A Week of Wall Streets (121105)

A possibly weekly feature that will note items reported in The Wall Street Journal that weren’t significant enough to merit full posts but still deserved notice elsewhere, and received little (All WSJ Links require subscription unless otherwise indicated):

Dec. 5 — “Chinese Doctors Tell Patients to Pay Upfront, or No Treatment”
Not quite a People’s Paradise:

Health care is an issue vexing the world’s most developed countries, including the U.S., where people without insurance can lose all their savings if they get sick. But in worst-case scenarios, people who need urgent care generally receive it. (BizzyBlog edit–”are required by law to receive it, and almost never fail to receive it.”)

That’s not the case in China, where patients are routinely denied care if they cannot come up with the money to pay for it in advance — even in emergencies.

The World Health Organization ranked China fourth from the bottom of 191 countries in terms of the fairness of its medical coverage in a survey issued in 2000. This March, a report from a Chinese cabinet think tank said that unless China overhauls its medical care, “it will directly affect economic development, social stability and public support for reform.”

Dec. 5 — Are States Undoing Welfare Reform Through the Food-Stamp Back Door?
“States’ Food Stamp Fight Intensifies” is primarily about how states have been attempting to extend the Food Stamp program to families with incomes well above the proverty line, in some cases as much as 85% above that line. Food stamp recipients have increased from 17.1 million to 25.5 million during 2000-2004, and federal costs have gone rom $17 billion to $27.1 billion. That’s an alarming acceleration that needs to be tamed.

Dec. 6 — Westin Hotels to Ban Smoking and Fine Violators
The rest of the hospitality industry will surely be watching how this works out: The Westin “will add $200 to the bill of anyone who violates the policy, an executive said. Westin Hotels & Resorts is banning smoking indoors and poolside at all 77 of its properties in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, said senior Vice President Sue Brush. Smokers will have to go to a designated outdoor area, she said.”

Dec. 6 — Testing Immigrants
The current test that immigrants must pass to become citizens is being revised, and of course there is controversy, along with the usual criticisms from the various sides that get raised in almost any testing debate (”useless trivia,” “too hard,” “not tough enough,” etc.). The question I have, after looking at the test, is how many people born here would flunk it. See it for yourself.

Dec. 7 — Alan Greenspan Translated Correctly
Much news on Greenspan’s December 3 Philadelphia speech gave the impression that he is okay with tax increases. Balderdash:
“However,” he added, “tax increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base.” Those risks are great enough “to warrant aiming, if at all possible, to close the fiscal gap primarily, if not wholly, from the outlay side.” Translated from the Greenspan-ese: Cut spending.

Dec. 8 — America’s New Un-Retirees
I’m not at all convinced that this is a bad thing, which may be the instinctive reaction of many to this news:

The oldest baby boomers turn 60 next year. Modern medicine is prolonging their life spans. The weakness of public and private pension plans is ever more obvious.

So experts predict many more people will work past age 65 — for their own good and the good of the societies in which they live. This sounds logical. In the U.S., after all, more than half of today’s 65-year-old men can expect to live beyond 81½, and more than half of today’s 65-year-old women can expect to live beyond 84½. Quitting at age 65 may be unaffordable.

Even if it’s NOT unaffordable, what’s wrong with continuing to work?

Dec. 8 — Motown Loses Its Mojo
The City of Detroit is in really, really dire straits: “The most immediate problem is on the cost side. The Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a privately funded watchdog group, found that as of 2002, Detroit was still employing more than twice as many workers per 100,000 residents as Phoenix, San Diego or Portland, Ore. ….. in order to make ends meet, Detroit still needs to lay off half of the 12,000 workers paid from the city’s General Fund — or cut the compensation for civilian workers by $27,000 each.”

Dec. 9 — Sarbanes-Oxley Has Given Tech Firms a New Line of Business
The new line of business is SarBox compliance: “Market researcher IDC estimates that world-wide compliance spending on technology will reach $7.5 billion this year and grow 22% annually. AMR Research says that companies will spend $6.1 billion overall this year to meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements alone, with tech spending accounting for nearly $2 billion of that.” My take is that all of this is a drain on executive time, resources, and openness to innovation. Compliance does not add value or move the economy forward; it holds it back. I think we could be ripping along at 5% annual GDP growth if SarBox wasn’t holding us back.