Social Responsibility

Claiming Social Responsibility

Requires Hard Choices

“Social Responsibility” is generally thought to include working with a higher purpose than mere profitability, a striving to improve our society and strengthen community life.

To some on the right side of the political spectrum, the phrase has taken on a pejorative meaning and they use it to label left leaning folks and groups as “do gooders,” consistent with their world view that we should just care about ourselves and not each other. 

Some organizations use “social responsibility” as part of their mission statement. Claiming this mantle is meant to show a concern for the well being of others and a commitment to making the communities they serve better through their good works. 

Our local Y (formerly the YMCA) and the national Y organization have staked a claim to being socially responsible. The Y touts its social responsibility in its promotional materials and offerings. It stresses “healthy living” by offering exercise and fitness classes, youth programming, nutritional and health screenings, child care and other endeavors meant to promote long, healthy lives for all ages of members.

I have long been associated with the Y. I learned to swim in Y pools as a kid. I attended Y sponsored summer programs and camps well into my adolescence. As I aged, I came back to the Y to regain lost fitness, continue my cardiac rehab, and reconnect with other seniors in my community. I try to get to the Y on Washington St. three times a week to work out and meet with my personal trainer, who has helped me stay alive.  By partnering with Silver Sneakers and other health insurance programs for seniors, the Y has made membership free to those on fixed incomes.

All of these activities certainly entitle the Y to claim that it acts in a “socially responsible” manner. Unfortunately, when attempts were being made to expand the Y’s social responsibility activities to include more current social issues, the current Y management was not interested.

The first issue came in the form of a request to make the Y a “Safe Space” for people who felt attacked or threatened in the new wave of anti-immigrant, anti-LBGTQ sentiments that sprang up after the last presidential election. The Y was asked to participate in “Safe Space” training and to post a small poster in the window indicating that the Y would offer protections to those harassed or threatened. The former “Social Responsibility” director refused the requests, indicating that the Y does not discriminate against people of color, those with non-majority sexual orientation or gender expression or those in minority or immigrant groups. She did allow placement of the “Safe Space” poster on a community bulletin board in an upstairs hall in the building, but refused to replace it after it mysteriously disappeared from the board.

The second attempt to engage the Y in an expanded vision of  “social responsibility” involved its fund raising program that included accepting funds from and advertising for a local business whose mission is to encourage the taking of human life by armed violence. Again the Y dropped the ball and refused to even discuss the matter at a recent Board of Directors meeting. 

The Y started a campaign to solicit funds from local donors. In exchange for a $1,000 donation, the donor got his or her name on a small banner hanging from the rafters in the Y lobby. For a $2500 or larger contribution, the donor received a much larger banner hanging closer to the floor with their name. Most names on the banners are well known members of Washington County’s donor class.

One prominent name on a large banner on the first row is Delta Defense coupled with the logo of the US Concealed Carry Association. I have written here before about Delta Defense’s owners and their attempts to purchase respectability with corporate largess. For those who do not know, the company provides support to the concealed carry/self-defense movement and advocates for an individual’s absolute right to take human life through armed violence.

When I tried to point out that the Y’s claim to “social responsibility” was inconsistent with taking Delta Defense money and advertising its brand, the Executive Director and the Executive Committee of the Y’s Board of Directors decided not to engage in the discussion about gun violence in our community and refused to bring the issue before its full Board for a discussion of its “social responsibility” policy. 

Organizations claiming the mantle of “social responsibility” cannot ignore the social issues of our time just because they are controversial or may anger some of their members. If you are going to be socially responsible, you have to be willing to examine what that means and take positions consistent with your mission even if it means giving back some money and letting marginalized people know they are welcome and safe.

Waring Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled with a Sheboygan County non-profit agency.

The Crossroads

Is America Great Again?

Not even close.

We are one year into Making America Great Again and seven years into the Wisconsin Taxpayer Revolt. We know what this looks like and have reached the crossroads. Is this what we want to become?

Do we want to be a society where everybody is out for himself or herself, looking to amass as much wealth as they can at the expense of those less able or fortunate?

Do we want to live on planet with less clean air and water with a dwindling food supply and a climate that grows ever harsher to human existence?

Do we want to live in a society where the elderly, disabled and different are deemed disposable and expendable?

Do we want to live in communities where women are second or third class citizens whose job it is to pleasure men and have their babies?

Do we want to live in a society where those at the top of the chain are automatically deemed more valuable than those in subordinate positions?

Do we want to end our commitment to universal quality public education?

