Desert Sky - Articles

University of Minnesota scientists recently reported research results in Science magazine, indicating that biofuels derived from grassland plants yield up to twice as much energy, per unit of land, as corn-based ethanol does. Are grasslands the key to the future of alternative energy production?

Although the University of Minnesota research results are indeed promising, producing significant amounts of biofuels from grassland plants, which would make a real difference for the environment and a positive impact on global warming, requires careful thought and a substantial investment. Only about one percent of the original grasslands ecosystem remains because it has been converted to agriculture, or is degraded and abandoned.

A little history might be helpful: In the 19th century, grassland covered almost 40% of North America and sustained millions of grazing bison, pronghorns and elk - and the predators that fed on them. The original grasslands were healthy because of the symbiotic and holistic relationship between the land and the animals. The presence of predators kept the grazing animals on the move; and their hoof action worked the soil so that their manure was quickly absorbed. These actions increased the soil's organic matter, thereby fertilizing it and making it healthier.

Therefore, if we want to restore the grasslands to health, we simply can't plant grass seeds and harvest them. The processes that would be required to grow these grasses would eventually result in the same consumptive, mechanical and chemical-laden approach now used to produce corn for ethanol.

Instead, we would have to be willing to free up the vast amount of acreage we will need; grow the grass with the animals present; manage animal grazing in such a way that it replicates the behavior of those wild grazers of yesteryear; leave sufficient forage for the animals after harvesting a certain percentage of the grasses for energy production, and permit enough time to elapse for the roots of the plants in the harvested and grazed areas to rest and recover.

It sounds like a tall order, but our organization, Holistic Management International, has accumulated abundant evidence - over 23 years of working internationally with farming and ranching families - that this is actually possible. Today, one million acres in the United States are successfully cultivated using Holistic Management.

If we could bring the animals back to the land and restore the grasslands, the results could be significant:

Vast amounts of carbon would end up in plant roots instead of in the atmosphere.

The water resources of the land, in underground aquifers and in those prairie regions would be increased - because covered soil retains significantly more water than bare ground does.

The overall habitat for wildlife would be improved.

Outbreaks of pests and weeds would decrease, along with the attendant use of herbicides and pesticides.

We could reduce the amount of methane that is produced by livestock in confined feeding operations.

We could produce a high-quality, clean protein product for human consumption.

And in the end, we would also improve our rural economies.

Holistic Management International is an Albuquerque-based non-profit that works both nationally and internationally with stewards of large land holdings to restore their lands to health and profitability.

New Mexico Health Security Act
By Jane Blume

This article was published in the January 2007 issue of La Montanita Co-op’s newsletter, Co-op Connection.

How many of you have health insurance, and find that it is increasingly unaffordable for you or your employer? How many of you are facing cuts in your health benefits, increases in co-payments and premiums, and restrictions in your choice of doctor? How many of you can't even afford insurance? How many others are in the same boat?

Clearly, the private insurance insurance system has failed. Congress is not facing up to the health insurance crisis, and the states are now taking action on their own.

Isn't it time for New Mexico to set up its own health plan cooperative, which would cover most state residents with a comprehensive benefit package and freedom of choice of doctor? The Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign is working to make this idea a reality.

The Campaign is a large and continuously growing statewide coalition of 127 member organizations, representing thousands of individuals, that has been working since 1993 for significant and comprehensive health insurance reform in New Mexico. The New Mexico Health Security Plan is a proposal developed by New Mexicans and for New Mexicans, with input from thousands of people from all walks of life throughout the state.

The Health Security Plan guarantees:

Health care coverage - no matter what your health, economic or employment status is
Choice of doctor and hospital - even across state lines
A comprehensive benefit package that is no less than the one that state employees receive (which includes acupuncture and chiropractic treatments)
Preservation of the private health care delivery system (physicians, hospitals, etc.)
Strong protections for retirees
Reductions in premiums for automobile and Worker's Compensation insurance, policies that have a large medical component, most of which would be covered under the Plan

An estimated 1.6 million New Mexicans would be in one large insurance pool, which becomes a strong buying cooperative that reduces the costs of prescription drugs and medical supplies. The tribes, who are sovereign nations, and large companies that self-insure, could elect to join the Plan. The only groups not covered are federal retirees and active-duty and retired military, who continue with their own insurance.

The Health Security Plan is financed by efficiently combining monies from public sources (i.e., Medicaid and Medicare) with individual premiums (based upon income) and employer contributions (with caps) into a dedicated fund. Private insurance companies can sell supplementary policies, just as they do now under Medicare.

A geographically representative, non-governmental, publicly accountable citizens' commission administers the Plan. Ten commissioners represent consumer and business interests and five represent health care providers. Commission meetings and records are open to the public.

The Health Security Act, which creates the Health Security Plan, sets up a three-year process to develop the financing and details with input from the public. If at any point the Plan proves to be unworkable, we can apply the brakes. Nothing in the current system changes until the legislature, the governor and the public deem it ready to begin operations.

Studies conducted in New Mexico and numerous other states have concluded that having all or most state residents into one health insurance risk pool will stabilize health costs and save billions of dollars.

New Mexico's health care crisis continues to worsen as premiums continue to rise. Piecemeal solutions that support the current private insurance system simply haven't worked. Now is the time to pass the Health Security Act. Legislation will be introduced this month during the 2007 60-day legislative session. We know that the bill will face strong opposition from the insurance industry. However, grassroots support from around the state for this plan is growing fast and can really make a difference.

In less than four years our coalition has grown from 28 to 127 member organizations, including two county medical societies and farmer and rancher groups. Already, ten New Mexico city councils and county commissions have unanimously endorsed the Health Security Act - and more are on the way.

