The Echo

State Employee Healthcare Should be a No Brainer

By Elizabeth Scheinberg

$1 Billion.
That's the estimated health care cost for Delaware's state employees by 2020. (Remember when 2020 was just a tv show? I'm definitely feeling my age.)

Our Gov. wants to balance his budget on the backs of state employees. And he's got it wrong. At least that's the opinion of the working poor, the non-unionized and unionized alike.

Yes, not all state employees belong to a union. And some are paid just dreadful wages. Single parent supports a family of four on $20,000? Who does that these days? Imagine all the two earners families who don't ever see the light of day over $45,000? And Delaware has a ton of them, under-employed earners who have yet to make a post-recession comeback!

If you are non-union, why even work for the State? For the health insurance. I am a SME - Subject Matter Expert. I have a special set of skills and knowledge that the state needs to fulfill its commitment to our jointly chosen field.

When I was stay-at-home wife and mother, my husband carried our health insurance at the cost of $12,000/year. Twelve grand was our share, plus co-pays and deductibles. Thank you, private sector. It broke us, b/c after paying the premium we couldn't afford to go to the doctors or medical aid units. While we tried to keep up with our children's healthcare needs, they went years without visiting a dentist or eye doctor. A two day stint in the hospital under my husband's insurance cost us more than $3,000.00.

My job was our savior. Although the pay is low, the affordable insurance means my children and I can see our doctors and specialists. My husband, however, is still capitated to his employer's plan.

I can't tell you how insulted I was to read Ann Visalli's comments in the News Journal this morning:

Ann Visalli, Markell’s budget director, who announced her resignation Friday to take a job with St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, said changes to the health care plan would ask employees “to be good consumers and have a stake in how their healthcare dollars are spent.” http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/health/2016/04/09/state-employee-health-care/82607460/

Come on, Ann. You can't seriously think that state employees are abusing their healthcare benefits? That's what you are insinuating, whether you publicly admit it or not. Healthcare dollars are spent on HEALTHCARE! We, the employees of the State, don't set the co-pays and fees. YOU, the State do, when you negotiate with the INSURANCE PROVIDERS! Do YOUR job and negotiate for savings from THEM. Not US!

(the no-brainer part - Graduated premiums. Make the state's $100,000 + employees pay more for insurance.)

St. Andrew's can have you! Insult them for a while.

via GIPHY

Category: 1 comments

Jake's Take on DE's Pooch Patrol Problem. With a special Nod To Patricia Blevins!

By Elizabeth Scheinberg

Jake left a fascinating comment on yesterday's satyric post on an animal welfare and the SPCA's serving Delaware. I don't usually wade into this type of manure. I just wanted to make a point - ALL of the agencies and organizations claiming to be serving our state's unwanted, lost, and sick animals are playing politics when they shouldn't be. They should be playing caregiver. Except, that would require certain politicians to stop playing God. And some just can't...stop. Like a trainwreck, Patti.

And be sure to follow the link below to Delaware SPCA's response to yesterday's NJ story. Their director is far better spoken that First State's Director Usilton. (And I still think that someone's contract should be euthanized.)

Here ya go, Jake. And Happy Autism Awareness Day!

Jake has left a new comment on your post "Playing Politics with Innocent Animals - Not an Ed...":

The director at Delaware SPCA provided an excellent response to the inflammatory nature of the article. Fortunately residents can see what is happening, and a state contractor trying to strong arm other shelters to force them to do their job is completely innapropriate.
https://www.facebook.com/DelawareSPCA/posts/1065227660185721

Before dog control contracts, Kent County SPCA (now known as First State Animal Center) was a small shelter and built the larger facility to do their job as dog control. Needless to say, the majority of their funding was pulled due to politics by the State, and as a result their are limited funds to hold animals.

Capacity care for animals is based on the number of personnel and health resources needed to care for those animals, and Kent County has the smallest population in the state with under 170,000 people and with lower per capita earnings, so clearly the donation pool is much smaller than the shelters in New Castle County. As a result, FSAC is using boarding and daycare in the second building to supplement their donations to still remain a larger number of animals than they handled before dog control. Unfortunately Mr. Lamb doesn't have the business sense to realize that a shelter with a donation base under half a million can't handle the same number of dogs as they were handling when their revenue was $4 million with the various contracts.

