Universal Health Care in the 14th Century

                  Reading Blossoms Into Gold, a history of the Croatians who emigrated to the Watsonville area 75 miles south of San Francisco, I came across the following: “The Republic (of Dubrovnik) showed its concern for the public good in a number of ways. From the earliest of times it provided free health care to all of its citizens — rich and poor alike.”

                  The book goes on to say that there was a salaried city doctor who was required to treat all who came to him without charge, and that this system of universal care was particularly important during the plague of the 14^th Century, which killed a third of the Republic’s inhabitants.

                  Of course it could probably be argued that given the state of medical knowledge in the 14^th Century (leeches, anyone?) the citizenry might have been better off without universal health care, but that’s a minor quibble. The key point is that more than seven centuries ago, it was regarded, at least in Dubrovnik, as a civil right. How strange that the idea has never gained such traction in America, and that we’re still fighting over it today.

Meanwhile, We Take You to Rwanda

                  This week the New York Times carried an online opinion piece http://nyti.ms/MVfgr7 by Tina Rosenberg about universal health care in Rwanda. It seems that once the country stabilized after the genocide of 1994, that was one of the first orders of business for the new regime.

Rwanda has now established a system of near-universal care that is widely used and has done wonders for its people. It is paid for by a modest tax on the population, and when the government determined, a few years ago, that even the modest tax was too much for many citizens, it raised the health money by quadrupling taxes on higher earners. Apparently the country has no equivalent of Fox News to raise the alarm of class warfare.

                  Citizens are required to make a co-payment of about 33 cents in American money when they go in for treatment. In a country where the average annual income is about $550, that’s about the equivalent of a $40 co-pay for an average American family. As the Republicans would say, it gives people some skin in the game and discourages frivolous use of health services.

It’s Hard to Argue With Results

                  Even with the co-pay, use of health care services is up dramatically in Rwanda, and so are the health benefits. Seventy percent of births now occur at a health care facility, which has dramatically cut the mortality rate for both infants and mothers. In just the past decade the average life expectancy in the country has increased by 10 years, from 48 to 58.

                  It works. But then we’ve known that all along from the examples of England, Germany, Sweden, France, Canada, Japan  — in fact, just about the entire industrialized world except for the United States. In America, health care is the best in the world for those who have good insurance; in the countries cited, it’s a hair less good, but still very good, for everybody. That’s why the United States ranks lower than many other advanced nations in overall health outcomes.

                  To be sure, advances in medical technology are putting a strain on health budgets, and the issue must be addressed. But unless we get four consecutive Republican presidents, hospitals aren’t going to be able to throw patients out if they can’t pay, and as long as everyone has to be treated, the first step toward fiscal sanity is ensuring that everyone is covered. They knew that in Dubrovnik 700 years ago; why are we so slow to get it?

The History Behind a Mystery

            In 1994, having wanted to try it for the past 20 years or so, I decided to write a mystery novel. Little did I know that it would take nearly 20 more years to be published.

The germ of an idea had come to me on a fishing trip a few years earlier, when I’d had an unsettling experience with some gun-toting campers in an isolated meadow in California’s High Sierra As often happens in creative matters, other elements were added over time. I can’t even say at this point when and where the idea of a challenged will came into the story. On the other hand, the inclusion of a citizens militia and rabid radio talk-show host were added in the early 1990s, when such things were much in the news.

A first draft of The McHenry Inheritance was written in spurts over a period of five months, from late July to Christmas Eve. My public relations consulting business was taking off then. Sometimes the book had to be put aside for a couple of weeks while I focused exclusively on my clients’ work, and sometimes I pushed forward feverishly on the manuscript between assignments, or during lulls.

The McHenry Inheritance, Cover by Deborah Karas

 After doing a rewrite, I began hawking the book in the spring of 1995. I first approached an agent I had spoken to about a business book a couple of years earlier; he said he didn’t do fiction but gave me a referral to an agent who did. She sat on it for a couple of months without responding, something I came to learn is fairly typical in the business.

            When she finally passed on the book, I began sending queries to other agents I came across in a directory. Late in 1995 or early in 1996, I got a nibble. An agent in New York asked to see the manuscript, read it, said she liked it (and that she was surprised by the ending), but she wanted me to do a rewrite.

            At that point I was embarking on one of the most ambitious consulting jobs I’ve ever done, and the rewrite had to be put on hold for about nine months. I finally got to it, and felt, when done, that her suggestions had made the book considerably better. Back to her it went, and after a reasonable time she sent a polite rejection. She still liked it, she said, but she didn’t love it and didn’t feel that at this point she could represent a book she didn’t love.