We CAN make this plan a reality, but we need you, the Co-op Connection readers, plus your friends, families and co-workers, to help us. If you agree that we should stop investing taxpayer dollars in a failed private insurance system and instead should choose a different path, then we urge you and everyone you know to contact Governor Richardson and your state legislators and ask them to support and pass the New Mexico Health Security Act.

New Mexicans cannot afford to wait any longer for real health care reform. If you want more information about the Plan and how to help us, please contact us TODAY at 897-1803.

Jane Blume, owner of Desert Sky Communications, is the media consultant to the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign.

N.M. Health Plan Has Statewide Support
By Eleanor Chavez and Max Bartlett

This piece was published in the November 18, 2006 issue of the Santa Fe New Mexican.

On Thursday, October 19, the overwhelming majority of Governor Richardson’s Health Coverage for New Mexicans Committee, his third task force on health insurance reform, selected the New Mexico Health Security Plan - advocated by the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign - as their Number One model for a financial study that will analyze three different insurance reform models and how they impact rising health care costs.

Published reports have described the Health Security Plan inaccurately, and we are taking this opportunity to educate the public about the details.

Why is there such strong support on the Committee to study this plan? It is because the Committee members understand what 123 member organizations (plus hundreds of individuals, business owners and physicians) of the statewide Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign coalition understand:

That this is a well thought-out cooperative plan, developed over more than a decade of consulting with thousands of New Mexicans around the state from all walks of life. The Health Security Plan is designed by New Mexicans for New Mexicans, and is not based upon any known model.
That the Health Security Plan guarantees health coverage for 1.6 million New Mexicans, regardless of employment, economic or health status. (The only populations not covered are federal retirees and active-duty and retired military. The tribes and employers that are self-insured under ERISA can elect to join the Plan.)
That the Health Security Plan guarantees choice of doctor (even across state lines), a generous benefit package that can be no less than the one that state employees have, and protections for retirees.
That the Plan will be financed with a dedicated fund, which efficiently combines monies from government sources (i.e., Medicaid and Medicare) with individual premiums based upon income and employer contributions based upon payroll (with caps).
That an independent, geographically representative and publicly accountable Commission will administer the Plan. Of 15 commissioners, 10 represent consumer and business interests and 5 represent the provider community. Hospitals, clinics, HMOs, private practice physicians, pharmacists, and other providers negotiate their budgets and fees with the Commission.
That our large insurance pool will allow for bulk purchasing of drugs and medical equipment and supplies.
That because 1.6 million New Mexicans will be in one insurance pool – instead of the numerous small insurance pools we have today - we will spread out the risk, reduce administrative overhead for health care providers and hospitals, and be able to exert stronger control over cost increases.
That premiums for automobile, van, truck and worker’s comp insurance will be reduced because their medical components will no longer be needed.
That if the bill creating the Health Plan is approved by the Legislature, there will be a go-slow, three-year implementation period to ensure that we do this right. Year One is called “The Year of Financing,” during which the Legislative Finance Committee, with public input, will determine the cost of the Plan, the premiums and employer contributions and insurance premium reductions. At the end of the year, the Legislature and the Governor must approve the financing package – otherwise, the Plan will not go into effect. During Years Two to Three, details of how the Plan will operate are developed with legislative, executive and public input. We will have the ability to extend the time to proceed or to put on the brakes should this phase not prove to be workable.

A member of the Health Coverage for New Mexicans Committee, Dr. Craig Keyes of United Health Care, stated recently that the New Mexico Health Security Plan is “the only model” of the three selected for the financial study “that will control costs.” It is also the only model that does not seek to continue to invest public dollars in a failed private insurance system.

The Plan has attracted attention from health reform advocates nationwide, and was the inspiration for a similar bill introduced this year into the Arizona legislature. We welcome invitations to present the details of the Plan to interested groups, who may contact us at 505-897-1803.

Eleanor Chavez and Max Bartlett are the Chair and Vice-Chair, respectively, of the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign.

The New Mexico Health Security Plan: A Co-op Model for Our State
By Jane Blume

This article was published in the October 2006 issue of La Montanita Co-op’s newsletter, Co-op Connection.

As La Montanita Co-op members surely know, a cooperative is a group of persons who join together to carry on a mutually beneficial economic activity.

The question is: it is possible to bring this cooperative spirit into our broken health care system and reform insurance coverage so that everyone benefits? The answer from the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign is a resounding “yes.”

The Campaign is a large and growing statewide coalition of 122 member-organizations (plus hundreds of business owners, individuals and physicians) that has been working since 1993 for significant and comprehensive health insurance reform in New Mexico.

At present, the cooperative spirit in health insurance really does not exist. Insurance companies by and large are concerned with ensuring profits and covering the healthiest individuals among us.

Approximately 46.5 million people nationwide - including an estimated 400,000 in New Mexico – are without coverage. A decreasing number of insured are paying rising premiums for an increasing number of uninsured. Those with coverage are segmented into hundreds of small insurance pools, which create higher risks and a complex administrative system that result in higher costs.

Studies in several states, including New Mexico, have shown that if all or most residents were covered under one insurance pool, billions of dollars would be saved over time. Early on, the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign realized that real, comprehensive reform would require us to create a health plan that would bring back the cooperative spirit of old-fashioned insurance, where we would all be in it together sharing the risks – the old, the young, the healthy and the not-so-healthy.

The New Mexico Health Security Plan is a proposal developed by New Mexicans for New Mexicans, with input from people from all over the state. The Plan guarantees:

Health care coverage - no matter what your health, economic or employment status is
Choice of doctor – even across state lines
A comprehensive benefit package that is no less than the one that state employees receive (which includes acupuncture and chiropractic treatments)
Preservation of the private health care delivery system (physicians, hospitals, etc.)
Strong protections for retirees
Premiums based in income
Reductions in premiums for automobile and Worker’s Compensation insurance – because these policies have a large medical component, most of which would be covered under the Plan.

