As an old IT guy this excuse has me laughing out loud! 😆 The most common corporate email system, Exchange, is host based. Some businesses and government agencies have switched to Gmail and it is host based, too. In all of my years in the IT business I have never run across an email system that was susceptible to a local disk drive failure. This makes no sense! Why would anyone put in a system that stupid? This would require a level of incompetence I have trouble imagining.
Things that make me go hmm…
Thing That Make Me Go Hmm… Reflecting On Ohio’s Economic Turnaround
I was fascinated with the Fox News interview of Governor Kasich this morning. Chris Wallace asked Governor Kasich the following question.
You have engineered quite a turnaround at Ohio since you took office in 2011 and let’s put up part of your record. Your state has been the number five job creator in the nation over that period of time. And number one in the Midwest. Unemployment is now 6.5 percent. The lowest in your state since June of 2008. And Ohio has gone from an $8 billion deficit to a $1.5 billion surplus. Question: what is the secret to your success?
The alleged job creation performance was pretty amazing considering that the last time I looked at Ohio’s job creation performance I was not impressed. So I decided to crunch the numbers. I picked up the job creation numbers from the Job Growth Update page at Arizona State University and found that Ohio’s 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 job growth performance was definitely middling. They were ranked number 26,18, 25, and 33. This was less impressive than the performance of Indiana which was ranked 5, 8, 40, and 20. So how did Fox come up with the optimistic talking point?
Since the question talked about jobs created, I put the data into a spreadsheet and calculated the actual number of jobs created. In this case Ohio ranked 7th since Ohio has a larger population than most of the states. However if we use this definition of job creation than the number one job creator in the Midwest is Illinois since it has the largest population in the Midwest. Hmm…
Amazon Raising Its Popular Prime Service By $40
Unique competitive strategies fascinate me so it goes without saying that Amazon’s business strategies fascinate me. They have always marched to the beat of a different drummer. One of their more unique competitive strategies has been free 2 day shipping via Amazon Prime. Two years ago I subscribed to Amazon Prime to see if I would break even on the shipping while enjoying some Netflix type video streaming. What I found surprised me. I purchased more incidental items through Amazon and rarely used the video streaming. I suspect this incidental shipping is killing Amazon’s bottom line. As an example I was repairing a computer and needed some thermal paste. Rather than going to the local computer store I ordered it I from Amazon because I had free shipping. The paste cost me $5 and was shipped to me using UPS. As a person who is real familiar with shipping costs, I am guessing that Amazon lost $5 on that transaction. I followed that up next week with a $10 purchase for a different repair. For high priced items I found that I could find lower prices that include free shipping outside of Amazon if I ran a simple internet search. Since free shipping is such a mixed blessing, I was debating whether to pull the plug on Amazon Prime this year. Now we hear this. It should be interesting to see how the Amazon’s competition respond.
Amazon also said it is considering raising the price of its popular Prime service by as much as $40 a year due to higher fuel and other shipping costs.
Things That Make Me Go Hmm… Did Sen. Coburn lose his cancer doctor because of Obamacare?
I was reading Sarah Kliff’s article, “Did Sen. Coburn lose his cancer doctor because of Obamacare?”, explaining the circumstances why Senator Coburn’s long time cancer doctor was not covered by the Affordable Care Act and I started to wonder where we went wrong. I really like the idea expressed by the President that most of us would be able to keep our doctor and insurance plan while at the same time help the uninsured get coverage. This was a win-win situation. Now we find that Senator Coburn’s experience is far from a win-win situation. This was not supposed to happen.
For the moment let us assume that the President honestly believed that the Affordable Care Act would allow most of us to keep our doctor and insurance plan. This was both good politics and policy. The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 and according to Sarah’s reporting that was “how insurance markets worked before the health care law and how they work after it.” So if the President wanted people like Senator Coburn to keep their doctor we have to ask the question, why didn’t anyone try to minimize this problem in the last three years with some good policies? In the not to distant past we used to have a class of bureaucrats who could turn almost any dog piece of legislation into a workable policy. Where have all of the good bureaucrats gone? Did they look at the Affordable Care Act and give up? Three years out of the starting gate and all we have to show for it is a lousy web site and a bunch of narrow network insurance plans. When do we start winning?
Things that make me go hmm…Credit Card Security and www.healthcare.gov
Things That Make Me Go Hmm… Startup-NY advertising in Ohio?
