a password for.
This particular exercise in futility is supposedly meant to make things more efficient and productive by doing everything on the computer.
But on this particular morning, there is nothing efficient nor productive about this. My ability to get the work done that I should be doing isn’t happening because I’ve got so many passwords to manage I’ve been locked out of a Web site.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone call to get a new password.
Policy wonk John Goodman raised an interesting question in his health policy blog: who’s at fault for the problems in our health care system? Is it doctors or the payment structure under which they operate?
Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonprofit group that bills itself as a nonpartisan public policy research organization, says he believes the payment system needs to be revamped in order to affect better, more efficient care.
He writes:
Our view is that doctors are just like other professionals. They respond to economic incentives. The policy problem: how to change the incentives in the perverse way doctors are paid.
Those who believe doctors are at fault, Goodman says, think doctors are just too stuck in their “imperfect” habits and are unwilling to go the extra mile to achieve better results and lower costs. If you believe that, Goodman says, you believe the public policy problem boils down to “how to get doctors to adopt the best practices, learn to use computers, work in teams, adopt safety protocols, etc. in the face of psychological resistance.”
Food for thought. What do you think? Are insurance providers — from private companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield to government payers such as Medicare — to blame for our cost and quality issues, not to mention our rampant uninsured?
I was chatting with a friend in retail over the Labor Day weekend, and he said it’s a tough time right now despite all the talk about the economy being good here. I mentioned that it’s probably a good time to check in with small local shops for a story on how they’re doing, but he said no one would want to talk. He said it’s hard to be known as a popular store or the “it’ store of the moment if you admit to problems.
Of course, it’s probably also hard to attract shoppers if you don’t let them know you need them.
As difficult a time it is for so many businesses — including newspapers — I have to admit I’m thankful not to be in retail.
It’s been 40 years since Cessna Aircraft began producing the Cessna 177 Cardinal. Cardinal owners and operators from around the country will be in Wichita later this month to tour Cessna’s plants in Wichita and Independence and take part in a 40th birthday party.
Cessna built nearly 4,300 of the light, high-wing aircraft before stopping production in 1978.
The event, sponsored by the Cardinal Flyers organization, will be held at the Wichita Hilton at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport Sept. 24 to Sept. 28
It really ought to be a new feature.
For the past several weeks, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. posts information about yet another bank in the nation that has failed.
This time it was in Alpharetta, Ga.
According to the FDIC, the number of bank failures in 2008 is up to 10. That’s the most since 2002, when there were 12.
In 10 years of covering the banking industry, I’ve never seen anything like this.
And with four months left in the year, I think we’ve got a few more to go and will likely surpass 2002’s total.
Let’s just hope that no more Kansas banks (remember Columbian Bank and Trust in Topeka?) contribute to this growing list.
Oil prices took a beating this morning on the commodities markets, falling to levels unseen since April. The price drops are so severe that OPEC officials are threatening an emergency meeting to “defend the $100 a barrel” price point.
With these developments - and others over the last five months - in mind, can we all agree that the run-up to $147 a barrel was artificial? Can we all agree that the supply-and-demand arguments offered up by industry officials - including the Bush administration - and commodities traders were a canard?
Despite projections for a weak 2007, Moody’s Investors Service conceded that nonprofit hospitals were fairly stable last year, despite the subprime mortgage-fueled financial markets meltdown, ongoing problems in the U.S. economy and continuous pressure on margins, Fierce HealthFinace reports.
But gone are the ubiquitous 5 percent to 6 percent margins. As Via Christi Health System can attest, just staying near the 2 percent mark is a coup these days.
Jeffrey Fluhr passed the first impressions test with flying colors Thursday morning at an introductory press conference at the WaterWalk. He’s smart, vibrant, articulate and has a game plan to pull downtown redevelopment together.
The Wichita Downtown Development Corporation’s new chief spoke with a near missionary zeal about listening to the community and crafting a downtown redevelopment strategic plan that every resident can own.
Including, he said, the city’s growing anti-tax crowd, opposers of everything from the downtown arena to the public-private partnership funding a lot of downtown’s growth. That group, he said, might have ideas to help further the city’s growth plans.
It will be interesting to see if Fluhr can invigorate a dialogue with the anti-taxers - or if he gets swept away in the “no way, no how, no taxes downtown” flood that seems to be developing.