An estimated 1.6 million New Mexicans would be in one large insurance pool, which becomes a strong buying cooperative for prescription drugs and medical supplies. The tribes, which are sovereign nations, and large companies that self-insure could elect to join the Plan. The only groups not covered are federal retirees and active-duty and retired military, who continue with their own plans.

The Plan is financed by combining monies from public sources (i.e., Medicaid and Medicare) with individual premiums (based upon income) and employer contributions (with caps). Private insurance companies can sell supplementary policies, just as they do now under Medicare.

A geographically representative, non-governmental, publicly accountable citizens’ commission administers the Plan. Ten commissioners represent consumer and business interests and five represent the health care provider community. Like a coop, commission meetings and records are open to the public.

As you read this, you may be asking yourself: this cooperative Plan sounds like a winner. Why isn’t it in place already? The answer is: the New Mexico legislature must pass a law to create this Plan, and the legislation has faced strong opposition from the insurance industry.

However, grassroots support for this idea is growing and can make a difference. In less than four years our coalition has grown from 28 to 122 member organizations, including two county medical societies and farmer and rancher groups. To make this plan a reality, we need you, the Co-op newsletter readers, plus your friends, families and co-workers to help us.

Until now, the Richardson Administration has embraced piecemeal solutions, some of which use taxpayer dollars to subsidize purchasing private insurance. Unfortunately, these piecemeal efforts haven’t made a significant dent in the number of uninsured or succeeded in controlling ever-rising premium increases.

The Governor recently appointed his third task force to come up with possible solutions. New Mexico is now at a crossroads. We can either continue to invest public dollars in the failed private insurance system or choose a different path.

The Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign believes that a homegrown plan that meets New Mexico’s needs is the right road to take. If you want more information or would like to help us, please contact us at 505-897-1803 or .

Jane Blume, owner of Desert Sky Communications, is the media consultant to the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign.

Print Media Reinforces Our Reputation
By David H. Kelsey, Managing Partner, Atkinson & Kelsey, P.A., Albuquerque, New Mexico

“Print Media Reinforces Our Reputation” by David H. Kelsey, published in Family Advocate, Volume 29, No. 2, Fall 2006. © 2006 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

In 1973, Atkinson & Kelsey was the first law firm in New Mexico to specialize in divorce and family law.

We made that decision at a time when divorce lawyers were not generally held in high regard by the legal profession - or by our society as a whole. Attorneys in our firm have helped change the perception of divorce and family law - at both the state and national level - to a respected, recognized specialty.

Therefore, our long-term marketing strategy (of which our advertising is an integral part) has been to convey a consistent message that our firm is a leader in the field, with attorneys who have made substantive contributions to both the family law specialty and to the legal profession, and who also provide top-quality and effective representation for our clients.

Our advertising is designed both to enhance our image as a leader in our profession and to generate new clients and referrals from our target audiences: the general public, former clients, other attorneys in New Mexico, divorce and family law attorneys around the country, and other professionals such as CPAs and mental health counselors. Therefore, our advertising decisions are based upon two considerations:

We will have an opportunity to present the firm as a whole.

The advertising vehicle reaches one or more of our target audiences.

We consistently dedicate 2-3% of our annual revenues to our marketing efforts, and 50% of the marketing budget is spent on advertising. We schedule a marketing meeting once a month, where we review our planned activities and make adjustments as the circumstances warrant (and they often do).

Our marketing committee evaluates all the advertising proposals and selects which outlet we think meets our basic criteria. As Managing Partner, I spend about 5% of my time generating the marketing ideas, and an outside agency executes them. Our firm administrator spends seven hours a week coordinating the marketing strategy and the advertising contracts, and serving as liaison to the creative agency.

Although we view the print media as the best vehicle to communicate our messages to our target audiences, the Internet is fast becoming a very important resource for us, as well.

Advertising: General Public
To reach the general public statewide, we buy advertising in two major print outlets, the Yellow Pages and the Albuquerque Journal, the state's leading newspaper. Because most of the state's population lives in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe corridor, we have built a major presence in those area Yellow Pages with full-page color ads on the back covers.

We also take out smaller ads in the Yellow Pages that serve another area of notable population density: around the southern New Mexico city of Las Cruces. In addition, we do not neglect the regular Albuquerque white pages: our smaller rectangular ads stand out with black type on a yellow background or white type on a blue background.

The Yellow Pages have become one of the most important sources of new clients for us. 22% of new clients in the month of May cited those directories as the reason they called us. For the year to date, 17% of new clients found us this way.

As for the Albuquerque Journal, we advertise 26 times a year (twice a month) in its Monday "Business Outlook" section, because research has indicated that - after the sports section - "Business Outlook" has the highest readership, not only among business owners and managers but also among support staff and independent professionals. We use these ads to call attention to the accomplishments of our individual attorneys, while at the same time always promoting the entire firm.

While only 2% of new clients in May cited the Journal as the outlet that triggered their call (1% for the year to date), we believe that our newspaper advertising (along with other marketing activities) helps to keep our name "top of mind" among our sources of referrals. In May of this year, 26% of new clients came to us on referral (the year-to-date figure is 17%).

Our Website
Recognizing that people are using the Internet with increasing frequency to do research about their needs and interests, we decided that we needed to become more visible there to attract higher numbers of out-of-state clients who have connections to and family law issues in New Mexico. This past spring, we changed our Web hosting service from a local provider to a national company that offers an online directory of law firms and helps these firms to enhance and promote their websites.

