Courage, audacity, and leadership apparently in short supply

Our legislators are describing the proposed healthcare reform as "keeping what works and fixing what doesn't work." I'm concerned that they are taking a simplistic view. Our healthcare system is such a complex, tangled, and flawed conglomerate of silos, it needs to be scrapped, including Medicare and Medicaid.

The existing healthcare system does not work precisely because it is a system of silos. Silos foster self-absorption, disparate goals, redundancy, and poor communication. Cobbling together existing silos with bandaids is doomed to cost a lot more than supporters of the current proposal anticipate, and will not solve the underlying problems.

I'm pragmatic enough to realize that scrapping and building from scratch may be an impossible task for our lobbyist-run government, but now is likely the only time we have a chance to "do the thing right." We need to build an efficient new integrated system managed by a private non-profit entity. We have experts in this country who can accomplish this—just look for proteges of Dr. W. Edwards Deming (http://deming.org/).

To President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate and House: You've got the majority, why not use it maximally? However this turns out, the Democrats will be blamed, so show some courage, audacity, and leadership—go for the best possible solution. Short of that, go for a solution that provides a clear path to an efficient integrated system in five years. On the off chance that you think the current reform proposal provides a clear path to an efficient integrated system . . . think again.

An intelligent response . . . but no answers.

I still have not received a substantive response from Bank of America, but in searching for other blogs/articles expressing similar concerns, it appears that B of A and other TARP recipients are being bombarded with queries such as mine. Good!

On a slightly more positive note, I was heartened by the thoughtful response I received from Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the (TARP) Congressional Oversight Panel (COP). It was an appropriate form letter and provided much information. Reading between the lines, it's clear the COP is frustrated and working hard to get answers.

I recently saw Elizabeth Warren interviewed on The Daily Show and was impressed with her—she's very smart and down-to-earth. (see the 2-part interview here: http://tinyurl.com/d2lbt9, http://tinyurl.com/d7s7s2 I take some comfort that a person of her caliber is leading the COP. Whether the COP will be able to glean the answers and transparency they are looking for remains to be seen. Check out their website: http://cop.senate.gov/, especially the "Reports" section.

I don't expect to ever hear back from Bank of America, but I do have to thank them for pissing me off to the point where I started blogging. It was not my intent to devote this blog to Bank of America's dated and wasteful business practices so I hopefully wrap up the issue with this post.

Follow-up on Bank of America waste

I'm still waiting for a response from B of A regarding their wasteful marketing spending. Meanwhile, I found out that my neighbor, Sherri (http://www.dragonflyzmusicstudio.com), who has no home loan with B of A, received a similar mailing with the same costly, meaningless printed booklet. So now they're sending it to all their customers, not just previous Countrywide customers, as I originally suspected.

I'm thinking that if our government does not monitor our TARP investment, we need to start doing it ourselves. With that in mind, I just emailed the TARP Congressional Oversight Committee and asked for their thoughts on this wasteful marketing spending by a TARP recipient.

I suppose I'm just banging my head against a wall but I'd like to think that someone besides myself is concerned--ideally someone in a position to do something.

Thoughts/suggestions?

What was Bank of America thinking?

Corporations have a huge task realigning their practices with current economic conditions. Waste and excess are deeply ingrained in their cultures. This fact was highlighted when I recently received a mass mailing from Bank of America, welcoming me and my Countrywide mortgage to their organization. The package included a 2-page letter with contact/procedure info, a flyer detailing their privacy policy, and a booklet of "important information and new opportunities" titled Welcome Guide. The letter and privacy policy were appropriate for the situation but I became concerned when I read the Welcome Guide. The content of the Welcome Guide did not justify the complexity and cost of its printing and can only be described as marketing fluff. It used a lot of "feeling" words, with pictures of happy, attractive people. The small amount of substantive information it presented could have cheaply and easily been included in the letter.

I have some basic knowledge of the relative cost to print different kinds of documents and the Welcome Guide was not a cheap project. It used at least 4 ink colors, and the back cover was die cut so that it could be folded and glued to make a little pouch. Inside the pouch were 5 cards, each describing a different product or service with fluffy words, often one word to a page. (Bank of America's 2008 Annual Report mentions plans to have a Countrywide operations rebranding in late April 2009—this must be it. But in our highly connected and communicative environment, does corporate rebranding still require spending on meaningless 4-color glossy booklets?)

Bank of America is a recipient of TARP funds. So I find it ironic that they need the injection of my hard-earned tax dollars to stay afloat, yet they can afford to squander money on intellectually insulting marketing projects. This kind of business activity sends the message that they are clueless in the face of our current economic crisis.

I realize Bank of America is a really big company and it takes time to change a big corporate culture, so I was going to let this issue slide. But I'm concerned about the widespread wasteful business practices that lurk in corporations and I think we have a responsibility to point out this waste. In an effort to help raise corporate consciousness I sent an email to Bank of America's investor relations department (as a taxpayer I am now an investor!) asking them to please justify the cost of this expensive piece of marketing fluff.

I received an auto-acknowledgement and am waiting for a substantive reply. I hope I can have a thoughtful conversation with Bank of America. I will suggest that instead of printing meaningless documents, they put those funds in a rainy-day savings account to cover them during troubled times!

Stay tuned . . .