Statewide health care policy
They say that medicine is not an exact science. So it seems reasonable that fixing an ailing health care system is not an exact science either. There are lots of people stirring the pot these days, making it rather challenging for Governor Lincoln Almond’s Advisory Council on Health to develop a statewide health care policy.
One insurer is doing a statewide survey that has come under fire from some politicians and medical people who see it as self-serving and scientifically unsound; politicians are holding meetings and proposing plans and legislation, seeming independent of one another, and a variety of groups are scheduling health care conferences.
These are complex issues that defy simplistic answers, and eluded President Clinton early in his tenure as he failed to meet the electorate’s mandate that his administration fix an ailing health care system.
The goals are simple – accessible, affordable and quality health care for all. How to get there is more difficult.
We’re concerned that the governor’s advisory committee lacks business representation, depriving it of an important viewpoint. There are plenty of politicians, state department directors, health professionals, academicians, consultants and insurers. There are plenty of representatives for the disadvantaged, and labor is there too in the person of a representative from the Laborer Union’s Health and Safety Fund. But there’s no one to represent the business owner who just took it on the chin with a 60 percent increase in health care rates.
We urge Governor Almond to expand his committee to include a voice or two from business, providing the balance that’s needed to assure that this committee develops a statewide health care policy that is workable and applicable to all Rhode Islanders.
Jewelry industry
In the latest round of cuts to the costume jewelry industry, The Monet Group Inc. announced plans to lay off 200 employees at the company’s East Providence plant and move manufacturing operations to Asia.
It is another sad chapter in the long running saga of the jewelry industry – but perhaps it is time to read this chapter with a different mindset.
Monet officials said layoffs were necessary because the company could no longer afford to run a manufacturing plant in Rhode Island, where workers make 10 times as much as their counterparts in Asia. Had it not made the move, Monet might have been forced to shut all of its doors – permanently.
Much has been made of the steady decline of our costume jewelry industry in recent decades. We see that decline as part of the inevitable evolution of the state’s economy.
Maybe it is time to embrace the costume jewelry industry as it exists today — smaller but nevertheless vital.
It seems clear that costume jewelry manufacturers must consider moving the bulk of their manufacturing operations offshore if they are to compete globally. And isn’t that what we expect of them – to compete?
Costume jewelry manufacturers must do what they can to survive and the result, we hope, is that they will again flourish, albeit with fewer employees than before, but with greater strength.
The bottom line is that the Rhode Island economy is changing quickly from a manufacturing base to a service economy, dominated by tourism, financial services, technology, and retail.
The world is now a more accessible place where improvements in transportation and communications have made the impossible, possible. Times have changed. As has our economy. It’s time to accept that the jewelry industry of this century will not be the same industry it was in the past – nor should we expect it to be.
