Trump Conundrum for Healthcare IT industry

Health Care industry may probably be the second well connected and lobbied in Washington DC. That could be the reason why any changes to the status quo will take decades to take effect. It all changed when President Obama brought in the Affordable Care Act(will be referred as ACA in the article) and among them few a stand out.

Donald Trump and Tom Price

a.       Patients with pre-existing conditions will get the coverage and  cannot be denied health insurance.

b.      Individual mandate for taking the insurance else penalty.

c.      Coverage for children in their parents plan till age 26

d.      Medicare and Medicaid expansion in states with federal funding.

Now Trump being the president elect and Tom Price to take over the health secretary, it seems very possible that most of ACA could be dismantled or let it go for a slow death.  There is another possibility with Tom Price who in Congress over the years had introduced the bill called “Empowering the patients first Act’. Salient features of Tom Price’s legislation are:

a.       Preexisting coverage will be given for members who’d insurance for previous 18 months.

b.      Medicaid Expansion will be removed from 31 states and DC.

c.       Removal of penalty for uninsured citizens.

d.      Tax free coverage from employers would be 8000 for individual and 20,000 for family

This puts Healthcare IT industry in a tricky spot; it had invested heavily in the changes required for ACA starting from designing products for the Exchanges market and to incorporate the ACA changes with respect to each states mandates. IT folks worked on the Exchanges know it was difficult and draining few months to meet the changes for Federal Mandate. Now either it is going to be dismantled or new legislation might put those changes redundant. This again will require more IT changes with considerable investment. Even then, a new presidential regime can change the policy putting an additional overhead on the IT spending.

So right now, the industry is pushing for any change in policy to take effect in the future at least 3 years from now. IT expenditure for the industry will always be fluid and can change depending on the budget allocation and overall outlook every year. But with federal mandates, it becomes out of control most of the time with man hours and dollars involved.

It will be interesting timings for IT contractors and nervous few months for the Healthcare industry. 

Relationships, failures and workaround

In Abraham Lincoln’s life an unhappy incident made him write the below quote to his law partner:

“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.”

 This was not during the distressing Civil War years (1860-65) but was written when Lincoln was a youth and his relationship with Mary Todd failed. I didn’t mean to simplify that Civil War years were less depressing, just to make a point what a relationship failure meant to the great man. 

How he overcame it is a difficult question to answer. But interesting part is Lincoln married Mary Todd and had a happy life (happy? we could not say but a peaceful life) till his assassination (1865). This suggests us how heavy a relationship could be, obviously it can act both ways.

 In our fast world we are seeing the negative aspect of relationship failure on the rise. A latest example in front of us is Jiah Khan’s suicide. What led to this is difficult to ascertain, but a strained relationship is the main factor.

 The reasons for failures could not be generalized, but over expectations and possessiveness are the common denominators among all. One way it makes his/her spouse (in case of lovers it is their beloved) feel special; at the other end it impinge on their freedom as well.

 Growing strains eventually result in the break-up. Our Indian society is slowly coming to terms with failed marriages in the form of divorce or mutual separation, but our pace is not in tune with the growing failures.
 Now it is a need of the hour that our generation comes to live with relationship failures and breakups. Again we can take the leaf out of Lincoln. Reading his biography we see that Lincoln has as many as three failed relationships. An excerpt from the same:

 “When he got to New Salem he fell in love with the tavern-keeper’s daughter, Ann Rutledge. Not long after they had become engaged, she was stricken with what was called “brain fever” and died within a few weeks”
 “But slowly Lincoln recovered, and slightly more than a year later he was involved in another courtship, this time with Mary Owens, a well educated and refined woman from a wealthy Kentucky family. We know from surviving letters that, having involved himself to the point of engagement, Lincoln decided that he did not love Mary Owens and hoped to avoid marriage by convincing her that he was unworthy. When she proved noncommittal, he finally felt honor-bound to propose, and much to his astonishment and chagrin, she turned him down. He confessed to a confidante: ‘Others have been made fools of by the girls; but this can never be with truth said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself.’”

 It is not difficult to guess what gave Lincoln the inner courage to take on his personal turbulence. He was determined that he was bound for something which was far more important than these failures. It will be fitting to give his speech as an illustration of the above point. The below is a part of his speech he gave Gettysburg on November 19, 1863 to dedicate the services on the civil war field:

 It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The 'reel' real story

"For me you are the veena

Caressing finger me for you”

-          Bharathiyar

“Ganesh Kumar is an excellent actor, but the Oscar should go to Oomen Chandy for his acting in this whole episode”

-          Kodiyeri Balakrishnan from CPI[M]

Perfect Match

Second of April dawned with a surprise news. Minister for Forests K.B.Ganesh Kumar became the first minister to resign from the Oomen Chandy government. As a good Congressman, Oomen Chandy tried to delay the inevitable but could not delay too long. The resignation was on the cards, as the chance for reconciliation between Ganesh Kumar and Yamini seemed out of bounds. Both of them leveled charges of physical assault in public and it became a treat for the media. Photos of Ganesh Kumar with bruises were aired; opinions sought from different quarters, the media frenzy came to a temporary halt with his resignation.