Do we want to return to a system that only allows white male property owners to decide who gets to govern the country?

Do we want a country that is not respected or supported by the international community?

Do we really want one-party rule in the halls of government?

2018 must be the year we turn away from these goals of Republican governance and return our society back to one based upon mutual respect and taking care of each other.

We need a tax code which requires everyone to pay their fair share to support basic human needs for food security, adequate universal healthcare, a secure infrastructure that supports business ventures and safe commerce, a stable defense for a peaceful world.

We need to protect Social Security and Medicare to make sure that seniors and the disabled do not go back to impoverished lives and dying in back bedrooms. We need to protect retirements for those who can no longer work.

We need to protect the world we live on by doing what science demands to clean our air and water and minimize the disruption of climate change. We need to maximize the use of renewable energy sources to stop the use of fossil fuels.

We need to value those who work by providing safe working environments, family supporting wages and benefits, collective bargaining rights and reasonable working conditions. Family and medical leave policies must recognize the importance strong families play in productive work.

We need strong public schools that support and educate every child to the best of their individual abilities so they can become productive and intelligent members of our communities. We need to recognize that professional and well-supported teachers are critical to the success of their students and compensate our educators accordingly.

We need to finally recognize and promote the equality of women in the workplace and the rest of society by guaranteeing equal pay for equal work and equal access to opportunity. We need an end to sexual harassment and assault everywhere.

We need to end income inequality and value each member of the community for the contribution they can make. The value of one’s opinions should not depend upon the amount they have in the bank. Everyone should be eligible to and encouraged to vote in fair elections. Election districts must be drawn to encourage competitive elections, not to favor incumbent politicians.

We need to expand protections for America’s natural wild areas and make them accessible for all to see and enjoy. Our National and State Parks are the envy of the world and need to be expanded.

We need a return to respectable diplomacy that respects other countries and their cultures and does not seek to impose American values by might.

2018 is the year we can restore the democracy to end the one party rule that favors the few over the many, but only if you vote. Those who stay home elect tyrants and dictators.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney who serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled.

Graham-Cassidy will Kill People

Trumpcare 3.0 will kill people

Single-payer deserves consideration

Just when you thought that the health insurance you could finally afford under the Affordable Care Act was finally safe, two heartless and downright cruel Senators bring up one last repeal and replace bill with the sole justification being, “that’s what we campaigned on.”

The latest edition of Trumpcare 3.0 is decidedly worse than any of its predecessors when measured by the damage done to the 25-35 million people stripped of health insurance, those stripped of basic healthcare all together and the families who will have to pick up the care costs for their young, disabled or elderly parents. All this on top of further restrictions on reproductive healthcare and reductions in other healthcare programs for women

The Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill is being ramrodded through the Senate by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who will stop at nothing to undo everything the Black former president put together. They need to get it done before the end of next week when the Senate rules revert back to a 60 “yes” vote requirement for any bill to pass.

Putting the bill together behind closed doors with no public, much less Democratic, input or review, it is being cast as a choice between states rights and the dreaded socialism of the government run single-payer Medicare for All healthcare system gaining increased public support daily. It is being rushed to a vote, before the Congressional Budget office can complete its review and provide the impartial numbers on the damage it will do and the costs involved. It is a true pig in a poke.

What we know is that Graham-Cassidy will roll back Medicaid expansion that gave 14 million Americans health insurance coverage for the first time. The rest of Medicaid, care for the elderly in nursing homes, the disabled, young people in poverty and others, will also be trimmed and converted into lump sum payments to the states with insignificant controls on how each spends the funds allotted creating 50 different healthcare systems for the sickest and most vulnerable. The savings will go to fund GOP tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporations who need them the least.

With insurers being allowed to charge sick people more, health insurance premiums for those still covered will skyrocket. With the elimination of required coverage for pre-existing conditions, the cost of insurance will quickly rise to levels that most Americans cannot afford. One analysis puts surcharges, in addition to the regular premiums, for opioid addicts and those with rheumatoid arthritis at $20,000, $50,000 more for those with serious heart conditions, and over $140,000 for those with metastatic cancer. Another puts a $4500 surcharge on asthmatics, $17,300 on pregnancy and a $72,000 bump on lung cancer.

The state block grants would punish the Democratic states that took Medicaid expansion dollars and reward the GOP states that did not. States receiving the grants will be allowed to apply for waivers from many of the Affordable Care Act requirements that the bill does not repeal directly. If you need a service not covered, you will have to pay for it. ACA premium subsidies will be phased out by 2020. The slow death of federal healthcare funding will continue to 2027 when all federal dollars for the nation’s health will cease.

