What’s the purpose of college?

The answer to “What’s the purpose of college?” is longer than the 280 characters Twitter allows per tweet. But you can at least start a conversation in that amount of space.

Such a conversation was started last week when Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, tweeted a picture of a University of Arkansas at Little Rock billboard featuring a dance major. He commented that higher education doesn’t need extra funding if this is how it would be spent. Instead of dance, the university should be encouraging computer science degrees and math teachers, he wrote.

The tweet drew a response from Savvy Shields. If you don’t recognize her name, you certainly recognize the title: Miss America 2017, and before that, Miss Arkansas. The art major disagreed, arguing that the arts can inspire people and change society. Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Berryville, tweeted in support of Hester’s position, and then there was a minor social media firestorm that since has been forgotten.

College: Job skills or life skills?

Now that the Twitter argument has slipped into the recesses of cyberspace, the question remains: “What’s the purpose of college?”

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Emptying tomorrow’s piggy banks

Piggy bank, piggy banks, debt, deficitHave you ever brought your children to the store and had to fend off one request after another to buy something? One effective way to make them stop, and teach them a lesson, is to tell them they can have what they want – as long as they pay for it themselves.

You can see the wheels turn behind their eyes as they’re confronted with the goodies’ cost versus their limited resources. What seemed so important when someone else was paying for it no longer is worth emptying their own piggy bank.

Apparently, many in Washington have never taken their children shopping. Or maybe their parents never took them. Continue reading →

A blue wave is coming. How big, and how wet will Arkansas get?

Alabama, blue waveHistory – both the recent and not-so-recent kinds – suggests a blue wave is coming. The only questions for this column are, how big will it be, and how wet will Arkansas get?

The recent kind of history is that, since President Trump was elected, Democrats nationwide have flipped 35 state legislative seats that were occupied by Republicans. In contrast, Republicans have flipped four seats that were occupied by Democrats.

The latest occurred Tuesday in Missouri, where a 27-year-old Democrat, Mike Revis, was elected in a district outside St. Louis that Trump won by 28 points in 2016. Revis defeated a pro-life, pro-gun Republican.

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Your pharmacist doesn’t want to see you now

If your pharmacist doesn’t look happy to see you the next time you visit, it’s probably because she’s losing money filling your prescription.

The problems are occurring with two groups of patients. The largest are those covered by Arkansas Works, which uses Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for 285,000 low-income Arkansans. The other problem patients are the 68,100 Arkansans who purchase their health insurance through the online Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace. Like Arkansas Works, the Marketplace was created by the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

Who are the pharmacy benefit managers?

Pharmacists say that, in those plans, they aren’t being fairly reimbursed by their pharmacy benefit managers. Those PBMs act as middlemen between pharmacists and insurance companies, which in Arkansas are Blue Cross, Ambetter and QualChoice. Continue reading →

State of denial

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the UnionLet’s say you served on a company’s board of directors, and its by-laws required the president to give a periodic report. And let’s say your company was losing money – in fact, a lot of it, and had been for a long time. It’s deeply in debt with no real plan to get out. Worst of all, the company’s structure and culture virtually assure the debt will continue growing until someday its consequences are severe.

The report would have to cover a lot of things. But shouldn’t at least part of it include an honest appraisal of the company’s rising red ink along with a specific plan of action?

That’s what was wrong with President Trump’s State of the Union address, and most of the ones given by previous presidents. The speech stretched for nearly an hour and 21 minutes from the first word to last. It was not a bad speech. But, in all that time, Trump didn’t even mention the national debt. For the record, it’s now almost $20.5 trillion, or more than $62,600 for every American man, woman and child. Continue reading →