We increased our visibility on the Web by purchasing a "top five" position on the directory's divorce and family law page for Albuquerque, and we are among the top eleven firms listed on the New Mexico page. With the company's assistance, we also added a special section to our site from which visitors can send us questions about their issues without charge - and we assigned one of our attorneys to answer the questions with a quick turn-around.

As an indicator of how important the Internet has become in attracting new clients: in our first month with the national provider, our website received 530 hits. In May of this year, 23% of our new clients came to us through the Internet, while the figure for the year to date is 15%.

Advertising: Legal Profession
We advertise to the legal profession in New Mexico by placing ads on a quarterly basis on the back cover of The Bar Bulletinin, which is published weekly by the New Mexico State Bar and is sent to every attorney in the state. To reach the national audience of divorce and family lawyers, we advertise on the back cover of The Family Advocate once a year.

To present a consistent image and message about our firm, our print ads contain several unchanging elements: our logo, a word of congratulations, the name and photo of the attorney receiving the congratulations, the specific accomplishment for which we are congratulating him or her, our telephone number, and our tag line, "New Mexico's First and Most Experienced Divorce and Family Law Firm."

We believe that the tag line words make reference to what is basically true about us: that we've been in practice for a long time and are very skilled at what we do. This is the most critical point about our advertising and marketing as a whole: our efforts have paid off over time because they have communicated a truthful message to the audiences who are most important to our success.

David H. Kelsey Profile
David H. Kelsey has been referred to as "the dean of family law attorneys" in New Mexico for his training and mentoring of many of the state's premier divorce and family law specialists. The first family law attorney to serve as the president of the New Mexico State Bar, he is also the only family law attorney to be listed under the New Mexico section of every edition of Best Lawyers in America. He is a charter member of the American College of Family Law Trial Lawyers and the only New Mexico attorney in the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

The Health Security Plan: Proposal for Affordable Health Care
By Mick Harper, Owner, Blue Sky Woodworks

This article was published in the October edition of the New Mexico Business Journal.

Would your customers accept a 51% increase in your prices over a three-year period while the quality of your goods or services declined? Most of us would not stay in business very long if we allowed that to occur. However, that is exactly what has happened with my company's health insurance coverage.

Over a three-year period, starting with our 2004 policy renewal, our health insurance premiums rose 51%. In return, we received slightly reduced benefits, shorter primary care hours (requiring more visits to urgent care), and higher employee co-pays. The beneficiaries of the large premiums I pay are a handful of health-system executives (and their company's shareholders) in Tennessee.

In 2003, my monthly cost for a single male worker's premium was $147. I now pay $230 per person monthly. This is a sizeable portion of my payroll, given the fact that I have nine full-time employees. Why would my insurance company raise my premiums - on a generally young, healthy employee group - by 51% in three years?

One reason is that my company and my employees are the targets of cost shifting, where a decreasing number of insured are paying for the medical care of a growing number of uninsured. In New Mexico, 21% are uninsured, often using expensive emergency rooms when they have a crisis. (We're also paying for this care through our taxes.) An estimated 75% of the uninsured are working, but they and their employers cannot afford to pay the premiums.

A second reason is that small businesses like mine are generally placed in small insurance pools that have higher risks - so we pay higher premiums per capita than large employers do. If one person in my shop gets sick, my premiums will go up even more.

These massive cost increases are fast becoming unaffordable to me and many other business owners. I am currently faced with a critical dilemma: if I ask my employees to cover a larger share of the premium, most will choose not to (this actually happened several years ago) - making my insurance pool even smaller and disqualifying me from group plans.

Other options, such as signing up for state programs like the Health Insurance Alliance, are not working for my business because my employee wage rates are too high. It is my understanding that few employers are signing up for these programs.

Clearly, the private medical insurance system has failed. The current efforts to expand coverage in New Mexico continue to invest in a failed system by using taxpayer dollars to help the uninsured buy private health insurance - with no cost control provisions. Offering more policies on the market results in additional small insurance pools and higher costs for hospitals and physicians - who are burdened with administering our complex system.

Health economists predict that costs will continue to increase. Obviously, something new and different must be done.

Several years ago, I found out about a very appealing proposal - one that would allow us to set up our own health plan in New Mexico - very much like a cooperative. The Health Security Plan has been under development for more than a decade. Most New Mexicans would be covered under the Plan; so the cost and risks would be spread among a very large insurance pool - 1.5 million people. To me, the advantages of such economies of scale are self-evident.

The Plan guarantees health coverage no matter what a person's health or economic status is, choice of doctor (even across state lines) and a generous benefit package. 1.5 million customers in a large buying pool will have negotiating clout, resulting in reduced costs for prescriptions and medical supplies.

Employers will benefit because with guaranteed health coverage, we'll experience lower employee absenteeism and higher productivity.

We will benefit even further because our premiums will be reduced for other insurance policies that have a medical component, such as auto, van and truck insurance and Worker's Compensation.

An independent, non-governmental, geographically representative commission would administer the Health Security Plan. To finance coverage and reimburse health care providers, the Act that establishes the Plan creates a dedicated fund, combining monies from government sources (e.g., Medicaid) with individual premiums based on income and employer contributions - with caps.

There would be a three-year feasibility period, giving us time to determine whether the Plan is affordable and whether we can put it together carefully and successfully. This unusual approach allows us to put on the brakes if this seems to be unworkable.

I urge you to learn more about this Plan. Feel free to contact me at 505-897-0594, or call the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign directly, 505-897-1803.

Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans Still At the Top of the Charts
By Mary Lou Dobbs, President, Executive Benefit Strategies, Inc.

This article was published in the August 10, 2006 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

Nonqualified Deferred Compensations Plans have existed for over 50 years. They were developed to allow corporations to select a group of key employees and carve out additional benefits to encourage loyalty, retention and high performance. Loyalty and retention are key, due to the high cost of replacing and training talented executives.