The deadlines for figuring out your insurance for next year loom. Insurers must sign final contracts for 2018 by the end of next week. If ACA subsidies vanish next year, premiums will explode.  ACA enrollment starts November 1^st. The new bill will eliminate the requirement for everyone to have insurance or pay a penalty. With that gone, many believing themselves to be healthy might not buy insurance at all. That too will drive up premiums as insurers scramble to cover a larger pool of sick people with fewer premium dollars.

Even with the developmental secrecy, negative reaction to the latest

Trumpcare has been swift and severe. Governors from both parties have condemned the bill. The American Medical Association, AARP, the America Hospital Association, most of the major disability advocacy groups, and representatives from just about every significant healthcare organization have urged Congress to reject the bill. Health insurers oppose it too. All 50 of the state Medicare directors oppose it too.

The three holdout GOP Senators’ objections to Trumpcare 1.0 and 2.0 have not been addressed in the new legislation. Hopefully, they will continue to stand up for their constituents like all of the Democrats in the Senate who will vote “no.”

This bill must fail, paving the way for serious consideration of a universal single payer system similar to those used for decades by most of the countries on the rest of the planet. It is time to stop the madness spawned by hatred of all things Obama and for bi-partisan solutions for America’s health.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the disabled and the elderly.

Predatory Healthcare

Predatory Healthcare Pricing

“Because I Can”

Remember Martin Shkreli? He is the New York vulture capitalist who bought the drug company that makes EpiPens, inexpensive devices that can save your life if you get stung by a bee and go into anaphylactic shock. That would have been acceptable, except that Shkreli then jacked up the unit price five hundred plus percent, putting Epi-Pens out of reach of many who need them. His justification essentially was “I did it because I can.” He instantly became the poster child for all that is wrong with American healthcare.

If you think predatory healthcare pricing is limited to big cities in the East, let me introduce you to Ascension Senior Living, a Catholic healthcare system that provides long term care to the elderly, especially those with debilitating diseases like Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and other independence robbing cognitive maladies.

Those who have lost the freedom to come and go to the fog of brain disease or injury are often placed in long term care facilities called “assisted living” or “memory care” units when they can no longer safely be cared for in the community. Those confined to these facilities who have no money or limited incomes can receive government assistance, usually funded by Medicaid, to pay the cost of their care.

If your grandmother was able to amass some retirement savings before becoming afflicted with memory loss or the ability to make rational decisions and has to be placed in “assisted living,” there is no government assistance until her savings are depleted, so she pays the full cost of her care until her money is gone.

Most “assisted living” facilities accept both Medicaid funded and private pay residents. Both are supposed to receive the level of care appropriate to their individual needs without respect to who pays the bills. The rates charged to Medicaid funded residents are regulated by state and federal rules. The rates charged to those who pay their own way are not.

In my retirement, I work part-time providing guardianship services by court appointment for those suffering from diseases that impair their ability to make decisions on their own and need someone to make fundamental decisions to make sure they receive adequate care and treatment. Guardians can also be appointed to manage the financial assets for those in their charge. Guardians must follow an objective standard with respect to decisions made for their wards, both personal and financial, that requires them all to be made with the ward’s “best interest” as the foremost consideration.

In these dual roles as a guardian, I am responsible for an 80 plus year old person with dementia who has been placed at Alexian Village, an “assisted living” facility in Northern Milwaukee County, for several years. My ward’s condition is stable and no one anticipates that the level of care provided by Alexian Village staff will increase substantially in the near future. The level of care and the quality of life provided has been excellent. Because my ward has money saved, the rate charged by the facility for services provided was about $5,400 per month, which is average for similar facilities in the area.

Ascension Senior Living recently purchased Alexian Village. The new owners decided that they needed a greater profit margin from Alexian. In order to justify rate increases, they came up with an 11 page assessment questionnaire that purports to measure how much staff time a resident will need to receive the care they need. After “assessing” my ward, without my knowledge or consent, the new managers decided that my ward was on “Level Two” and would be required to pay an additional $1,200 per month.

The problem with this 20+% bump, $14,000 more per year, is that Alexian Village is not going to provide any additional services or staff time to my ward for these additional payments. After I complained about the arbitrary and unconscionable increase, the regional vice-president asked for a meeting where they announced they had recalculated the assessment and figured out my ward was really at “Level One,” lowering the additional payment for the same level of service to a mere $800 more per month or $9,600 more per year. The justification offered amounted to little more than a Shkreliesque, “Because we can.”

