Just uploaded a butt-load of childhood pictures of me. Click the collage below to be transported at light speed to the Flickr set:

One of the most important thing I've learned in a previous course of mine on Organizational Behavior: organizations tend to have as their primary goal their survival. Sometimes, advocating for a solution to a particular problem - if successful - can lead in the end of the need for such a service, and thus the end of the organization. For example, a soup kitchen that provides food for the hungry will no longer have a need if policies are enacted that eliminate hunger. Sure, many organizations are led by honest folks who would love to see the need for their services disappear, but organizations that grow obsessed with scientific management, bureaucracy, and self preservation may grow counter-productive to their missions.

 

This did not hit me until I was auditing some of the non-profits that receive funding from my workplace Department. One particular organization that dealt with serving abused children were "under spending" and had not utilized all of their budget. In this case, the government generally snatches the money away and cuts potential funding for next year. When I brought this up with the administrator she had told me, "thank God we didn't use all the funding! That means cases of child abuse or the need for our assistance has dropped!". Ironically, this theory moves contrary to budgetary logic found in today's public administration.

I am not a health care expert. Nor am I a doctor. I haven't even spent much time in hospitals, pharmacy queues, or clinics. I don't like (or trust) medicines, I usually "duke out" injuries and pains, and I hate - and I mean hate - going to the doctor's office for something. Doctors hate me, as I'm the guy who's always asking for copies of whatever he's writing. My disinterest in my formal health care was so serious that for the first two years of my employment at the Municipality of Aguas Buenas, I had not used my employer-given $100-a-month credit to choose a health plan.

 

If I was king of the world, I'd just hand over the medical industry to Google or Ikea and let them take care of it. But I'm not king of the world and Google and Ikea aren't in the healthcare business. So I'll have to make due and come up with some other suggestions.

 

I'm as pro-free market as a former commie can be, but health care is one of those industries where public good outweighs profit. For that sole reason, I support at least some government intervention in the field. Ideally, I would love to see five star hospitals, open free-of-charge to anybody who feels like walking in. Though I think that there is more than enough public dollars to make this a dream come true (even counting that which is already running through the system), I must acknowledge that corruption, bureaucracy, and politics may contaminate such a system. Despite this, I sure as hell think it's a better option than Puerto Rico's current system of massively subsidizing private healthcare plans through public dollars.

 

Let's play with some other ideas, shall we:

 

What if hospitals and doctors remained private but health insurance providers were either public, quasi-public, or non-profit? This would not only assure competition among doctors but would assure top health services. Non-profits, cooperatives, or quasi-public authorities can incorporate themselves as a health insurance providers under some sort of National Enabling Charter to assure uniformity of billing and reporting procedures. These organizations would then compete among themselves - much like current insurance providers do - to provide the best services desired by their clients.

 

A universal "health care credit" can be provided to each citizen regardless of income and employment status, equal to a certain amount of money. Some employers already provide such a credit, allowing employees to seek their own plan but with the discounts of group coverage. This "credit" can be funded by what now is Medicaid deductions, obligatory employer health coverage, or other taxes that currently fund the present system. Surely, cutting out all the crap will at least make the cost of each citizen's "health care credit" viable.

 

Citizens who wish for additional coverage or insurance options will pay for it from their own pockets. Citizens who would prefer to just go with private sector insurance can write off their expense (up to the cost of this universal credit) from their taxes.

 

Newt Gingrich hit a sweet note with me when he suggested in his book that insurance policies have a annual credit worth a certain dollar amount, say $2,000 (just to say a number). Services that surpass this mark, would not be covered by your health plan and you would have to pay for the rest out of your pocket. Customers who experience an emergency or serious condition will switch to the "unlimited plan", though those on the capped annual credit would be a bit more conservative with their credit expenses and shop around for competitive prices. This would avoid the ineffective and costly practice of clogging up doctor offices and emergency rooms for mundane, miniscule things.

 

These chartered insurers could offer different packages - some with different annual credit limits, varied or no co-pays, optional life insurance policies, special treatments or surgeries, and so on. These insurance providers would function and compete with each other much like Credit Unions do today; each with their varied packages, services, fees, and interest rates.

Papa Joe's BBQ, Opelika, AL

I am sort of a popular by default. I strongly oppose statehood because I think it would further dilute our democratic sovereignty and turn us into a fattened welfare state. I also oppose outright independence because I think it would turn us into a sweatshop nation hanging off the cuffs of the World Bank or IMF. Right now we sort of have a mix of both, which is something I'm not that proud of either.

 

I used to be a die-hard, socialist independentista until a friend of mine made a casual - but impacting comment - that reinforced some tendencies that I had been hiding in the back of my mind.  "I want independence. But I was real independence. I want social independence and cultural independence and economic independence. What good is political independence if we will still be a mentally dependent nation?"

 

Many of Puerto Rico's political parties will blame our biggest social problems on our status issue. Statehooders will say that Commonwealth status holds us back from becoming as economically secure as our Northern colonists or that independence will throw us into a pool of sharks to fend for ourselves. Independentistas say that our territorial status with the U.S. prevents us from international trade (a very globalist and capitalist thought for a self-proclaimed socialist movement, I might add). Populares want the best of both worlds, something everybody is increasingly acknowledging that we cannot have.

 

The truth is that our biggest problems are mostly independent of the status issue. Our failure to effectively implement policies, programs, and projects that benefit our population is drastically hindered by a politicized, bureaucratic, and institutionally corrupt public administration. In terms of public officials stealing money for themselves, we are probably as "corrupt" (or only a little more corrupt) than your average modern State. This corruption breeds from in our nepotism, patronage, and illegal political campaign funding, which has been ingrained into our day to day public administration.

