Tag: Utah

Categories
politics State

One Party State

Most people are probably not yet aware that the state legislature is in session yet and already our unbalanced government is drawing flack from both sides of the political spectrum. From the left we get complaints about a task force to study merit pay for teachers. I like the idea of merit pay, but the task force being proposed is highly questionable as it is overwhelmingly composed of legislators rather than educators and citizens. It goes so far as to pay the legislators on the task force, but not the other members of the task force. It is so loaded with legislators that if they were to split the legislators proportional to the makeup of the legislature they would have 9 Republican legislators and one (likely Republican) governor’s designee who can simply dictate the outcome of the study against the other 3 Democratic legislators and 6 professional educators – this assumes that they put 3 Democrats on the task force – which is not guaranteed.

From the right we have complaints that our state laws governing the use of campaign funds are too lax. It seems like the simplest of common sense that campaign donations should not be used on other campaigns or for personal use unrelated to active campaigning. It’s nice that we have laws to require full disclosure of any gift over $50, but that’s no excuse to allow campaigning to be used as a source of personal income.

You really should visit the original articles to get the full extent of both issues. Nice start to the political year.

Categories
politics State

Health Care Assistance

When I wrote about declining enrollment for CHIP in Utah I did some research on the requirements for CHIP. I learned that even though I am fully employed – meaning I make a comfortable living – my kids would be eligible for CHIP if I did not have the option of insurance through my job. More interestingly I learned that there is another program, Utah’s Premium Partnership for Health Insurance (UPP), which my family would qualify for if I chose a traditional insurance plan. (Actually, my company just switched insurance and I could have enrolled in a traditional plan that would have allowed me to have my full premiums paid – partially by my company and the remainder by the state.) This program helps pay the costs of health insurance premiums for working families.

As I looked at the requirements for UPP it shows some interesting biases that are not good for our health care system. The one that makes the least sense is that they explicitly will not cover High Deductible (HD) plans that qualify for Health Savings Accounts. This essentially discourages people from using the best vehicle we currently have for becoming cost conscious and driving down the real costs of health care. If they wanted to encourage people to get the kind of insurance that is better for the whole system they would give the same amount of money – deposited directly into an HSA – for those who have an HD insurance plan as they give for comparable coverage under a traditional insurance policy. Of course the rules would be the same for qualifying plans whether they were HD or traditional.

Categories
culture

Utah Society

I was amazed after my recent move to Missouri at how different things were out here. Inside the church people have a much more friendly and functional attitude and outside the church people have a much more friendly and inclusive attitude. Laura asked why it is that Mormons – who ought to be the friendliest and most helpful people should be so closed in an area where they are so dominant (Utah). I think I have finally figured out what is going on – in Utah and in Missouri.

In Missouri, within the church, it is necessary to be accepting of people who do not share all of our values and beliefs because most of the people around us don’t. In Utah, within the church, it is easy to not associate with people who do not share our values because they are in the minority.

In Missouri (and I hear that most of the Midwest is like this) people are open and friendly and non-judgmental. That stands in stark contrast to the way things are in Utah. Society is very closed. It divides all to sharply along ward and stake boundaries and there is little association with anyone outside you religious circle – especially, but not exclusively, with anyone who is not a member of the church. There is some exception to that as people intermingle with others outside their wards and stakes at school and work, but that mixing occurs in very small doses when compared with the frequency of association within ward groups.

Some people might think that this is all a bitter exaggeration, and it may turn out that my memory of society is not entirely accurate, but even if my memory is imperfect there is another, more sinister, indicator of the cliquishness of the society in Utah. We are often taught that Mormons are persecuted throughout the world. That teaching is technically accurate, but it has the undesirable effect of making people paranoid and closed to outsiders unless it is tempered with the accompanying fact that 99% of that persecution comes from a group of people that is no larger than the membership of the church (which is less than 2% of the population of the United States and less than .2% of the population of the world.

Telling stories of persecution is supposed to make us resolve ourselves to stand firm when things get tough, but maybe we need to spend more time talking about standing firm and less time saying “poor picked-on us.” It seems that we are prone to forget that others are also picked on and it also seems to promote our inadvertently picking on others. The result in Utah, where Mormons are in the majority, is that Mormons tend to be closed to non-Mormons and non-Mormons are not inclined to become more trusting of Mormons than they were before.