collingwest

In March of 2020, when the CARES Act was passed, most people were focused on pay protections, primarily since they included sole proprietorships, a category that covers most so-called “gig workers.” A lot of its provisions also went into effect relatively quickly. But there was another provision in that act and the associated FFCRA that might have been missed, because it wasn’t about pay and it wasn’t effective until just this past Saturday.

Under that provision — which, at the time, I suspect many people, Congress included, may have hoped would not need to become an issue — health insurers are now required to cover over-the-counter COVID-19 tests without any sort of cost share. However, it’s not as easy as going down to the local pharmacy, showing your insurance card, and getting a test for free. There are some requirements that are involved.

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collingwest

The second week of 2022 has certainly had its ups and downs, and my goal work has reflected that. I did end up going back to work this week, but I was only able to manage two days in-person, although I was able to work the other three from home. My bout with COVID-19 is not quite over, despite the fact that I’ve been officially asymptomatic. It seems that my tendency toward extremely long recoveries from respiratory diseases is definitely still in place.

I also had a rather personally painful experience as a result of the online reactions to the very poorly reported comments by Pope Francis on January 5th. Fortunately, though, I was able to go to Adoration the day after it happened, and my experience there was much better than usual. It helped me work my way through it mentally and come to a resolution about my feelings and how I intend to react (or, more properly, not react).

There are also some significant wins in the goals work, too, even if they’re not as much as I’d hoped for. Today is a day I’m having to remind myself that sometimes, any win counts.

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collingwest

This isn’t the post I thought I was going to write.

I thought I was going to write about Pope Francis’ tone deafness with respect to his January 5th general address and its comments about pets versus children. But when I dug deeper, it turned out that the entire situation was little more than manufactured outrage and upset.

It’s understandable why this might have happened. The media did, after all, do a very good job of putting sound bites into their ledes:

Pope Francis has criticized couples who choose to have pets instead of children as selfish, arguing that their decision to forgo parenthood leads to a loss of “humanity” and is a detriment to civilization. [CNN]

In a move likely to raise the hackles of millions of cats, dogs and their human cohabitees [sic], Pope Francis has suggested that couples who prefer pets to children are selfish. [The Guardian]

Pope Francis said that people who adopt pets instead of children were exhibiting a “form of selfishness” as he presided over his first general audience of the new year. [NBC]

Pope Francis criticized individuals who opt for having pets instead of children, saying that a “denial of fatherhood or motherhood diminishes us.” [USA Today]

Based on these four sentences, it seems clear that the leader of the world’s Catholics was stating that couples who don’t have children are selfish to the point of possibly not even being human. The ledes do vaguely suggest that he may only have been talking about voluntarily childfree couples instead of involuntarily childless couples, but it’s not clear enough to be certain. The only thing that was relatively certain was that the comment was, as The Guardian noted, bound to upset a lot of people.

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collingwest

One of the lesser-known provisions of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 is stricter disclosure requirements for group health plan broker commissions. On the surface, this seems like a great idea, especially in light of documents such as the oft-cited 2019 ProPublica/NPR report about broker compensation. What employer wouldn’t want to save more on healthcare costs by making sure that their broker isn’t making too much money off of them?

After reading the report, though, I’m left with more questions and concerns than I am with answers.

The report itself admits that its data is incomplete, stating that the investigating journalist only queried ten broker agencies, none of whom answered his questions. This makes almost no sense to me, considering that as of mid-2021, industry statistics showed 1.2 million insurance brokers in the United States — and even that figure omits the huge number of brokers who, like myself, work as independent contractors. Anyone with any level of statistical knowledge understands that this means the sample size was far too small.

That’s not the only problem with the ProPublica report. ( Keep Reading...Collapse )

collingwest

Yesterday completed week #1 of the new year, and it was a bit of a strange one. At the beginning of the week, I was still very much feeling the lingering effects of my bout with COVID-19 that happened during the last week of 2021. By the end of the week, I was asymptomatic except for a very occasional cough and roughening of my voice.

In the meantime, though, I worked from home the entire week — I usually only do this one or two days in the week — and have otherwise completely isolated myself. I haven’t actually left the house since December 26th, unless you count going out to the mailbox or pulling the trash bin to the curb. This has left me with more than a little bit of cabin fever, and it certainly hasn’t helped the routine.

That said, it wasn’t a bad week. ( Keep Reading...Collapse )

collingwest

Welcome to Second Row, a place for Catholic women who are orthodox and faithful but who don’t quite fit the “mold” of the normal Catholic lifestyle. We may be single career women who never met the right person; we may be converts or reverts who have a not-so-savory past; we may even be lesbians who are choosing to live consistent with the teachings on chastity and celibacy. We might be widows with grown children; or married but childless and done with fertility treatments; or even just the sole Catholic amidst a family of non-Catholics.

Whoever we are, we’re working out our relationships with God and the Church as best we can; but we often feel invisible and excluded simply because there are so few of us and our parishes don’t have the resources to minister to such a small population. While we recognize that, it doesn’t cure the loneliness that comes at times or help us find our place within the parish and the Church.

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collingwest

Welcome to Radius!

I’ve worked in the field of employee benefits since 1999: first in human resources offices in both government and private industry; and then on the broker side focusing on small businesses. During that time, I’ve seen a clear need for better consumer education. That’s what this blog is all about: providing a resource for benefits information, using clear language that anyone — regardless of their level of expertise or experience — can read and understand.

Topics on the blog will include all aspects of employee benefits; while the focus will be primarily on health & welfare benefits, other topics such as total compensation and retirement benefits will occasionally be covered. ( Keep Reading...Collapse )

collingwest

Happy New Year! 2022 has already started out fairly decently in my world, in that both Will and I woke up this morning with clear indications that we’re getting toward the end of our respective bouts of COVID-19. Our vitals are mostly back to normal, and aside of still being quite tired we’re both starting to feel that way too. We’re taking the rest of the weekend to let our bodies finish their recoveries on their own times, instead of attempting to force schedules onto them.

In the meantime, though, it’s still New Year’s Day and that means it’s a time for goal setting. I actually wrote most of these out this past October and have been fine-tuning them since then. I’m going to be using this blog as a way of keeping myself accountable, because if I can meet these goals this year, then I’ll be well on my way toward finishing my larger overall plan of self-improvement between now and the time I reach the half-century mark. So, without further ado, here’s the list of goals I will be working on:

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collingwest

It was a long, long weekend for me as I was busy trying to redo the organization and URLs of my web site. Unfortunately, it took me three days (and a combined six hours on the Chat feature) with my web host* to figure out that they don’t support WP Multisite. Since I’m talking about a small personal site here, I couldn’t justify the cost of a developer or even upgraded hosting options that including some customized SSL solutions.

Fortunately, I stumbled onto Infinite WP yesterday night. ( Keep Reading...Collapse )

collingwest

I’ve spent parts of this weekend revamping and updating my web site, which is now located at https://collingwest.com. Unfortunately, at the moment I have run into a snag with WordPress Multisite. I have a ticket in with my web host and they’ve promised an email as soon as they get it figured out, but until then I’m not able to move forward with setting up the sub-sites.

One thing I’m not prevented from moving forward with, though, is writing content since I do that primarily offline. That, then, is what I’ll focus on until I get the snag untangled. Watch this space for more!

Originally posted at https://collingwest.com/2021/site-re-setup-continues/.