            She encouraged me to try other agents and wished me well. I was optimistic. Her initial response convinced me I hadn’t produced a complete pig’s breakfast, and I was sure someone else would represent the book and get it published. Five years and more than a hundred agents later, there was nothing to show for my efforts but a drawer full of form rejections and some business deductions for postage.

            So I put the book aside and worked on other things, but I never stopped believing in it. Every time I upgraded my computer, I converted the text of the book to the new version of Word, just in case. And now, just in case has happened; Amazon has made it possible for The McHenry Inheritance to be published.

            In re-editing the book for publication, I saw once again its strengths and flaws, but on the whole felt pretty good about it. It will never be required reading in an English class, but if it helps someone get through a rainy Sunday or a flight to Chicago more pleasantly, that will be satisfaction enough for me. In a couple of weeks it will be in the hands of the readers.

           

           

Lessons From the Original Consultant

                  Between 1957 and 1963, in the heyday of television Westerns, there was a half-hour show called Have Gun — Will Travel, which aired on CBS Saturday nights at 9:30, just before Gunsmoke. Because there was no school the next day, I got to stay up late enough to watch it. I only got to stay up late enough for Gunsmoke if my parents were out for the night and my grandmother was in charge.

                  My grandmother was a big fan of Have Gun — Will Travel. The star was Richard Boone, who may be remembered by (slightly) younger readers for a later TV series, Hec Ramsey, and who also graduated from the same high school as I — Hoover High in Glendale, California. Boone wore a mustache in the show, unusual for the hairless fifties, and my grandmother used to call him (I spell this phonetically) SOO-see-kum-ee, which, roughly translated from the Russian, means “one with whiskers.”

                  Boone played a hired gunslinger named Paladin, who lived in a posh hotel in San Francisco. His calling card featured a picture of a chess knight, with the legend, “Have Gun Will Travel. Wire Paladin, San Francisco.” When I first saw the show at the age of seven, I thought Wire was Paladin’s first name.

                  Most episodes began in a similar way. Paladin would be in his best evening attire, standing by a roulette wheel or walking down an elegant staircase at his hotel, usually with a drop-dead-gorgeous woman at his side. (She was probably a high-priced working girl, but I didn’t figure that out until I was ten.) Hey Boy, the hotel’s Chinese bellhop (this was before the civil rights movement gained traction) would come running up to him, shouting, “Mr. Paladin, Mr. Paladin. Telegram!”

                  He would look at the telegram, politely excuse himself from the lady at his side, and in the next shot, he would be riding across the desert in his all-black work outfit, a six-shooter at his side and a derringer in his boot. He charged a thousand dollars an assignment, which was probably three to four times the annual income of an average American back then. He tried to solve problems with reason and ingenuity, but when that failed (as the plot generally required it to), he plugged and planted the bad guys, collected his fee, and headed back to San Francisco until the next episode.

                  Have Gun — Will Travel was above the average in the quality of its acting, writing and direction, and was highly rated for most of its six seasons. It’s one of the handful of favorite shows of my childhood, and I never really forgot about it but for years it was largely out of mind until I went into business as a consultant.

                  At some point in the first couple of years of my consulting business, I came across a rerun of Have Gun — Will Travel while channel surfing one night. It held up pretty well, but what really struck me at the time was that Paladin was the original consultant: The man of many skills who could get the tough job done, and who was often biding his time until the next call came.

                  From Paladin, I learned three important lessons about being a consultant. 1) Believe in yourself; if you’re good, the word will get out. 2) Enjoy the down time when you have it; you could be riding across the desert, guns at the ready, tomorrow. 3) Most importantly, charge what you’re worth; the client wouldn’t be calling you if he could do the job himself.

           

Calling in Sick

            My cousin Bill once said that his ambition in life was to spend more time retired than he spent working, and he apparently succeeded. He was an officer for the Orange County sheriff’s department and never called in sick a day in his life. When he retired, he was able to collect a quarter-century’s unused sick leave as a lump sum.

            In Republican campaign commentary today, this is known as “boat money.” Meaning that when public employees retire, they take their unused sick leave and use it to buy a boat to go fishing in the Golden Years. It’s cited as an example of overly generous public-employee benefits, and in this one instance it pains me to say I think the Republicans are right. Sick leave shouldn’t be a retirement piggy bank.

            When I worked at the newspaper, vacation and sick leave were to some degree determined by union contracts, which trickled down even to those of us not covered by them. Vacation benefits were fairly liberal, but the sick leave was pretty Spartan. You got five days a year, and couldn’t accumulate more than ten days no mater how healthy you were.

