I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

You Better Run All Day And Run All Night

First up, you guessed it, a healthcare thing:

So, AHIP, the health insurance companies' professional organization, has come out swinging with a full page ad about "We ain't the bad guys. Don't look behind the curtain," stating:
"And the total cost of everything we do, including all overhead, marketing, and profits, amounts to four percent of our nation's health care spending. "

Okay, Health Care spending is 1/6th of the gross national product. That means their cut of everything in the country is 0.67% of the GNP. Since they average 16-17% of premiums as expenses (the overhead and marketing parts), and 10-15% profit (well, let's say 10%, to be nice about this), makes their profit only portion of the GNP about .25%. For one industry. I wonder what other industries' profits can be expressed as a quarter of a percent of GNP or larger?

Oh, and what Jim said. (About father-in-law, death, Glenn Beck, and healthcare - yeah, thinking of printing this and having my Mom read it over Easter, had the, "But Mom, you're on Medicare, it IS a government health care program," conversation already, which, she knows it, Mom ain't dumb, but I think her TV set had been tuned to too much Fox since she hasn't been out working).

Spent last night and today running around. I can't really talk about it much, and except for being with my wife, wasn't exactly much fun, but it certainly took up a bunch of time and money and put the miles on the car.

Last night I hit upon a Sr. Designer job at a local hospital. Really psyched about the opportunity. It had been posted on the hospital's own career sites (which the search engines don't pick up on). So I rewrote my top core competencies to show how I'm a fit for the position (highlighting my skills to match their requirements listed in the ad - that's a hit I got from the resume class - note, not lying, just emphasizing some skills over others). Only to see they've listed the position in the newspapers. Sigh. Now everybody is going to know about it. Hopefully, being in early will count for something.

Tomorrow, I should be around more, and more coherent. I need to finish up the "skills focus" resume (the one used for jobs outside of the design field - in this economy, a good job is a good job), get to a meeting for both learning some more of how my tax dollars can help me and maybe some heavy networking (one of the people has an "in" for volunteering at the hospital system the job above is for - or something like that). And get back to rewriting, critiquing, and editing. I owe people stuff and I need to get it out of my head so I can focus on the next batch.

So how do you miss Mondays?

2 comments:

Jim Wright said...

Good luck on the job!

Let me know if you need me to bend any elbows.

Steve Buchheit said...

Thanks, Jim. I'm still psyched as I haven't received the standard rejection letter (hey, it's a business that still sends rejection emails, go figure), like I did for other positions I've applied for them. Unfortunately I saw the job advertised on some open boards (typically their jobs are posted on their own website, which isn't indexed by the job search sites). So now there's going to be a whole boatload of applicants that might live closer (which kinda pisses me off that some jobs will make that choice for me, my normal commutes have all been about an hour long, but most people rate that as "way too far" - but that's up to me). Therefore there's going to be more elbows that need twisting (and more) to deplete the available job pool. I might need help with that.