They're Covered!

The question always seems to boil down to entitlement - who deserves what. The interesting conundrum when entitlement is reviewed in relation to elected officials is the disparity between what they think they deserve and what they think the rest of us deserve.

Take national health care reform, for instance. It's a huge issue; everyone's talking about it. We wonder what the proposed changes will do for (or to) us - the average taxpayer. Our legislators don't have to wonder what it will do for (or to) them; they have a very nice benefits package that includes very good health coverage.

How can our elected representatives decide what's best for whom when the decision won't affect them because they already have the best and believe they deserve it?

And how about those NM public employees' pension plans? How can our state legislature vote to require public employees to contribute a higher annual amount to their pension plans and not include themselves? Aren't they public employees? (Yes, they are.) Granted, the additional amount collected would be minimal if our legislators had included themselves in the legislation, but that isn't the issue and they should have known that.

This is a lost opportunity, where a little integrity could have made up for lost ground; our legislators not only missed the mark but they added another layer of mistrust to the already multilayered film that shrouds New Mexico's state leadership.

Who deserves what? A very good question and one we should be answering, not them.

Unique Symptoms

There is a debate going on nationwide about health care options for Americans. There is a four day online debate going on even closer to home at ABQ CitySeeker . This debate is between five Albuquerqueans with widely differing opinions on how to best reform America's health care system.

With the goal of finding a solution that will guarantee health care to every American, each with their own unique set of circumstances, I was compelled to comment on the debate and in my not-a-policy-analyst remarks I included the following:

"I am unique, but in that uniqueness I am just like every other American. None of us fit the "one size fits all" models being considered."