            In a newsroom full of healthy kids embarking on their careers, that wasn’t a problem. Nor was it for longer-term employees. In 19 years at that office, there was one year — when I was sidelined a week after a hernia surgery and had two serious bouts with the flu — that used up my accumulated ten days. In other years, I typically used two or three days, and some years none at all.

            That tight leash on sick time taught you not to abuse it, and it was reinforced by some unwritten interpretation of the rules. In the newsroom, we spent the first five hours of the day putting out the paper. If someone came in with a bad cold and worked through the morning, he or she would be excused for the afternoon with no loss of pay. At a small-town paper, where one reporter out sick cut the news gathering staff by 15 to 20 percent, you didn’t want to let people down by not showing up. There were several days when I could legitimately have called in sick but put in the morning anyway, because I knew we were short-staffed and my absence would put a strain on everyone else.

            To be sure, we had a few employees over the years who were particularly susceptible to Monday Morning Disease, also known as the wicked hangover. But that problem was infrequent enough that we could live with it. Bottom line: sick leave was used sparingly and not seen as a goody benefit.

            There was a human relations consultant who worked with us in the 1980s. He suggested an interesting idea on employee time off that was never approved, but that I still think, years later, has a lot of merit.

            His proposal was that there should be no distinction at all between vacation and sick time. Instead of getting two weeks’ paid vacation and a week of sick leave, an employee would get 15 days a year off with pay. How the employee used it was the employee’s business. No more than five days could be carried over to the next year, and if an employee had worked full-time the first ten months of the year, he or she could borrow against next year’s earned time off in the last two months of the year, to cover an unexpected illness. It was a good idea, but problematic in today’s private-sector environment, where too many employees get no vacation or sick leave at all.

           

Dad and the Plastic Champagne Cork

            In the 1967 movie The Graduate, young Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is cornered at a party by one of his father’s contemporaries who conspiratorially offers him a one-word piece of business advice: Plastics. For most people who saw the movie then, it was a great gag line. For me, it was personal.

            My father was one of the people who got into plastics in the early 1950s, and he did pretty well at it. He had a little shop in Pasadena where he made a lot of precision parts used at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other high-tech places. He and the people he worked with could put together a mold to make almost anything, and he was always willing to talk with someone who had an idea.

            That, I assume, is how he met the guy with the idea for a plastic champagne cork. It was the early 1960s, when I was ten or eleven. An internet search turned up a patent for a synthetic cork granted to Julius Fessler on March 8, 1960, which would fit. Fessler lived in California, so I’m guessing it was he who somehow found my father. Drawings from the Fessler patent certainly look very much like my recollection of the prototype cork my father made.

            What I also remember was that Dad was on fire about the plastic cork. It would be cheaper than real cork, seal more precisely, and wouldn’t rot in the bottle. Better in every way. How could it lose?

            One of the things you need to know about my father at this point is that he was a great salesman. Shortly after World War II he got hired at a Chevrolet dealership in Los Angeles and sold more cars than anyone else every year he was there. Many times I’ve wished I inherited that sales gene, but it seems to have skipped a generation.

            So Dad set out to make the plastic cork the coin of the realm in the champagne industry. I have a vivid recollection of a family vacation where we went to the mountains (Sequoia National Park, I believe) for some R&R, then descended into California’s Central Valley for a week and stopped at just about every winery in California. Or so it seemed.

            It was the middle of the summer and perishing hot. Dad would go in to make the sales call while my mother, sister and I waited outside in the station wagon, which quickly became unbearable. There was usually a shade tree nearby, but it was over 100 even in the shade.  After the first few stops, my sister and I were bored out of our minds, and my mother had to increase the soft-drink ration in order to avoid a rebellion.

            And it was all for nothing. My father, great salesman that he was, got laughed out of most of the wineries and never made a sale. They said the public would never go for a plastic cork, and that it was simply out of the question. He kept after it another year or so but never made a dime from it.

            In the 1970s, I remember bringing home a bottle of champagne to have with my girlfriend (now my wife) and being stunned, when I took the foil off, to see a plastic cork. More than a decade after my father had gotten nowhere with it, the idea finally caught on. It taught me a valuable lesson. You can have a great product and a great salesman but still fail. Luck and timing matter.

Watergate and My Life

            Forty years ago this past Sunday, a momentous historical event occurred. I graduated from college. If memory serves, there was also some sort of third-rate burglary in Washington, D.C. that morning.

            News of the burglary was on the radio when we woke up that day but at the time no one thought much of it. Even the Nixon haters didn’t think he’d do something that criminal or that stupid. It was probably the only time they underestimated their man.

            It’s not uncommon for people to feel their lives are inextricably connected to some historical event. For my parents’ generation it was likely to be the Great Depression or World War II. In my generation it was likely to be the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, or, as in my case, Watergate.