Another consideration was the reverse discrimination against the highly compensated employee in the qualified plans. Due to the limits on contributions for qualified plans and Social Security benefits, individuals earning high incomes find that a diminishing percentage of their current compensation can be replaced at retirement through these two sources. Here is an example: someone making $50,000, who contributes 10% or $5,000 into a 401 (k), at the age of 65 may receive $14,780 a year plus $16,644 from Social Security, which totals $31,424, or 62.8% of total income.

On the other hand, someone earning $150,000 ends up with 44.8% of total earnings, and someone earning $250,000 ends up with only 26.9% of total compensation provided by retirement benefits.

Given this reverse discrimination, non-qualified plans have become so popular because they defer income on a pre-tax basis at amounts in excess of the qualified plan limits.

In their earliest and simplest forms, these plans generally involved an advance agreement between an employer and an employee that an amount to be earned in a given year would be paid to the employee in a subsequent year, generally upon retirement or termination of employment. The plan was informally funded by a combination of corporate assets or a combination of employer matching of employee deferrals (called 401k mirror plans).

If the agreement were structured properly in accordance with all Tax Code requirements, the employee would not pay tax on the deferred amount until he received it.

A survey titled, “Executive Benefits-A Survey of Current Trends, 2005 Results,” published in Los Angeles, concluded that, “the popularity of nonqualified deferred compensation plans continues because there is a sustained demand for low-cost corporate plans with the power to recruit, retain and reward a select group of managers or highly compensated employees.“

“Also, deferred compensation plans offer greater flexibility of design as compared to 401 (k) plans.” According to the survey, 91% of respondent companies offer a non-qualified deferred compensation plan.

Executives who benefit most from the plans are at the top of the corporate pyramid: presidents and CEOs (89% of whom reported being eligible for such plans in the 2005 survey), followed by executive and senior vice presidents (87%), vice presidents (74%) and division or unit managers (33%).

54% of survey respondents said that their nonqualified plan contains six criteria for distributions: separation from service, death, disability, specified time, change in control, and hardship clause.

The survey noted also that 73% of non-qualified plans are informally funded, whereas only 24% of these plans remain unfunded.

In the past, many companies and professional practices (such as CPA and law firms) created a sinking fund, or became obligated to pay an obligation to future generations. The future generation then became obligated to fund and pay out large amounts from current profits. This financial burden has strapped or ruined many firms.

On the executive side, the question is: What happens if the business I work for doesn’t make it, and the assets set aside to fund a portion of my retirement are attached by creditors? This concern created the “Rabbi Trust,” which protects participants against adverse decisions that plan sponsors may make.

Since then, many other kinds of plans have surfaced, such as Controlled Executive Bonus, 412 I plans and Section 79 group plans. They allow the corporate owner to carve out key employees, level the playing field, and address the reverse discrimination.

Mary Lou Dobbs is the president of Executive Benefit Strategies, Inc., which provides succession planning, living buyout and non-qualified executive compensation services to business owners and other professionals. She may be reached at 505-688-6703. Dobbs has more than three decades of executive experience in insurance, business exit strategies, and sales training, most recently as Senior Vice President of Wells Fargo Insurance. She is the author of the book, “The Cinderella Salesman,” and has published articles on business succession and non-qualified executive compensation planning in Southwest Airlines’ Spirit magazine and in industry publications.

Retirement: Annuities Quiet the Fear of Outliving Your Income
By Mary Lou Dobbs, President, Executive Benefit Strategies, Inc.

This article was published in the June 1, 2006 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

A major concern for both retired people, and baby boomers on the edge of retirement, is: will I last longer than my money does? The number of seniors - including the baby boomer pool - will climb to 78 million by 2030. 80% of baby boomers currently have only $125,000 in total assets due to inflation, taxation, poor investment decisions, or no investment strategies at all.

Worries about retirement security keep people awake at night. Do you worry about outliving your assets… inflation eroding your purchasing power… income taxes that reduce your investment profits… predators (total strangers or a family member) who look for vulnerable assets… putting your nest egg at risk to achieve greater return on your investments? In addition to these concerns, we also know that companies are beginning to abandon their pension plans, and you can't expect to make substantive gains on your investments in a low-interest marketplace.

How can you overcome these fears and achieve peace of mind? There is a bright spot in the "safe money" arena: annuities.

Purchased from insurance companies, annuities offer safety and guaranteed rates of return in bad times, provide opportunities for growth in good times, and promote independence and peace of mind. Parents use annuities in estate planning to make sure that an adult child who has no ability to control his or her spending will have an income for life. Annuities also shelter assets from financial predators and avoid probate.

An annuity is similar to a Certificate of Deposit (CD) guaranteed by the FDIC - in that the insurance company that issues the annuities also guarantees them. (The financial strength of insurance companies often far exceeds that of financial institutions.) Annuities have many positive features, including tax-deferred interest income accumulation, and best of all, they are the only investment vehicles that can provide a guaranteed lifetime income that an individual or couple can never outlive.

The recent introduction of Equity-Indexed Annuities (EIAs) has been taking the savings/investment marketplace by storm. EIAs allow you to participate in stock market-like returns without incurring any risk to your principal or earned interest. A simplistic way to think about Equity-Indexed Annuities would be to imagine going to Las Vegas and playing your favorite game of chance, knowing that the absolutely worst thing that could happen is that you'll go home with the same amount of money that you came with. And, if you are a winner, the casino will share the winnings with you.

EIAs allow individual investors to trade all of the risk for some of the gain. You won't receive 100 per cent of your winnings, but you are guaranteed not to lose any of the principal or earned interest. EIAs allow individual investors to chase potentially higher stock market-like returns without putting the principal at risk.