 

Becoming a U.S. State would not help our bloated bureaucracy. In fact, the ushering in of new federal dollars would only intensify it. Our current government is already required to abide by the best management standards as deemed by the Office of Management and Budget, thus statehood would not usher in any sort of new standard to abide by. Independence which would leave our de Castro Font and Acevedo Vila's without the federal agents which keep them in check. Not to mention, imagine if Puerto Rico had its own, independent National Guard during events like the pivazo ordeal or the government shutdown of 2005, political allegiance and caudillo attitudes from both parties would have brought about constitutional crisis or maybe even a coup or two.

 

I feel that Puerto Rico has the sufficient sovereign capacity and economic resources as is to implement real social change. Muñoz flipped us upside down within a generation; why can't we continue with such a similar rumba for social transformation?

 

We have the power to re-direct our welfare dollars to productive activities, such as job creation programs, re-educating the workforce, and micro business loans. Simply shaving a percentage off of our PAN budget could spawn a nation of citizens of college graduates.

 

We have the power to convert our mammoth public corporations into cooperatives. AAE and AAA can retain their non-profit and "pro-public" mantra while reporting directly to the clients that fund them.

 

We have the power to stop subsidizing private insurance companies through La Reforma and build free-access public hospitals and open up international treatment centers. As is, we have the ability to send armies of young adults to medical school to produce an abundance of doctors and nurses free-of-cost, in exchange for providing their services to our public health system for a few years.

 

Why aren't we doing this? Because our public administration is in a dire state. It has grown so large and inefficient that it has grown its own consciousness and has run off its rails. Neither statehood nor independence will give Puerto Rico a new state, and by writing off our problems in the name of status, we are doing nothing more than perpetuating the problem.

YES. My subscription to The Economist is back. (Don't worry. I don't pay for it, with RSS feeds and all. I subscribe to these bad boys using frequent flier miles that I know will never accumulate to a free ticket.)

...or die.

If this is not your first time visiting my site, then you probably know that I have good taste (I know I know, a conceded moment). Thus, I felt impulsed to highlight a couple much-slept-on apps that I feel deserve a bit of attention:

iStudiez Pro - I use this to document all of my school assignments and due dates. The truth is, is that it's very much like the Calendar app, but iStudiez Pro will keep pending assignments on your list until they are completed. iStudiez also lets you organize your assignments by class - with titles, descriptions, schedules, and even colors, thus creating attractive calendars. You actually have to pay a few bucks for this one, but they have a Lite version if you'd like to check it out. It's worth the buck or two.

Banking - It's free. And it's probably one of the most straight-forward baking apps. I like to hold onto all of my receipts and tally them onto an Excel sheet. This app will let me pull up my bank balance and statement with one finger. Easy. Butter.

Flickr - Don't you hate having a shit load of photos on your phone that you always intend to share but never get around to? You end up with a massive surplus of cool and quirky photos that never leave your hard drive. Yuck. Flickr is convenient in the sense that you can upload photos instantly from your library. I'm not uploading my Photos of the Day on the spot, following them up with a formal post whenever I log onto my blog and see the new photos. Free.

Zillow - If your interested in buying a house or even investing in Real Estate, Zillow has a cool feature where it'll show you the homes for sale and their cost, laid over a map of your current location. Neat, eh? "Wow.. this neighborhood looks nice. I wonder how much the houses cost." Badowww.

Quicksheet - Sure, they have a third party version of the Office suite on the iPhone, but who the hell is going to edit Word and Power Point files on their tiny little iPhone? Quicksheet provides simple spreadsheet functions, and even lets you export them to your computer easily.

PhoneFlicks - "You should watch "Ali G the Movie", states a friend. Badowww. Just open up PhoneFlicks, type in the movie title and hit the Add to Netflix button. Buyakasha.

Geodelic - Always a fan of Urban Spoon, my only beef with the app was that it would list, but not map the restaurants of my picking. Geodelic not only maps restaurants near your current location, but can show you a variety of other types of business establishments.

I am sure that all of you understand what I'm talking about. I know folks (cough cough, Raf) who has every episode of every season of every television show he's probably ever interested. Despite the fact that he has a folder with probably a hundred movies in it, he's always asking folks to recommend to him new ones to add to his list. When you ask if he's seen them a week or two later, he admits to have downloaded them but not watch them. "Yet". I think it's safe to say that it's humanly impossible for him to get to all of them.

I confessed to myself a couple months ago that I will never around to reading all of these books or watching all of these movies. Sure, it hurts nobody to add something else to my Netflix queue, just in case I ever wish to pick something random; but I really don't need to be filling my hard drive and JDownload queues with movies and books I will never get around to watching and reading.

At least with music, massive music collections may enhance random iTunes and Genius playlists. As a hard core sampler, having a sizable music collection to draw from is also a plus. But I will never be able to sit back and enjoy all 55.7 days of my current iTunes collection. I've really had to cut back on my addiction to data.

For starters, I've started downsizing my RSS feed subscriptions (the source of most of my "bandwidth splurging"). Second, I've stopped downloading things I could easy put on my Netflix playlist. Third, I've begun putting more trust in the recommendation of friends, particularly those that I know have good taste. When someone recommends that I watch something, instead of downloading it and slapping it onto a hard drive, I'll pull out my iPhone, add it to my Netflix queue and jump it up to #1.

And fourth, whenever I stumble upon a book of interest, instead of adding it to my Amazon wish list (thus never reading it), I will just pull up a summary of the book, read it, and save a PDF copy if I feel that it has any data that I could later use as research for either scholastic or personal purposes. Considering the fact that we will remember probably only 10% of what we read, I don't think this is too bad of idea. Plus, if I ever feel like I need to read about a particular subject in debt then I can really read the book.