Mr. Lamb wanted the contract and has aligned himself with the folks that have been trying to put FSAC out of business for years, but what I think is odd is that those complaining about the SPCA's never spoke up when Faithful Friends wasn't taking dogs from FSAC, and was also importing animals from other states. In fact, BVSPCA also still imports dogs into their shelter, and where is the shock and awe about the fact he wants other shelters to do his job while he brings animals into his shelter from the south?

Maybe folks need to accept the reality that a handful of folks plotted and planned to get FSAC out of dog control and those folks and their new contractor need to assume responsibility for those actions.

-Original Message-----
From: "Blevins Patricia (LegHall)"
To: Anne Cavanaugh
Cc: "Ranji Jennifer (Governor)" , "jane@faithfulfriends" , "bengal98@aol"
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:39:14 +0000

Subject: RE: meeting tonight recap - confidential
Maybe you could bid on Kent County at $3.52 per person, same as Wilmington. You would beat their bid. If they lost just one contract, they would be underwater for sure, because they are so drastically underbidding New Castle County.

Category: 0 comments

Christina School District's Other Route to Poverty

By Elizabeth Scheinberg

Wilmington is not the only place to find deep institutional poverty alive and well.

Route 40. With some Northern New Castle County's last pastoral views sandwiched between shopping centers of various sizes and blight, where low-rise apartment buildings sprung up against the working class neighborhoods of the 1990s, before there was a mortgage crisis.

Where arsonists move faster than mobile home park managers when it comes to demolition...

Where residents fear retribution from their lot owners for speaking too loudly about the drugs, crime, homelessness, and the squatting that happens just next door, a few hundred feet from the Boys and Girls Club.

Further off the main Route, you can't miss the McMansions, where builders capitalized on cheap farmland. But, most of us have to drive past at least one and often more than one trailer park to reach those well-manicured greenscapes. Those trailer parks and the older Section 8 neighborhoods that line the highway.

Where Brookmont Farms became Sparrow Run because sum years back some well-meaning political hack thought a new name might re-invigorate the suburbs version the projects.

And where Westside Family Healthcare led the charge into a poverty stricken corridor and opened the first clinic for un/under-insured residents. Long before MedExpress put down roots or Glasgow Medical Aid grew its foot print.

Yet,
The Route 40 Corridor is still a sleeper cell of poverty. All the conversations in the world, and I am told there have been many, haven't made a dent. The poor get poorer everyday.

Just Read This, http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2016/04/02/glasgow-mobile-home-fires-point-bigger-concerns/82526586/

More importantly, look at the photos from the fire. A picture tells a million stories.

Category: 1 comments

The Autism Post - World Autism Awareness Day!

By Elizabeth Scheinberg

It's World Autism Day! Shine Blue, Delaware.

I want to depart some awesome and inspiring words to you today, tell you of a journey conquered, teach you something rare and humorous, move you to tears...

And Autism will do all of that. But, I am having trouble finding the words. Bear with Me.

Autism is Brutal.

Terrifying.

Devastating.

Brutal. Like the cat that shadows you wherever you roam.

Get down, Brutal. You may not climb the bookcases. They are not the ladder to the ceiling fan. No Ceiling Fans!

Oh! Brutal, please do not smother your baby brother in diaper cream and call him "snowman."

Brutal, please stop slamming your head into the stroller frame.

No, Brutal. The material inside the couch is NOT edible.

Stop, Brutal. You may not swing from the drapes in the living room. Nor may you use them to try to reach the ceiling fan. What have I told you about ceiling fans?

Please Stop Scratching Me, Brutal. Please stop Scratching Yourself!

Oh Brutal, (and then to the teenage store clerks) We will leave, Brutal, just as soon as you finish destroying the book section in Happy Harry's. And you know what, Brute? We won't ever come back. Promise.

Hands, Brutal? What is on your HANDS, BRUTAL? (autism mom knows exactly what is on those hands)

Words, BRUTAL! PECS? IPAD? The last hour has been about a treat? You want a TREAT?

Yes, Brutal, you are a Treat. Eat your perfectly white-yet-thoroughly-cooked pancake.

Autism is Brutal. And you cling to the littlest things for longest times.

And then, like a breath of fresh air, you realize and appreciate Awesome and Amazing!

Mom, want to watch the Fault in our Stars?

Sure.

Mom, will it make you cry again?

Hopefully not. We've seen it 50 million times.

Mom, are you crying yet?

No.

5 minutes later and every five minutes thereafter,

Mom, Are you Tears? Are you Crying?

And sometimes,

You just can't tell Brutal from Amazing or Awesome from Brutal.