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Those in favor of reform tell us that if we do not take action soon, health care will soon be unaffordable for most Americans.  Those who oppose reform say that the cost of subsidizing health care costs  will be astronomical and we cannot afford it.

Both sides are probably right - and be that as it may, we will very likely see some reform legislation sometime this year.  As a medicare counselor for almost 15 years, I have formed some strong opinions on the subject, but I will keep them to myself.

I have done a piece on the various proposals that are before congress and I present them here, without bias or comment. - John S.

Click here to read the proposals

For those of you who are interested in keeping up to date with what is happening on this important issue,  AARP has a pretty good site.

Click Here to go to the AARP site.

Do your bit to support the Employees Free Choice act.

Click here and make yourself heard

Joe Gullo came up with this site that has more information about the bill and a list of supporters in Congress

See where your representative stands

Click here

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The following does not reflect the opinions of anyone but myself - John S.

When my wife, Kathy and I received the news that we were going to receive $250 each from the government’s stimulus plan we were not unhappy, but it was little cause for celebration.  Frankly, $500 is not a lot of money to us, for some seniors and disabled persons who were eligible for the payment it came as a boon.
Our first thoughts were that the money would go in the general fund from which we pay our monthly bills, but the brains of our mob (Kathy) came up worth a better idea.
Said Kathy, “Since this money is supposed to help stimulate our (U.S.) economy, let’s make an effort to spend it on things that directly benefit our fellow citizens.  That means no Walmart. “[Yeah I know it is a U.S. owned company that makes jobs in the U.S., but if you if you haven’t figured out that Walmart is at its heart the distributing arm of the Chinese economy, nothing I say here will change your mind.]
She went on to say, “We will make a conscious effort to directly affect our local economy by buying our veggies at the local farm stand, meat at the butcher and some food products (mostly deli items) from local businesses, hardware and garden supplies at the local hardware store rather than the big box stores, eating out at local privately owned restaurants ( we do that a lot) rather than the chains whenever we can.”
Of course the $500 didn’t go all that far, but it did make us realize where we were spending our money and just how difficult it is to spend it on American made products.  We know we haven’t made much of a dent in the country’s economic crisis – but we have at least, made a $500 contribution toward the solution.

Relative to the above -
Near the end of last summer Kathy and I stopped at a farm stand on the Eastern end of Long Island – in the middle of farm country, to purchase bunch of fresh vegetables.  As Kathy inspected and chose the peppers, eggplant, zucchini, onions and thyme that I would be grilling later in the day, I wandered about and happened upon a stack of wooden crates containing broccoli.  I knew it was broccoli because I could see it through the spaces in the wooden slats that formed the side of the crate.  I couldn’t read most of what was printed on the slats. It was written in Chinese (my Chinese is a bit rusty), but I could read “Product of China” proudly stencilled in that pretty blue you often find on the plates in Chinese restaurants.
The point of this story is – it is not easy to buy American, and I doubt whether any amount of stimulus money in the hands of consumers will really have much of an effect on the economy.

