Month: August 2006

After my article Sunday in the WDL on Parkland and the county’s indigent health care I’ve been doing some more research today.
I’ve found out some interesting things and I’m waiting for some more specifics and details.
When it comes to indigent health care, the county is required to put 8 percent of the county’s tax revenue levy aside for indigent health care.
That 8 percent is broken up with 4 percent going to hospital care, 2 percent to medical care and 2 percent to prescription.
According to the state, the county is only required to reimburse indigent health care for people at or below 21 percent of the federal poverty level, but the county may choose to qualify people for assistance up to 50 percent of the federal poverty level.
Here’s a breakdown of monthly income standards at 21 percent of the FPG.
Family of 1 – $172
Family of 2 – $231
Family of 3 – $291
Family of 4 – $350
If you’re making more than that a month, you wont qualify for assistance.
According to county sources, the county has not reached the budgeted amount for indigent health care in any recent years. If it were to reach or pass the budgeted amount, the state will reimburse up to 90 percent of the health care costs over budget.
Otherwise, any budgeted money that does not get spent, rolls over into the general fund to fix your roads and bridges or other misc. county projects.
So what does this mean?
I tried to explain it to a friend this way (as I understand it – granted I may be overlooking something at this point or over simplifying it):

Lets say 8 percent of the tax revenue is $200,000 (these are totally hypothetical dollar amounts)
The county gives some money to Hope clinic, lets say $25,000.
Parkland or other hospitals bill the county for the three indigent health care patients they had in FY 2005 at nearly $100,000.
At the end of the year the county has $75,000 left over (not including medicine or other medical costs).
Whatever is not spent, that money goes into the general fund and gets divided up into the different precints for their road and bridge construction money.
In the meantime, someone making $5,000 a year with four members in the family is stuck having to pay huge medical bills because the county has such a low qualification amount.
The county will only pay for people at 21% or below the federal poverty level.
The state says you can change that to 50 percent and they’ll reimburse 90 percent of it.
So if the county budgeted $200,000 and ended up having to spend $300,000 in a year the state would give the county $90,000.
It would only cost the county $10,000 to provide $100,000 of service.

I hope its not as “simple” as that. I hope there’s some other situations I’m overlooking at this point as to why we’re not helping more people in need.

Just found this quote on a series the BBC is/has doing called The Gospel According To…
After turning down £12.5 million to allow an advertising company to use their song, Where the Streets Have No Name, Bono said, “That’s the one song we can guarantee God will walk through the room as soon as we play it”.
It sounds like U2 did not want to risk God’s arrival at a gig being confused with a product which the song might have been used to advertise.
It’s an interesting series. Check it out.

I met with several guys from my Lighthouse 21 days. Oh it was great. I really miss those guys. I don’t think we’ve seen each other since Louie’s funeral last March.
But the idea came up of “getting the band back together.” And I can’t tell you how excited I was about that idea.
We talked about it last night — and we didn’t realize it at the time — but we were really on the cutting edge of media and ministry when we were going strong.
From our knowledge, we were the first and only ministry or organization of any type to use Internet chat, audio streaming, Television, radio and video streaming for our program/ministry.
Crazy how when you’re in the midst of it all you don’t realize what you’re really doing.
I think we just said, “this is cool. How can we utilize it?”
Anyways, “God put a smile upon my face” last night thinking about it all.

People aren’t too happy about today’s cover of Quick. The Belo/Dallas Morning News product features the kiss between Britney Spears and Madonna on the MTV Video Music Awards a few years back as the cover picture for an article on MTV’s 25 year anniversary(granted the actual cover wasn’t censored).
I’m normally a proponent of free speech, mainly because I don’t want my rights trampled on. But considering this paper is distributed freely across the Dallas area I question the editor’s choice of pictures.
It is a shock photo and grabs your attention. I imagine it will help improve rack sells today, but is it worth it?
From email:

Let the Dallas Morning News know what you think here.
There are ways to address declining newspaper subscriptions, but here’s a sure way to make things worse.
The cover features the infamous kiss between Madonna and Brtianny spears that was brought to us on Viacom’s MTV. It’s no wonder Viacom is renaming their outdoor advertising business with the CBS brand.
In the minds of many, the Viacom brand has become a symbol of moral decay — a symbol of selling out people for the love of money. Many people overseas hate America because of the moral influence of our media — and this is an excellent illustration of the problem.
Quick is the daily free distribution paper of the Dallas Morning News. You can let them know what you think here.

KERA has posted a story on last nights immigration sub hearing in Plano.
An immigration in Plano seems somewhat out of place, but I guess it works for a state with the largest border with Mexico.
According to several bloggers, “Sam Johnson, R-Plano, made himself the star of the show, pointing out how more moderate proposals to deal with illegal immigration are unacceptable to him and others on the far-right.”

Democratic State Representative Roberto Alonzo, who observed the hearing, called it a sham, saying House and Senate members have already debated the issues.
State Representative Roberto Alonzo: The only reason they’re doing the hearings is to create anti immigrant sentiment right before the elections.

At one point the crowd was a bit unruly and Johnson said he wouldn’t allow it.

That prompted Mr. Johnson – who is up for re-election and whose Democratic opponent, Dan Dodd, was in the audience – to tell the gathering: “Any emotion such as clapping is not allowed in the House. I am going to allow it here.”

Listen to the KERA story here.