Recently Start-Up NY has been advertising heavily in Cincinnati touting New York as a great place to start a business. Cincinnati has a small but interesting start-up business. Most of the buzz has been about Cintrifuse. Although there have been some successes, no one has confused Cincinnati with the start-up meccas like Silicon Valley. Start-ups in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky largely remain a work in progress. When we look from New York’s perspective the grass sure looks greener over Ohio’s septic tank. The recently released United Van Lines 2013 migration study press release says that New York has the third highest ratio of traffic moving out of state. The reason for the high outbound ratio is complicated but it is hard to ignore the business climate’s consistently low ratings. The 2013 version of the ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index has New York ranked 49th. The year before they were ranked 50th. So why would a budding start-up move from a state like Ohio who is ranked 26th to a state ranked 49th? Cincinnati may not have the cachet of Silicon Valley but it has a better business environment and a lower cost of living than New York.
New York has a difficult marketing problem and from their perspective at the back of the pack, the Cincinnati start-up market is a more appealing target to attract businesses from than Texas or California. Their plan is to create tax free zones in which “businesses can operate 100% tax-free for 10 years. No business, corporate, state or local taxes, sales and property taxes, or franchise fees.” This is an interesting offer but it is restricted to areas located primarily on SUNY campuses around New York City. Their idea was to pair up high tech businesses, low taxes, and college campuses. This might eventually work with Columbia university but I am skeptical of its usefulness at the SUNY campuses. Even if this plan happens to be successful at a major university, what is going to stop Kentucky and Ohio from setting up similar plans at the University of Cincinnati, Xavier, Miami, or Northern Kentucky? In the grand scheme of job migration their plan is a nice employment solution for high tech, college students but it really does not address the much larger unemployment problem with the low education, low skill job market. They may save a few jobs for college graduates but the rest of the people are going to have to look for jobs elsewhere. To fix that problem we have to learn how to grow low and medium tech companies again. We tried to fix the problem by encouraging the growth of the service industries at the expense of manufacturing companies. Now we have learned that the service industry is not the magic bean that will grow the low education, low skill job market. “To grow middle class wealth you must be making things bigger, better, faster, or cheaper.” That will take a different mindset. A mindset that made New York city great a long, long time ago.
When I think of New York City I think of this poem. From huddled masses to high tech college students, it is amazing how the vision of who we are has changed. It is hard to embrace a return to the optimistic vision of the poem when a poor business climate is undermining that vision at every turn. In a very provincial sense I feel like Samuel Gerard in “The Fugitive” who kept telling Dr. Kimble, “I don’t care”. I have a job to do, New York has a job to do, and it is very likely that never shall the twain meet. I hope local start-ups will look at the numbers and stick with Cincinnati. That is the smart decision. Regardless of their decision my life is unaffected. However there is a deeper issue in play. Like Samuel Gerard who finally admits that he does care, I want New York to be successful again. When I root for New York’s success I am not rooting for a more optimistic future for all of us and the success of New York is part of it. I am rooting for the unbridled optimism of the poem.
Give me your tired,
your poor,
Your huddled masses
yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse
of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
the tempest-tost, to me,
I lift my lamp beside
the golden door!
Things That Make Me Go Hmm… The Continuing Bull Market
I have been unwilling to invest more money into the stock market for the last couple of years because the stock market has this uneasy, codependent relationship with the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet. Every time the Fed threatened to cut off the purchases the stock market had a temper tantrum. I hate this market psychology. As an old school MBA type I am much more comfortable with a market that goes up when the unit sales goes up. As a result I missed out on the stock market gains in 2013. Jeff Sauts makes a very good argument on BussinessInsider that the stock prices will continue to go up for the same reason it has since 2009.
…there has been a very tight correlation (R2) between the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet and stock prices since 2009. If the Fed expands its balance sheet by another 12% over the coming year, it is conceivable the SPX could increase by another 12%
His argument is solid so despite my qualms I will probably test the investment waters in 2014. I would be much more optimistic about investing in the stock market if our government was reducing the policy risk on small and medium sized businesses. This is MBA advice you would have gotten in the 1980s. The government needs to get out of way so businesses can get back to their running their business. The Affordable Care Act and the increased regulations are a distraction that has increased the risks to small businesses. It is hard to grow your business with all of these meaningless distractions. I have said it before. If we want to grow middle class wealth we have to focus on making things bigger, better, faster, or cheaper.