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I was confused, were you? When I opened the mailing from the Alcatel – Lucent Pension Service Center I found two booklets, each titled Annual Funding Notice for Plan Year January 1, 2008 Through December 31, 2008.  One had the form designation LTPP/LTRP-RT-1 and the other, LTPP/LTRP-RT-2, on the cover page, bottom left.  The difference between the two brochures became evident when I opened them.  The footer in the one designated RT-1 is designated LTTP 2008 Pension Funding Notice for Retired/ Terminated, and RT- is designated LTPP 2008 Pension Funding Notice for Retired/ Terminated.
I know now, but I didn’t then, that LTTP stands for Lucent Technologies Pension Plan and LTRP stands for Lucent Technologies Retirement Plan.
Except for that and the differences in the numbers on pages 2 and 3, the text in the two is the same.
Anyone who has ever tried to collect on a homeowner’s insurance policy or get out of a cell phone contract knows that “God (or more accurately, the devil) is in the details.”, and the details here are quite different.
The bottom line, which is our major concern as retirees, is the “Funding Target Attainment Percentage” which is the ratio of assets in the fund to the funds obligations - the amount the fund is obligated to pay out to retirees. The LTPP is funded at 156%, and the LTRP at 177%.  All good news!!! – But – 177% over funded is better news than 156% over funded – no?
I read and read – compared and compared, all to no avail.  I could not for the life of me determine which plan applied to me. 
Later, in the same week that I received that mystery letter from the pension service center, I got an email from a frequent correspondent that included information that was at odds with what my brochures stated – indeed that the Funding Target Attainment Percentage level is about 104% according to the Lucent Retiree Organization.
After the initial shock, I realized that the LRO’s info pertained to salaried employees (supervision and management) rather than union represented retirees. That was the easy part.
Since that time I have made and received more than a dozen calls to the pension center (two of which ended in an empty promise to get back to me) and a follow-up email (never acknowledged) to clear up the mystery.
Part of my confusion (albeit a very small part) came from the fact that this is the first time I had received an Annual Funding Notice.  In the past information about the state of my pension’s financial condition came to me as part of the Summary Annual Report.
The Pension Protection Act of 2006, in an effort to give better information to defined benefit pension plan participants about the funding status of their pension plan has required fund managers to send out the Annual Funding Notice.  Okay, I have that straight – but I still didn’t know which plan I belonged to, and what was the eligibility criteria for each plan.
I can only tell you that after a month of inquiry, and the assistance of a very nice supervisor, Beverly Jenkins at the Lucent Pension Service Center.  Ms jenkins could not be nicer - BUT - I still do not have the answer.  I have been assured that my question has been turned over to the Center’s Director, who in turn is contacting Alcatel/Lucent to get a definitive reply.
CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT THE OFFICE NAMED THE LUCENT PENSION SERVICE CENTER THAT IS CHARGED WITH OVERSEEING OUR PENSION FUND DOES NOT KNOW THE ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR EACH OF THE FUNDS.  IF THEY DO NOT – WHO THE HELL DOES? - I'll get back to you if I ever  get the answer.

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I guess the foregoing shouldn’t surprise me.  Here is a situation that has come up in my life this past month.
My wife had a IRA account CD due.  The internet bank (Etrade) that issued it was offering a very low rate, while the local Teacher’s Federal Credit Union offered a rate that was 3 times higher.
She went to TFCU to have  the funds transferred there.  The teller was unfamiliar with the process so she asked the branch manager for assistance.  The manager informed my wife that it was not wise to make the switch because the Etrade rate was higher than theirs.
The Etrade rate was .7% and the TFCU rate was 2.7% more than 3 times better.  – Okay – the manager may have missed the decimal point before the 7, but shouldn’t any person working in a bank know that NO BANK IN THE WORLD IS OFFERING A 7% INTEREST RATE ON A 1 YEAR CD.
I give up -

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Father's Day falls on June 21st this year, the same day as the summer solstice.  It presents me with an opportunity to reprint a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, a newspaper editor and president of NBC News. A few years ago he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed.  -

He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.
 'In those days,' he told me when he was in his 90s, 'to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.'
 At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: 'Oh, bull----!' she said. 'He hit a horse.'
 'Well,' my father said, 'there was that, too.'
 So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the Van Laninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.
   My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
 My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none.  'No one in the family drives,' my mother would explain, and that was that.
 But, sometimes, my father would say, 'But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one.' It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.
 But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.
 It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.
 Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.
 So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. 'Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?' I remember him saying more than once.
 For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator.  It seemed to work.
 Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.
 (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
 He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests 'Father Fast' and 'Father Slow.'
 After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: 'The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.'
 If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream.  As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, 'Do you want to know the secret of a long life?' 'I guess so,' I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.
 'No left turns,' he said.
 'What?' I asked.
 'No left turns,' he repeated. 'Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.'
 'What?' I said again.
 'No left turns,' he said. 'Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer.  So we always make three rights.'
 'You're kidding!' I said, and I turned to my mother for support.
 'No,' she said, 'your father is right. We make three rights. It works.' But then she added: 'Except when your father loses count.'
 I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.
 'Loses count?' I asked.
 'Yes,' my father admitted, 'that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again.'
 I couldn't resist. 'Do you ever go for 11?' I asked.
 'No,' he said ' If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day.  Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week.'
 My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.
  She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.
 They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)
 He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
 One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, 'You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred.' At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, 'You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer.'
 'You're probably right,' I said.
 'Why would you say that?' He countered, somewhat irritated.
 'Because you're 102 years old,' I said.
 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right.' He stayed in bed all the next day.
 That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.
 He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:
 'I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet'
  An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:
  'I want you to know,' he said, clearly and lucidly, 'that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable.  And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.'
 A short time later, he died.
 I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns. 

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

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