Born 1944, in Middletown, Ohio, Fred received his bachelors’ degree from the University of Dayton in 1976. He dropped out of full-time college work when he fell in love with Barbara, now his wife of forty-two years. He later finished his degree by attending classes at night. Fred received the prestigious insurance designation of Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter from the Insurance Institute of America in 1974 after completing an extensive study of the property casualty insurance industry.
Early in his insurance business career Fred began teaching insurance classes and published his first book The Successful Insurance Agency, to provide a teaching tool to individuals who wanted to enter that business. He followed this with writing his first mystery novels based on an insurance agent and his partner and Carmen Press published the first two of these, Death, Then Murder, and Murder Under Fire.
After spending nearly thirty-five years as a successful professional, executive, and business owner in corporate America Fred felt a call to teaching and left the world of insurance to begin a new career teaching American Literature and creative writing at the high school level. During summer break after his first year as a teacher, Fred penned an inspirational book for teens, “Incoming”, based on his life experiences following God’s messages.
It wasn’t too long after entering the field of academia that Fred became concerned about the high turnover in that field. At the same time he discovered that his teaching style based on the management principles he had learned in college and practiced as a businessman could be a way to help reduce that problem. He felt it could increase the overall morale and teaching experience for teachers, and result in a better learning experience for students. He returned to the nonfiction field and used his writing skills to write Not In My Classroom, focusing on classroom management, and it was published by Adams Media. This was followed by a book about all the fears that enter the classrooms and inhibit the learning process. This book is titled No Fear In My Classroom and also published by Adams Media.
He began to write while in college. He wrote what he calls the master dust collector. It was his first attempt at a full length novel and he has never submitted it to a publisher because, in his words, “It stinks!” He has enjoyed writing poetry and has had his poems published in anthologies. He also has written many articles for nationally published trade magazines further expanding his writing skills. Fred has never considered himself a novelist, but a writer who enjoys writing in many genres as well as in teaching them. Fred says, “Losing yourself in reading a good novel is second only to the writing of one.”
His primary vocation of husband, father, and grandfather has meant that times have passed when writing took a back seat, but never has a part of his mind completely left the formation of the ideas that later became words on paper, for a writer must write. Fred tells his students that poetry involves putting your thoughts in written form using the fewest words possible, and you do it best when you fill the reader’s mind with a lyrical mist of thought.
While living in France my wife and I met many people from other countries who were living in France and happy to remain there for the rest of their lives. Yet, I never met anotrher American living there who didn't plan on returning there once their assignments that required they leave America ended. WHY DO YOU THINK THEY FELT THAT WAY? Because America is the greatest country in the world. It's really as simple and important as that.
Am I naive' enough to ignore our problems. Absolutely not, and neither should you. Here's food for thought: The US dollar is the world reserve currency. This has many important implications, but the most important is that we can just print more money to cover our debts. However, since we are now doing that on a grand scale the result will be hyperinflation which in turn will destroy our way of life. If the IMF creates a world currency, our dollar will devalue precipitously exacerbating the rate of inflation especially on commodities we purchase that are produced outside the United States.
Our country's debt to other nations is impacting our national security as well as the economic issues. We must stop spending more than we make.
November, 18, 2008
Who wins with bailouts?
$25 billion, $700 billion, who know where it stops. This is obviously a rhetorical question since no one really knows the answer. Consider this: Every industry evolves over time, but it is the truly well managed businesses that survive in a free market. General Motors set the standard for developing the automotive manufacturing business. Ford created the assembly line that made automobile ownership possible for the vast majority of Americans. Chrysler became known as the engineering automotive company. Over time they all became very successful, so much so that they allowed unions to fill their expenses with wonderful employee benefits. The question is whether they really understood the long term implications of those increased costs.
When three companies have 95% of a market they may feel no need to be concerned about expenses, that is, until competition enters. Due to the high cost of entry into the field of automobile manufacturing it was felt nearly impossible for that competition to happen, but, alas, it did.
We now have three domestic auto companies bloated with costs making them no longer competitive and we are being asked to donate to their failure rather than let them fix it. Recently, the members of the board of directors of GM said they had faith in the current management team. If that is so, that management team should find ways to fix their problems or go out of business.