We insure our cars… we insure our homes… we insure our lives. Why not insure that we won't outlive our incomes? The basic saving/investment rule for seniors, or anyone saving for retirement, should be: Never lose principal or interest! It might take you 50, 60, or 70 years to accumulate whatever nest egg you have. You do not have the time or the ability to replace lost funds. The mantra should be: Safe Money.

Redirecting a portion of your assets to an indexed annuity will help overcome outliving your assets, inflation, taxes, predators, and risky or low-interest investments, and will give you the potential for faster growth while keeping your money safe.

Mary Lou Dobbs, president of Executive Benefit Strategies Inc. in Albuquerque, has over 30 years of experience in insurance and related products. You can reach her at 505-688-6703 or www.mldobbs.com.

Seminal Booklets on 13 Pioneer New Mexico Jewish Families Released
By Jane Blume and Lisa Witt

Adapted from an article that was published in the March 2006 issue of the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society's newsletter.

On Sunday, March 5, 2006, the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society (NMJHS) celebrated and presented the results of an unprecedented four-year study of the untold role of Jewish Pioneers in the development of the multi-ethnic State of New Mexico from 1850 to 1920. Thirteen booklets that relate the stories of these pioneer families were unveiled and are currently available for purchase.

This groundbreaking work, a joint effort of the NMJHS and the University of New Mexico History Department and Center for Regional Studies, began in 2002 with 11 dedicated volunteers assigned to research thirteen New Mexico pioneer families.

"I am thrilled to see the completion of this lengthy study," said Project Director Lisa Witt, owner of Avista Video Histories. "Since I have a personal and professional interest in helping people preserve their family stories, it was so gratifying and fascinating to uncover information about people who played such an enormous part in the history of New Mexico. These are stories most people don't know about, even people in the Jewish community."

Accompanied by professional videographers from Avista Video Histories, project volunteers interviewed about two-dozen second and third generation members of the Seligman, Ilfeld-Nordhaus, Herzstein, Goldsmith, Ravel, Taichert, Spiegelberg, Wertheim (both Carlsbad and Ft. Sumner), Freudenthal-Lesinsky-Solomon, Gusdorf, Danoff, and Moise families.

The Jewish Pioneer families were selected based upon specific criteria: they arrived in New Mexico in the middle part of the 19^th century through World War I; they made significant economic, political or other contributions to the state; their descendants still reside in New Mexico; and they were willing to make a representative available to serve as a liaison to the project team.

Before starting their assignments, the volunteers received about 20 (instead of 40) hours of training over an 8 (not 10)-week period from UNM Professors Noel Pugach and Durwood Ball, Jewish Pioneer scholar Henry J. Tobias, Rose Diaz, Program Manager, UNM Libraries, Political Archives and Lisa Witt. The subjects covered in the training included New Mexico, American Jewish and New Mexico Jewish history, and methods of doing historical research and conducting interviews. Archivist Judy Basen Weinreb developed the initial concept and grant proposals and guided the archival part of the project.

The taped interviews, transcripts, digitized photographs, booklets and booklet templates will be made available to researchers at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (NMJHS Collection) and at the UNM Center for Southwest Research. Booklet sets will also be distributed to other libraries, museums and archives having an interest in the Jewish Pioneer topic throughout New Mexico and nationally.

"We expect this body of work will be of interest to many students of American Jewish History," said Professor Pugach.

It was generally known that Jewish settlers, primarily (but not exclusively) from Germany, were an integral part of life in 19^th-century New Mexico, as merchants, bankers, miners, ranchers, soldiers and politicians. However, our study of the Pioneer Families has yielded many significant findings. We learned that the geographical reach of Jewish settlement and economic activity was greater and broader than earlier studies have indicated. Jewish pioneers settled all over New Mexico, from Taos to Carlsbad. Some of the places where they lived are truly obscure, and in some cases they are no longer inhabited. For example, the Wertheims of Ft. Sumner catered to the needs of miners in Porter. Nathan Weil created a little empire in Ocate, and the Vorenbergs established themselves in Wagon Mound.

During the territorial period of New Mexico following the U.S. conquest, Jewish merchants were critical players in the nascent New Mexico economy, particularly in rural communities, and their influence carried well into the twentieth century. The operation of their shops and stores almost single-handedly kept some small towns and isolated hamlets on the map. The merchants also learned Spanish and various Indian languages so that they could communicate effectively with their customers.

The Jewish merchants were also innovative and daring in their mercantile enterprises. Several of them made the transition from retailing to wholesaling, often combining the two; some also added freighting to their enterprises. In Clayton, Simon Herzstein recognized that World War I was hastening the acceptance of manufactured clothing. Consequently, he opened Herzstein's Ready to Wear, which carried such name brands as Stetson, Justin and Levi Strauss. Other merchants diversified into cattle ranching, sheep raising and the hide trade.

In the process of earning a living, these pioneer families combined efforts and resources to plant and cultivate the first Jewish communities and institutions in New Mexico. The fruit of their devotion is the rich, vibrant Jewish society that flourishes throughout the state and region today.

The early families never lived lives apart from the majority population; instead, they became active, dedicated members of their communities. They were heavily involved in civic affairs, and some occupied public offices, including Willi Spiegelberg, Mayor of Santa Fe, Henry Jaffa, the first Mayor of Albuquerque, and Solomon Bibo, who married an Acoma woman and eventually became the only non-native (and Jewish) governor of Acoma Pueblo.

