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Local politics State

Strengthening Our Caucus System

Caucus meeting
Image by Cherie Priest

I really appreciated Paul Mero’s take on efforts to change our caucus and convention system. Unlike Mr. Mero, I’m not well enough connected to be invited to take part in private meetings regarding how to change Utah’s caucus and convention system. On that particular issue that is the largest of our differences.

Like Mr. Mero I have been annoyed at the misinformation that I have seen spread by and among delegates with extreme positions on a number of issues – HB 166 among them. Like Mr. Mero, I have tried to pay attention to the efforts to change the caucus/convention system but I have not found those proposed changes to warrant any particular support from me. The core of where my views align with those expressed by Mr. Mero are summed up in the following quote:

Yes, I’m sure some delegates have stated that they don’t want increased participation in the political process. But, to be fair, most of those voices are more concerned about how blissfully ignorant most Utahns are about the world around them than those voices are about consuming political power. So, yes, these delegates do believe they are better informed and for good reason – most of them are! Not all of them have the right answers, for sure. But it’s a bit disingenuous of my friend to chastise any serious citizen for wanting her candidate to be elected or her policy to become law – for heaven’s sake, that’s exactly what everyone wants!…

If reformers want their candidates elected to office, they should make a case that appeals to the most responsible citizens who take time to engage in a democratic process that has served this state since its founding.

Categories
culture politics

Causes and Symptoms


Photo by Center for American Progress

In the practice of medicine we have come a long way from the days when doctors could do little more than treat the symptoms their patients were experiencing and hope that they were physically strong enough to recover from the underlying condition that was producing the symptoms. There are still times when doctors are limited to treating symptoms – such as when a condition has not been diagnosed yet or when it is so far advanced that it is beyond the reach of our available medical care – but generally in modern times our doctors seek to treat the underlying cause of a problem rather than the symptoms. We need to do more of that in the healthcare industry – especially as it relates to our most pressing chronic condition in the industry: uncontrolled costs.

The first step in treating an underlying problem is to correctly identify it. As is often the case with health problems, our healthcare industry is suffering from multiple underlying problems which interact with each other in ways that magnify their combined effects and often make an accurate diagnosis difficult to make. Thankfully we have had people interested enough in this issue for long enough to have made some headway in identifying at least some of the more pronounced underlying problems. These include the cost of new medicines and health care technologies, weakening of market influences in our health care decisions, misaligned incentives in the system, and inefficiencies in the practice of medicine (like misdiagnoses, inaccurate record keeping, reliance on emergency care by some patients, and problematic record sharing between parties).

I can’t claim to have solutions to all of these underlying problems, nor can I be sure that these represent a complete set of the real problems driving our symptom of skyrocketing costs. On the other hand, I am confident that the way we will solve the problems in our healthcare industry will follow the same pattern that people used to solve the problems that the practice of healthcare has become so adept at addressing. It will require many individuals and groups tackling the problems from a variaty of perspectives and experiementing with a variety of solutions. It won’t be done simply by turning the problem over to government and expecting them to insist on providers not charging outrageous amounts for the care we wish to receive (which is essaentially the premise behind the Affordable Care Act).

While I am anything but optomistic about the eventual benefits of the Affordable Care Act, I am encouraged at many other examples of private organizations taking steps to identify and address various of the systemic problems that afflict our health care system. Some of the initiatives I know of which give me hope is the innovative ways that some companies try to reduce health care costs without reducing employee benefits (Walmart, for example), the growing prevalence of individuals having high deductible insurance plans coupled with health savings accounts (which helps to introduce stronger market forces and healthier incentives into the health care system), efforts to bring more transparency to health care from groups like Pricing Healthcare, experiments in combining data-mining with hands-on care to reduce the costs associated with statistical outliers, and the rise of Direct Primary Care Practices and retail clinics.

We are nowhere near solving this problem and we need much more in the way of innovation and fresh perspectives but we have reason to hope that this problem will be cured in time.

Categories
politics State

Why John Swallow Should Resign Even If He Did Nothing Illegal

If a call for for Attorney General John Swallow to resign is based on a presumption of his guilt then Mr. Swallow is right that that we should wait until the investigations into the various allegations against him are completed. I think it is time to make the argument for why he should resign despite the assumption that he is innocent. By choosing not to resign the Attorney General is proving beyond any doubt that he is less interested in what’s good for the people of Utah than he is in his own benefit. If felt it was time to make this argument publicly after hearing Mr. Swallow on the radio talking about how he and the others in the Attorney General’s office are getting up and going to work every day despite all the allegations against him. I absolutely believe that to be true but it illustrates why John Swallow has no business in public office – he is clearly not interested in what is best for the people he is supposed to be serving.

John Swallow essentially admits this in this article from the Deseret News.

“I’m a little handicapped right now because of the situation I’m in. I get that. People say, ‘That’s not fair. You ought to leave.’ I can’t control the situation I’m in, and if I felt I did something that wrong, I would leave,” Swallow said. “But I’m not about to walk out of this office because people make allegations that aren’t true.”

As evidenced in that statement, Mr. Swallow is making his decisions based on his personal interests. The only reason that he would resign is if he were convicted of illegal activity. Mr. Swallow contends that he has done nothing illegal and I make no pretense that I know otherwise. The way I see it there are two reasons for him to step down even if he is innocent. Either of them should be sufficient cause for a true statesman to step down from office – at least temporarily.

  1. There are a number of statements that Mr. Swallow is known to have made – such as in his now infamous campaign telephone call – that he defends as being legal and yet clearly display judgement not worthy of a good public servant. Having shown such blatant poor judgement, a statesman would step aside and take the time to reestablish the credibility of his judgement before trying to take on a high-profile public office.
  2. No matter how hard he and his deputies work, the sheer volume of complaints against Mr. Swallow – and especially the fact that those complaints have resulting in multiple ongoing investigations by various official organizations – siphons off much of the time, energy, and efficacy of his office such that the people of Utah are not getting the kind of representation they deserve out of the Attorney General’s office. Again, a statesman would step aside – regardless of whether he did anything wrong – when the allegations against him were distracting and diluting his ability to serve effectively.

If Mr. Swallow were making his decisions based on the interests of the people of Utah his statement would have looked a lot more like this:

“I’m a little handicapped right now because of the situation I’m in. I get that. I and my deputies get up every day and work hard for the people of Utah but I recognize that the allegations made against me limit the effectiveness of all our work. The people of Utah and those working in the Attorney General’s office deserve an unencumbered chief legal officer therefore I have decided to step down as Attorney General.

“I sincerely hope that after the investigations are complete and my innocence has been established I will have another opportunity to serve the people of this great state.”

The real reason why he is not resigning is that whether he is innocent or guilty John Swallow will not materially benefit from resigning. If he were interested in the good of the people he was elected to serve he would resign because it is abundantly clear that regardless of his innocence or guilt the people of Utah would be better off with a new Attorney General.