Will there be lost jobs? Yes. Will these unemployed people be permanently unemployed? No. There are still opportunities for them with other successful automobile companies if they want to stay in that industry. Or, perhaps they should consider reevaluating their skills and retraining to enter other areas of our economy.
When I was a business owner we were constantly looking for new products and better ways to operate, shouldn't you?
The national news media and interviews with our leaders, both elected and appointed, continually overlook regulations already in effect for the financial industries. The Comptroller of the Currency is the ultimate federal banking regulator and there are three agencies providing that level of regulation while each state also has an agency that provides regulations for state chartered banks.
The insurance business has been determined not to be interstate commerce and so is regulated by an insurance department regulator in each state. Banks and insurance companies undergo in-depth financial analysis once every three years and must also file in-depth financial statements annually with the appropriate regulator.
One final regulator involving both areas of this industry is the IRS.
The major issue with regulating these financial businesses is that, unlike other businesses that have "hard assets" like machinery, equipment, and supplies, their assets are intangible. The regulation requires a level of sophistication unlike any other. Many of the states do a good job, but they really have a tremendously difficult task in finding and hiring top people because of low pay scales and tedious work.
I tell you all this because it is my firm belief that adding more oversight will not prevent a recurrence of recent failures and I predict will slow down the process of operating these businesses, reduce their ability to comply with demands to provide better products to the public, and deteriorate their functional integrity by chasing off high quality, profit-motivated talent.
This is a brief outline of a plan that will dramatically improve our health care system on a budget neutral basis and without growth in the government. It uses the private health insurance and provider sector, government control agencies already in place, and has the following benefits for the American people:
1) Places the focus on supporting the improvement of the professionalism of health care providers while reducing the costs.
2) Provides transparency of health care provider pricing thereby equating charges to all patients whether insured or not.
3) Increases availability and portability of insurance coverage thereby increasing the number of Americans covered and reducing the need for employer group insurance plans.
4) Provides coverage for pre-existing conditions without dramatically increasing the premiums for either those who have the conditions or others who do not.
5) Any additional cost to the government would be born by all insurers who will build it into their rates and, therefore, spread it to so many Americans that the cost would become minimal in effect.
6) Increase health insurance competition to lower the premiums for all thereby increasing the numbers of Americans covered by health insurance.
7) Reduce Medicare fraud without reducing coverage and without increasing government costs.
8) Eliminates the need, perceived or real, for a public insurance plan with its huge potential costs and negative political impact.
The plan outline is as follows:
1) Require all providers to provide follow up care without additional charges to the patient if the procedure either was performed in error or did not help resolve the health issue. At the same time mandate the individual states pass tort reform as follows: cap the maximum recovery for professional malpractice claims; eliminate punitive damages for malpractice claims altogether; and require the plaintiff pay all legal fees of both parties and court costs if their suit is lost. This mandate would be accomplished by eliminating federal funding to the individual states that do not comply with the outlined tort reform within one year. This will result in better patient care and lower costs.
2) Mandate that providers make no difference in their fees for services so that no patient is charged more for a procedure than another regardless of ability to pay or the existence or lack thereof of health insurance. Insurers must provide rewards to insureds when the insureds, through their own independent review of the provider charges, find incorrect, duplicate or erroneous fees charged for their medical procedure.
3) Repeal the McCarran Ferguson Act making insurance interstate commerce. The regulation mechanisms are in place in each state but the best state insurance department organization is New York. New York already requires that any insurance company licensed to do business in New York must not only comply with New York State regulations but must use those same criteria in any other state where they are licensed. At the same time as repeal of this act the fed would convert the New York Insurance Department for Health Insurance Company regulation to a federal agency in charge of the regulation of insurance in all states. All other state regulators must report to this agency and use their own auditing staffs and regulators. Thus, insurance competition automatically dramatically increases making it available to all. The competitive forces will then work to reduce insurance premiums and create an environment of much greater portability.