While retaining loyalty to their Jewish faith, the Jewish pioneers generously supported financially local churches and local celebrations. One of the most notable examples is Santa Fe businessman Abraham Staab, who accumulated a large fortune as a major supply contractor for the U.S. Army during the Civil War, was very close to Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy and donated funds to help the beloved cleric build St. Francis Cathedral. Staab, and so many like him, have therefore left a rich legacy, which the New Mexico Jewish Video Project has gone far to uncover.

NMJHS expresses warmest appreciation to the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, The New Mexico Historical Records Advisory Board, the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities, the Albuquerque Community Foundation and numerous private donors and Jewish Pioneer families, who provided funding for the study.

We also honor the 11 volunteers who were with the Jewish Pioneer Families project from start to finish: Richard Deutsch, Gail Jamin, Steve Kesselman, Anita Miller, Naomi Sandweiss, Paula Schwartz, Vivan Skadron, Judith Solo, Paula Steinberg, Pete Tannen and Barbara Weinbaum.

Is Old Technology Eating Your Lunch?
By Carole Petranovich, President, Computer Corner

This article was published in the March 2, 2006 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

We’re all concerned about the rising cost of energy. What effect is your computer equipment having on your power bill? How much time are you wasting waiting for your old equipment to perform?

We tend to follow the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” to justify keeping our old computer, monitor and printer. Then, of course, there’s the cost concern: “Should I really spend XXX on new equipment when this is working just fine?” But, what is it really costing you to hold on to your old technology?

Technology has changed markedly - especially in the past five years. According to statistics provided by Samsung, the cost of running an old-style CRT monitor averages $17 per year, while it costs only $5.40 per year to operate an LCD display. That’s not a huge saving, perhaps, unless your company has 100 computers and you’re suddenly looking at a $1,160 difference in the annual cost of running all this equipment. And with the price of energy rising, this difference can only grow larger.

What about that old laser printer? They are certainly built to last; some models survive for 10 or more years. But what does that mean to your pocketbook? Five to ten years ago, most moderately priced printers did not print on both sides of a sheet. Newer printers now offer this feature for a relatively low cost, saving on both equipment and paper (whose prices continue to rise because more expensive energy affects the costs of production and distribution).

As recently as five years ago, color laser printers were beyond the financial reach of most individuals and small businesses: a full-color print could cost as much as $5.00 per page in ink and materials, at a resolution of 300 or 600 dpi (dots per inch). The new generation of 1200 dpi laser printers produces photographic color prints and business documents for as little as 12 cents a page. Black-toner cartridges for older printers might be as high as $200 or more, while toner replacement costs for newer, faster printers with higher dpi resolution are about $100.

Also only five years ago, you would have paid $200 to $300 for a color inkjet printer with 720 dpi. Ten years ago you would have shelled out $500 to $900. Today you can find a 1440 or 2880 dpi Epson printer for under $99. Replacing the ink in your old inkjet will probably cost you about the same as buying a new printer, and you’ll gain speed (saving your valuable time) and color clarity.

The relatively new ENERGY STAR efficiency standard offers special power-management features in home and office products of all kinds. When you’re not using the equipment it automatically enters a low-power "sleep" mode. An ENERGY STAR qualified computer in sleep mode consumes about 80% less electricity than it does at full power, while an ENERGY STAR qualified monitor or printer uses up to 60% less electricity than standard models.

Still using a Pentium 4 computer? Imagine the time you’ll save running graphics programs, spell checking, opening and saving files, and doing calculations with a machine that operates more than three times faster.

Some people are still holding on to their 8- to 10-year-old operating systems, Windows 98 or even Windows 95. These systems are prone to crashes and lockups, and they do not even offer minimal protection against hackers and data loss. New features in Windows XP will help you save and restore your files, regardless of when you last performed the “Save” command.

Replacing your old equipment can be an important investment, giving you more productivity, safety, cost savings, and higher quality print jobs over the long run.

The Uncharted Journey:
Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment, and Getting on with Life
By Barbara Kline Hammond

This article was published in the February 2006 issue of New Mexico WOMAN magazine.

If you’ve ever had one, it stands out in sharp detail – like hearing about the Kennedy assassination for several generations of Americans. You know where you were. What was said. You can recall details about the air, the colors, the other people present. “It” is a cancer diagnosis.

Adele Frances, a life coach in Albuquerque, tells me an anecdote about seeing her doctor in the hall prior to entering the examination room to hear the results of a mammogram. “He said, ‘How are you?’ I said, ‘I don’t know until you tell me.’ He told me it looked cancerous, that I should see a surgeon about a biopsy. I wasn’t surprised; I had been preparing.” Adele had just gone through a sister’s breast cancer, as well as helping one of her friends. “I was concerned, but not traumatized,” she said.

Tammy McQuitty was a young mother of 28. Her doctor had suggested she have a mole removed – nothing serious, but let’s not take chances. “After the biopsy, I was told to get back in my doctor’s office as soon as possible,” says Tammy. “I cried. My first thought was: what is going to happen to my children?”

When my turn came, I found out in the recovery room. I had gone in for emergency surgery after a doctor took a look at a very unassuming lump on my leg, and the first words I heard coming out of the anesthesia were from my doctor: “It’s malignant. I’ve made an appointment with an oncologist for you on Friday.” And he was gone.

Treating cancer is unlike anything you have experienced with a common cold or even a more serious acute ailment. There are typically a number of options that a Tumor Board at your hospital will consider. In addition, you are drawn into the conversation. The typical cancer patient is handed stacks of papers discussing options, and there is more information available on the Internet, at the bookstore, from friends, from natural healers, and from others.

