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January 17, 2006

Sliced Bread Finalists: Vote

The SEIU's  Since Sliced Bread competition is in the final round of voting. Contestents submitted their "common sense ideas" for improving the country and the economy. Now, readers are voting to select the most popular idea. The winner gets a $100,000 grand prize.

Out of the 7 finalist ideas, my favorite is Martin Johnson's "3 Steps to Universal Health Care":

"3 Steps to Universal Health Care" -- This is Martin’s idea about how to create a universal health care system that has a chance to pass in Congress. It focuses on digital records first, which will save lives and reduce system costs in the long term. It then creates a single-payer system for people under 35, which will be less expensive than other proposed systems and give the current system time to adjust. Then, as people get older they will stay in the system, so we will have universal coverage in thirty years.

Click here to vote for your 3 favorite user-submitted ideas for improving the country and the exconomy.

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A nice, innovative idea, although we would need to think through the effects of this idea on older workers, already discriminated against. I would propose that there be some kind of phase in so that older workers (over 35) could buy into the system.

Because young adults are less likely to be ill they end up paying more into the system than they take out. This is not really unfair: I spent more than twenty years as an adult paying in to the system with nothing more than minor colds before I suffered serious illness and needed medical insurance in my forties.

There are potential problems with taking young adults out of the current system:

1. The price of health insurance for older working adults will rise or they will lose coverage because of the rising costs just when they are more likely to need care.

2. Employers will be more likely to hire workers who do not require a health insurance contribution from the employer. Employers may respond to this and rising costs by dropping their health insurance plans.

I agree 100% with the goal of moving to a single-payer system but this particular plan looks like it needs work.

I never really understood the saying "best thing since sliced bread". Coming from several generations of bakers, I don't think that sliced bread was a particularly positive development in cultural history.

Be that as it may, SEIU's "Since Sliced Bread" contest is unquestionably one of the best public campaigns by any US labor union in years.

Mulroney said "give us ten years and you won't recognize this country" we gave him nine and we're still cleaning up the mess he made. Give Stephen Harper ten years and not only won't you recognize Canada, you won't even be able to find it on the map anymore.

http://kevinswoodshed.blogspot.com/2006/01/playing-catch-up-is-what-both-canadian.html

Yup. Americans are talking about universal health care, and Canadians are in a big rush to dismantle it. Who'll win, you figure?

Didn't know about this.

My new brilliant idea is price floors on guns. All guns must be sold for at least, say, $500 US new or $250 US used.

If you are chronically unable to get $250 in one place, no gun for you.

The market for saturday night specials dries up.

Jonathan--

There are a bunch of health care plans to choose from on that site, which underscores a fundamental weakness of the whole project. I think it likely that many people who are concerned about health care will vote for different plans, so none of these plans will win. That would create the false impression that health care is less important to the voters than other issues. Frankly, I was surprised that any of the health care ideas made it to the final seven, and the fact that any did tells me that the SEIU ought to focus its efforts into coming up with a viable plan for universal health care.

Also, I share your frustration at the fact that so many of these ideas go in the right direction, but are unnecessarily complicated with the injection of a "brilliant idea." For example, the plan you cite does have the disadvantage of driving up health care costs until it's fully implemented. It also has the weakness of not covering everyone for a full generation. So, why not just cover everyone not already in Medicare, and keep them in the universal system as Medicare gradually fades away? Maybe because that would be too simple to be considered a brilliant idea.

Lance Norskog--

We could probably implement your "price floor" idea by requiring guns to meet high standards of quality and safety. As you point out, most gun crime is committed with cheap guns. If I want one for home defense, I'm going to want one of the more expensive models.

Seems to me it's more like 60 years to universal coverage. Unless something drastic happens, the proportion of the population over 65 in 2035 will be significant (it's about 12 percent now), and their effect on medical expenses is of course much higher than that of younger people.

I think it likely that many people who are concerned about health care will vote for different plans, so none of these plans will win.

I presume it's too late to suggest moving to a voting system that makes more sense than plurality vote (which can double up as a suggestion for the contest's rules and a policy suggestion).


I still think the best health care policy the US should adopt is to lift the French system wholesale.

I voted for that one as well.

The winning idea and two runners up in the SinceSliced Bread contest sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (ironically this contest was open only to U.S. citizens) were announced on February 1, 2006; see the SinceSliced Bread website:

http://www.sinceslicedbread.com

This idea, like the other 20 "finalist" ideas displayed at the SSB site, fails to comply with the contest rules (also available at the SSB site, in their third or fourth version) requiring ideas submitted to be original. The contest sponsor, SEIU, has induced thousands of people to hand over their intellectual property on the premise that they had a chance to win $100,000 or $50,000 on the merits of their ideas--not on their correspondence with the previously well-publicized political agenda of SEIU, but the latter criterion was the actual principle of selection. All the "finalist" ideas can be found at the SinceSlicedBread website.

While there are many actually original and creative ideas in the ideas database of over 22,000 ideas, the selected ideas have all been published in public policy discussions over the past few decades and some of them even duplicate legislation which has been introduced in Congress.

Additionally, the contest rules established priority of submission as the tie-breaking criterion in the event of multiple submissions of the same or substantially similar ideas. Many of the ideas in the 21 "finalists" list have been shown to have been duplicated by lowered-numbered (and therefore earlier) submissions.

At least one lawsuit has been filed against SEIU, and several complaints have been lodged with the attorneys general of the states of residence of participants.

SEIU has failed to admit to any responsiblity for having compromised the contest and ripped off participants who actually followed the rules.

Hundreds of pages of complaints about this situation have been posted to the SinceSlicedBread blog--which was abruptly removed from their site a few hours before the winners were announced.

The blog includes a great deal of evidence for SEIU's failure to follow its own rules and for the nonoriginality of the selected ideas. I have backed up all the blog threads begun since the "finalists" were announced and I can make these documents available on request.

Sincerely,

Kevin Langdon
P.O. Box 795
Berkeley, CA 94701
(510) 524-0345
[email protected]
http://www.polymath-systems.com

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