4) Establish an insurance pooling arrangement to cover pre-existing conditions. This can be done in the same way that substandard drivers are insured by the various state assigned risk plans. Or a reinsurance pool could be established to reinsure insurers who cover this risk. This pool would be populated by reinsurers from around the world thereby spreading this risk so as not to have an adverse impact on any one insurance company’s financial viability. The pool would be facilitated by the federal government providing catastrophic coverage for the pool thereby removing that financial risk from the private insurance company sector. The cost of this catastrophe coverage would be born by the health insurers who then build it into their overall rates for all their customers. This reinsurance arrangement would mean the government could mandate all insurers provide pre-existing health coverage at little additional cost to either those insureds who have the condition or those who do not.
5) Medicare fraud would be handled by contracting to independent CPA firms across the country. These firms would be compensated only when or if they actually find fraud. Their compensation would be based on the amount of fraud uncovered and the remedies put in place to prevent further fraud. This would fall within the area of Health and Human Services Agency.
I am not only an expert in the insurance business but am no longer employed in that industry so I have no axe to grind. I teach future voters not only educating them but taking pride in the knowledge that none of them can tell what my political leanings are. My students often ask me if I am either a Democrat or Republican, especially those who take my Contemporary American Issues Class. We must have a better educated populace and I am committed to that goal.
Academics are liberals because they spend their days trying to motivate young minds. Teaching so that their students will be able to grow unimpaired by worldly pressures to earn money. They know that living life just to earn money is never satisfying or self enriching.
Just think, if one can focus on the beauty of art or science without being encumbered by basic human needs, then the mind can be expanded beyond the imagination and into new paradigms of discovery.
If this is carried to the extreme as is attempted by many in academia, it means the academics need not have an awareness of crime, political infrastructure influences on society, wars, taxes, human corruption, genecide, economics, or health of society as these issues detract from the teaching of more important subjects such as understanding the plays of Shakespeare or the proper conjugation of verbs in Latin.
Knowing their subject is only part of the teachers' responsibility. They must also have an in-depth knowledge of how students learn best so they can taylor their teaching style to each one of the sometimes twenty-five or more students in their classrooms. For example they may have the following mix of learners: 5 - 10 love video games; 5 - 10 have ADD or ADHD; 2 - 5 have dyslexia; 5 - 10 may have the intellectual capacity and desire to go to college; 5 - 10 may have the mechanical apptitude and desire to learn a specific vocation. Yet they all have the minimum educational needs upon reaching adulthood of reading at a sixth grade level, knowledge of basic arithmetic, and writing to communicate clearly using correct spelling and grammar. Beyond these basics the commonality of need nearly disappears making mass instruction a nearly futile exercise developing high levels of frustration for the serious teacher and potentially degrades the creativity and capacity for cognition of our population as a whole.
JULY 1, 2010
WHO'S RESPONSIBLE for the economic meltdown and how it affects your business plans?
Pointing fingers smacks of the "Blame Game" all the politicians and so-called economic experts love these days. So I might as well join them. I feel the need to do this in order to help you look forward.
If you want to start a business one of your primary sources of seed money is your home. Up until now using the equity in your home as collateral for obtaining a second mortgage or an equity line of credit from your bank has provided that needed cash reserve or cash investment money. If you have already established that source, and your bank is still around, you still have access to it.
Here's where I must now take a look back as a warning. For the past almost twenty years banks have been willing to loan up to and actually exceeding 100% of a home's value. They have done this with the idea in mind that inflation of home values would continue and it would actually result in the homeowner gaining equity over time. Some banks preferred to refinance the original mortgages that were based on an initial equity requirement of from five to twenty percent equity ownership maintained by the home buyer. The refinance deal sometimes actually exceed the current home value by up to twenty-five percent.
That is absolutely throwing good lending practice out the window. I won't go into all the reasons for the lenders doing this because that is not my purpose here. My purpose is to tell you that NOT accepting such a loan offer is your responsibility, especially if you plan to use the money to start a business. Don't add the high risk of a new venture to the risk of not only losing your home, but of owing more that the value of that home. That type of situation is called "upside down" by the real estate community. You MUST be able to focus on the business and not the cash flow needed for the financing. Doing this is a sure recipe for failure on both fronts.
Remember, it is not only the banker's fault for the stupidity of bad lending practices. It is also your fault for accepting them.