Now two questions arise naturally. Is it mandatory a Minister or a Government servant resign on personal issues/allegations? To what extent media can give prominence for such stories?

The first question is tricky as we have not yet come to terms with absolute freedom that is proposed and followed (to a certain extent) in the West.  But we can state that if a Government Servant’s personal allegiances affect his daily activities and amounts for a larger impact on the society, then it is no more personal. It is for the media/public to scrutinize that. For example, Nehru’s relation with Edwina affected the independent India as much as his leadership hence it is nothing wrong debating that.

In this episode, nobody including the strong critics of Ganesh Kumar could charge him any wrong in ministerial affairs. He is one of the performing ministers in Kerala Government more than anything he was able to make the changes happen. Renovation of government theatres and excellent hosting of IFFK was one such example of excellent work by Ganesh Kumar and his team.

Media has become a punch bag of late for all thanks to its sensationalism. But the prominence given depends on the general public’s interest and most importantly on the competitors. Both these factors go hand in hand. Comparatively Indian English News Channels could themselves appropriately in a situation like this. We have some lessons to be learnt from how English Media handled the Abhishek Manu Singhvi video in compromising position with a fellow lawyer.

This is another episode to analyze the psychology of Indian Public like the Abhishek Manu Singhvi episode. All said and done, if Yamini withdraw her complaint today Ganesh Kumar will be reinstated within hours.

Hence Kodiyeri’s comment quoted above is very much valid but he missed include the public as well; we too acted our part very well.

Three Tamil Writers in the web

“Tamil Penchant to see a Trinity in each generation (musical) implied an attitude of veneration, which, considering the caliber of those constituting the triple Trinities was fully deserved. On the other hand, it could also suggest a collective inclination to set high standards against which to measure a generations’ artistic worth.” – TJS George in MS: A Life in Music

Tamil society loves to have stars in every aspects of life. Some are grudgingly compared to the 'stars' in their field and look diminished;whereas others happily coalesce to the star power.

In Tamil Literary world three such stars are: Charu Nivedita, Jeyamohan and S.Ramakrishnan. Even after the arrival of next generation writers, this trinity has not lost its star status. Selecting these three for writing about has two reasons. One this Trinity contributes extensively in web world, two the strength of reading their most works.

Charu Nivedita:

Charu started writing in Web around 2000, out of the trinity he has the largest readers (fans I should say).  He first wrote in Vikatan.com which was a startup by Vikatan Publications which publishes various popular magazines. Since it was free website and also had the brand name Vikatan Charu was able to reach a lot of foreign Tamil readers especially Sri Lankan Tamils. These readers still are the major fund raisers for Charu. “Konal Pakkangal” was the name of the column which serialized and then was published as a book. In that he discussed on the Literature, Music, Cinema, Gossips and lot of others. It catered to the online readers because of the following reasons:

1. Insightful parody on the current political and social events happening in India, Tamil Nadu in particular.



Charu Nivedita

2. Introducing Erotic literary texts and writers like Marquis de Sade etc.,

Having said this, it might sound a single dimensional reading. It also contained essays on “Billie Holiday” and Latin American Music which were unique. Charu’s novels like “Rasa Leela”, “Kamaroopa Kathaigal” were serialized in his blog (charuonline.com\blog) then published as books.

Today even after his controversial support to Nithyananda and allegations of sex messages to a female writer, Charu has an inspiring presence in the online world.

Jeyamohan:

Jeyamohan also started writing in the Web around 2000. Looking back now, we could say that the articles around were focused broadly on these two themes. One the articles were written to take part in online debate and put forth his arguments. By doing that he countered the incorrect reading of his works and false propaganda about his personality. Two essays written to introduce the books he read and critical analysis on the works of eminent Tamil Writers. He wrote them in Thinnai.com till 2007. From that year on he writes almost an article  a day in his own blog jeyamohan.in.

The specialty of the Jeyamohan is that he hasn’t fallen prey to the cult of writing in a different language for the Web.  Because of that some of his essays may be more than 10 pages and short stories extending 5 pagees in our computer screen. His blog contains essays under different genres including political criticisms, travelogues, introducing different personalities etc. He shares his experiences, views on life and engages constantly with the readers. 

Jeyamohan

 His novels “Anal Kattru”, “Iravu”,” Maththagam” and short story series under the title “Aram” were serialized online and then went on to get published. Now looking back Jeyamohan has utilized this online medium to a near perfection.

S.Ramakrishnan:

 S.Ramakrishnan is relatively a late comer to online media. He writes mostly on his choices and preferences in movies, music and foreign personalities. His blog is sramakrishnan.com and essays on foreign movies, books are very thought provoking.  S.Ramakrishnan language in itself is simple and easy to engage. His wish list of 100 important books in Tamil and 100 movies to be seen are very important for starters.

S.Ramakrishnan

I consider this essay to be starting point to know and access these three writers and going over to the website will open new avenues for a literary reader.