Ascension management knows they have a captive and vulnerable population. They know it would be terribly disruptive and damaging for those in their care to be uprooted from all they currently know and moved to a more reasonably priced facility. Ascension raised the unregulated rates for those who can pay just to turn a larger profit.

If you need to start looking for “assisted living” for an elderly parent or grandparent, consider anyplace else other than Alexian Village or any other facility connected to Ascension Senior Living. Their pricing philosophy is anything but Christian and they do not seem to care. Shkreli would be proud, but probably say they did not raise the rates enough.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled.

Save Social Security

Save Social Security

Social Security was created during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and rescued many elderly Americans from the despair of the Great Depression. When jobs,  savings accounts and those few pensions that existed in the 1930s were wiped out in that upheaval, many seniors sank into poverty and had no support systems to fall back on.

Social Security was designed so the miseries visited on the elderly of low and moderate means after the stock market crashed would never happen again. Payroll taxes on working people and their employers who contribute, in equal amounts, about 12% of an employee’s gross wages, fund the system. These payroll taxes are placed in a separate Social Security Trust Fund administered by the government to maximize the returns payable to people when they reached the age of retirement. This was done purposefully to keep politicians from raiding the Fund for general revenue needs in times when the fund carried a surplus. Even back in the 1930s, we knew there would be fluctuations in the numbers needing benefits and a need to keep the Trust Fund solvent.

Conservative republicans hate the Social Security system. It embodies all that deemed wrong with big government doing what private business could do better. Those on Wall Street cast a covetous eye on the large surpluses in the Trust Fund that they cannot manage or use for investments or rape for profit. They cast aspersions on such a social safety net, demanding that people take control over their own retirement savings and investments or suffer the consequences. They have forgotten the trials and tribulations families faced during the Great Depression when elderly parents starved and died for lack of money.

Over time, conservatives in Congress have whittled away at the Social Security System by raising the age at which a retiree could start collecting benefits, capping the amount of an employee’s wages subject to withholding, imposing means testing for some benefits, limiting disability and spousal benefits, capping cost of living increases by tying them to less than relevant consumer price indexes and others. The biggest betrayal came during the Bush years when Congress took huge sums out of the Trust Fund surpluses in order to pay for other government programs and wars.

The ultimate result set up the big lie that Social Security needs to be scrapped and replaced because the current system will not be able to meet the benefit demands that will arrive as the baby boomer generation hits retirement and current payroll tax revenues decline because there are fewer people working. That date is currently somewhere in the 2030 range and changes as does the economy.

Conservative republicans tell us that Social Security is not sustainable in its current form. They have made it that way. Their solution is, of course, to give the Trust Fund to Wall Street to manage and then pay seniors what might be left after the profiteers take their cut, assuming the managers investments make a decent return.

Political campaigns for Congress and the Presidency depend upon the votes from seniors. They vote in higher numbers than other age groups in the electorate. Candidate Trump and many members of Congress promised not to touch Social Security for those already retired or close to retirement, thinking that would be enough to secure senior support.

Democrats of the populist ilk recognized and campaigned on other positions. Raising or eliminating the cap on payroll taxable income is the easiest fix. It would pump enough money into the Trust Fund to make it solvent for decades. It is only fair that wealthy wage earners continue to pay into the system on wage incomes over $115,000 per year. Bolder folks also campaigned on cost of living increases being tied to price indices more aligned with those items seniors actually buy like food, housing and medications. They also championed increasing benefits to a more sustainable level than the average current $1,400 monthly stipend.

With the failure of the republican repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act effort, conservatives now turn to tax reform looking for more ways to cut taxes for the wealthy.

One of the current proposed  “reforms” is to completely eliminate Social Security payroll tax withholding. The short-term benefit will be to put that money back into employee paychecks and employer bank accounts. That is a very attractive incentive. Who would not want what amounts to a $3500 plus annual wage boost?  What they don’t tell you is that it will kill the Social Security revenue stream and bankrupt the system for sure and much sooner than currently predicted.

As you communicate with your member of Congress at one of his town halls, call or write to him, please let him know that further damage to Social Security is not acceptable and that the system needs to be fixed by repaying the money taken from the Trust Fund and raising the cap on payroll taxes subject to withholding to at least $500,000 per year. Your elderly relatives will appreciate it and so will you when you retire.