            One of the things I was in a position to see first-hand was the impact Watergate had on the business of journalism. After graduating from college, I began applying for newspaper and radio reporting jobs with a resume that consisted of a bachelor’s degree in English and a few clips from my college newspaper. In six weeks I got several offers and ended up at a highly regarded daily newspaper in coastal California.

            A decade later, after All the President’s Men had been a bestselling book and top-grossing movie, a lot of smart kids wanted to be newspaper reporters. By then I was doing the hiring, and many of the resumes I was looking at featured a lot of master’s degrees in journalism from some of the best journalism schools in the country. Anyone trying to get into the business with a background like mine would likely have been job-hunting for months before landing at a weekly paper in rural Nebraska.

            In the first couple of years at the newspaper, I absorbed the business at several levels. Being new, everything I covered — even a routine water board meeting — was exciting. There were a lot of non-routine stories locally, as well, including several horrifying mass-murder cases that are remembered to this day. And in the background, Watergate was moving toward its conclusion.

            We were an afternoon paper then, with a news deadline of noon Pacific Time, or 3 p.m. Eastern. Much of the news coming out of Washington was fresh when we published it, and we had it to our readers an hour or more before the evening news came on TV. We in the newsroom were the first in town to know the latest developments in Watergate.

            Because the story completed itself so completely with President Nixon’s resignation, many people who lived through it now think of it as a whole. I don’t. What I remember about Watergate was how it came out one piece at a time — a steady drip, drip, drip of shocking revelations. Just when you thought you’d heard the worst, something else came along to top it.

            The news came over the wire from United Press International (now gone), and whenever there was a big story, the wire machine bell would ring several times. Most of us would drop what we were doing to run over to the machine and read the first couple of paragraphs of the story.

            Watergate solidified my commitment to the news business as it poisoned the politics of the country. It’s unlikely that there will be any major new revelations after all this time, and kids today hardly know the tale at all. But whenever I hear the word Watergate, I think of bells ringing in the newsroom, and for a few seconds, my blood runs a bit more quickly.

           

           

           

           

Unfit to Be a Landlord

            In 1962 my father sold his business and decided he needed to invest some of the money. So he bought a 1920s-vintage stucco house a mile and a half from ours, figuring he’d rent it out for a steady stream of income. That wasn’t how it worked out.

            The place needed some work before it could be put on the rental market. Some of it — plumbing and wiring — had to be contracted out, and some of it we did ourselves. I have a vivid memory of going to that house with my mother and spending the better part of a few very hot summer days painting the interior.

            For some reason I can’t remember the name of the first tenant. It was a family, and the man was in his late thirties or early forties with curly brown hair slicked down, as was the standard at the time. He used to drive over to our house on payday and settle in cash.

            After a few months the paydays seemed to become less frequent, but when he had a good day at the track he’d come by and pay the rent — or part of it, anyway. For a couple of years he was chronically behind, but always managed to pay just enough to keep my kind-hearted father going.

            Then one day the tenants up and left without any notice, leaving the place in need of repairs and my parents in the hole for a couple of months’ rent. There was another tenant after that, I recall, and the story was similar in its general outlines. My father decided he wasn’t cut out for the landlord business and sold the house. I had overheard enough snatches of conversations between mom and dad to conclude from the experience that I, too, would never be a landlord.

            Stuff happens, though. Linda’s mother died recently after a long and full life, and we inherited her house. It’s a nice little place, but it’s in a location awash with foreclosures, which are depressing the market. Selling it now would be a bad move, so we have become what I swore I would never be. We are now landlords.

            Even with a professional property manager, the landlord situation is putting a lot of stress in our lives. The ubiquity of foreclosures referred to earlier means that many of the prospective tenants out there have gone through foreclosure, bankruptcy or both. Even with decent jobs, they are just one income shock away from falling behind on the rent. If one of the kids needs an unplanned doctor’s visit, or one of the parents gets ill and loses a couple of weeks of work — well, their problem becomes our problem in a hurry. It’s as if the ghost of my father’s tenant has come back to haunt us.

            At times like that, I try to maintain my serenity and gratitude. Our problems are not as serious as the tenants’ and at the end of the day we are fortunate enough to own that house. Eventually we will sell the place and put the problems behind us. Still, there are enough mornings where, at 2 a.m., it’s hard to focus on the big picture.

            I was right as a kid when I decided I didn’t want to be a landlord. If you’re considering it, I would strongly suggest that you not go into the business unless you have a certain minimum number of units, say 12 to 15. The tenants who are paying at any given time will generate enough cash flow to allow you to sleep like a baby. Perhaps that sounds like Mitt Romney advice, but then that’s my point.