Things that make me go hmm… Parsing the Insurance Cancellation Debate
Yesterday I got some good news. Aetna confirmed that I could continue to keep my grandfathered health insurance plan in 2014. Here is the letter.
It is kind of sad but all of the chaos surrounding health insurance cancellations heightened my fears. Despite the President making that conservative argument that if I like my insurance plan I could keep it, it became very important that I figure out what factors allowed me to keep my insurance plan beyond 2013. My trust that the President said what he meant and meant what he said is about zilch. I think the key factor can be found in the second paragraph. I had purchased my plan before March 23, 2010.
Coincidentally I received an email from www.ehealthinsurance.com that covered some of the factors that kept some people from keeping their insurance plans. Here is what they said. Once again the key factor appears to be when you purchased the plan.
AARP® Essential Premier Health Insurance Plan, insured by Aetna
For Non-Grandfathered members in: Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri*, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina*, Tennessee, Texas, or Virginia –Effective January 1, 2014, your current AARP® Essential Premier Health Insurance Plan, insured by Aetna will no longer be available. As a result of the many health coverage options and policies available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), AARP will not be co-branding a 50-64 health insurance product in the 2014 Exchange marketplace.
Because your current co-branded plan was purchased after the passage of the ACA on March 23, 2010, it does not meet all the new standards required in 2014. As a result, you will need to select another plan with an effective date no later than January 1, 2014. You should have received more details from Aetna, including information about a December 1, 2013 option for an Aetna Individual Plan.
If you do not make a new plan selection by November 25, 2013, Aetna will automatically move you to an Affordable Care Act (ACA) qualified health plan (where available) so you have continuous coverage. You must continue to pay premiums on your current coverage through December 31, 2013. This change will go into effect on January 1, 2014.
Please note: There aren’t any Aetna 2014 ACA options available in Missouri and South Carolina. There is only an Aetna December 1, 2013 option.
For more information, please visit http://HealthInsurance.Aetna.com. Should you need help with enrollment, you can call Aetna directly at 888-352-1047, Monday ”“ Friday from 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 p.m. ET.
*There are no Aetna 2014 ACA options in Missouri and South Carolina only an Aetna December 1, 2013 option
Hmm… are the really saying if a person purchased AARP® Essential Premier Health Insurance Plan after March 23, 2010, their plan is being canceled even though the exact same plan exists for other people in the state.
Things that make me go hmm… Fixing www.healthcare.gov by the End of November
I have been critical of www.healthcare.gov since I first used the web site in 2010. It sure looked like I was the only person who had tried to use it and I can say that it did not improve with age. Two weeks ago I had to chuckle when Mr. Zients announced that “by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.” Since his claim violates much of my personal experience and knowledge of software design and development, I was skeptical that they could fix www.healthcare.gov by November 30th. When a project like www.healthcare.gov makes the transition from development mode to maintenance mode, fixing problems on the fly while customers are using the system is difficult and risky. I am not saying the healthcare.gov folks cannot do this but experienced IT guys will remind anyone still listening that they have been there, done that, and have the cuts and bruises to show for it. I hate to say I told you so but CBS is reporting in “Memo warned of "limitless" security risks for HealthCare.gov” that:
Chao said he was unaware of a Sept. 3 government memo written by another senior official at CMS. It found two high-risk issues, which are redacted for security reasons. The memo said "the threat and risk potential (to the system) is limitless." The memo shows CMS gave deadlines of mid-2014 and early 2015 to address them.
I can think of only one reason that Mr. Chao was unaware of the memo, somebody did not want Mr. Chao to know the extent and gravity of the problems. Management failure is a dish best served cold. Good luck, Mr. Zients!
Things that make me go hmm… Valuepenguin.com
I ran across a nice health insurance pricing site today, www.valuepenguin.com. It was easy to use. My only problem was that when I ran my demographics through the calculator it showed the Anthem cabu plan for my demographics(2-59yr,Ohio,clermont county) would cost $969.52. Over at www.ehealthinsurance.com the price is $844.92. Hmm… Why is there a difference?
*** Oops! I entered my data wrong at www.ehealthinsurance.com. With the correct data it matches the numbers at anthem. It is interesting that the Core DirectAccess plan is 3.3% costlier than the Bronze DirectAccess for the same benefits.