Typical allopathic treatments include surgery that may or may not change the shape of your body; radiation that can lead to internal and external burns; and chemotherapy that is designed to bring your body to a near death state in the hopes of killing off cancer cells and leaving healthy cells the opportunity to recover. In addition, there are a variety of health regimens that may be recommended by your doctors or by others who have opinions on the matter. Because your immune system is particularly weak, you may decide to cut out all sugar because cancer cells appear to thrive in the presence of sugars; you may decide to eliminate harsh chemicals (cleaning equipment, cosmetics, dyes, smoke) from your environment; or you may even want to limit your exposure to pets.

You are more tired than you have ever been. You are probably frightened. Your life revolves around doctor and hospital visits and tests. It is so tempting to give up, and yet . . . talk to a cancer survivor and you will learn that life with cancer takes on a sweet edge. You have the opportunity to pare life down to what really matters. All of the sudden, death isn’t something far out on the horizon that you can avoid thinking about for a little longer.

While it is possible for some people to get to the other side of cancer with little apparent impact in their lives, many cancer survivors recognize the gift they have been given.

Adele notes that cancer was her second life-threatening illness. Her first was a profound depression that led to a suicide attempt. When cancer came five years later, she took it with a certain stoic grace. “I had just started back to work after 25 years at home. I was a career counselor in a college, recently divorced, so I kept working through my treatment because I had to. Luckily, my employer was very supportive,” she says.

Adele, an author and public speaker, did a lot of speaking and writing about her depression. However, roughly six years into her recovery from cancer, she decided to move her emphasis to cancer. “Surviving breast cancer has deepened the richness of living. The primary reason I have come back to the cancer conversation is that it keeps me honest . . . Now that I am helping to run a support group, I honor the sacredness of those conversations so much – from both patient and caregiver. When I get away from the conversation, I can get complacent.”

Although her husband was very supportive during her treatment, four years later, Tammy is divorced. She has become an esthetician, and she is adamant about sun protection. Melanoma is not just a disease for the old. She is a campaigner for awareness.

As a result of the cancer experience, Tammy is finding herself becoming more contemplative. “I’m not as willing to ‘get into it’ with other people these days. Life is too precious. Yes, I worry sometimes (that cancer will come back), but I really appreciate each moment. I have started going back to church regularly and I am looking for other ways to give back.”

It takes courage to live through cancer. When you know what to look for, it is often easy to detect who has been through the experience. While cancer is not a recommended strategy for developing self-awareness, it is certainly the proof of the old adage: “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Barbara Kline Hammond is founder of The Day Spa at Serenity Gardens (www.SerenityGardensNM.com), a spa dedicated providing a relaxing, nurturing environment and safe and natural treatments that are as pure of chemicals and irritants as it is possible to provide. While reducing exposure to harsh chemicals is crucial for cancer patients and others with impaired immune systems, Kline Hammond feels that any reduction of the chemical burden is equally attractive to healthy spa patrons.

Kline Hammond worked through her fears, rage, frustration and wonder regarding the cancer experience through writing and publishing two books on the cancer experience: ‘Cancer’s Gifts: Meditations on Healing, Being and Forgiving’ and ‘Victory: How to Organize to Survive a Cancer Diagnosis’.

“They are very different books,” says Kline Hammond. “’Cancer’s Gifts’ looks at how to manage the ‘unconscious cruelties’ that happen daily while undergoing cancer treatment – from the fear of new test results to the lack of understanding or empathy of family, friends, or strangers encountered while dealing with the effects of the disease. ‘Victory’ covers the organizational issues: what papers to keep, what papers are expendable, how to work with doctors, insurance agencies, pharmacies, etc.”

The books can be purchased at the spa or online at www.Amazon.com or www.BarnesandNoble.com.

To share what she learned from her cancer experience, she founded CanSurvival (www.CanSurvival.org), a non-profit to help people diagnosed with cancer maintain a sense of control and optimism in their lives. CanSurvival offers workshops and video tapes based on the books she developed.

“I came to hate the term ‘cancer victim’ because it embodied what happened to a lot of people when they were diagnosed,” she says. “Moving into the world of a cancer patient is overwhelming; you are fighting for your life. It is easy to feel that things have moved beyond your control. I believe that most people who survive a cancer experience learn to take a positive and proactive approach to their treatment program. In fact, when doctors evaluate patients who have been diagnosed with cancer, one of the key attributes they track is attitude.

New Mexico Can Build A Better Health System
By Jane Blume and Mary Feldblum

This article was published in the Thursday, December 1, 2005 edition of the Albuquerque Journal.

Winthrop Quigley raised some interesting questions in his November 10^th Business Outlook column, "What is `fair' when it comes to insurance?" - including:

The "fairness" of paying for health benefits we might not use.
Whether people want a choice of health plans.
Whether placing those who use health care services more often in the same insurance pool with younger, healthier individuals penalizes the healthy.

Answers to these questions lead to a compelling reason why New Mexico needs to have a system that guarantees health coverage for everyone.

Why pay for services we don't use? We buy auto insurance hoping we may never have an auto accident, but knowing we'll be covered if we do. The same is true for health insurance. We may be healthy today, but even the youngest, healthiest people can experience a major illness or serious injury in an accident.

Is "choice of plans" preferable? In September the Commonwealth Fund, which supports independent research on health care issues, published "Choice in Health Care: What Do People Really Want?" The study was conducted in light of recent proposals to give consumers more "choices" by severing the link between employers and health insurance, expanding the individual health insurance market, and promoting health savings accounts. It concluded that, "having a choice of health care providers matters more to people than having a choice of health plans." It confirms the Employee Benefit Research Institute's 2002 Health Confidence Survey, which found that 9 out of 10 Americans believe the ability to choose their own doctor or hospital to be extremely or very important.

Why one health insurance pool? Large insurance pools spread the risk and tend to control costs more effectively. On November 9, in a National Public Radio "Morning Edition" story about the new Medicare drug benefit, health insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski said, "The basic principle of insurance is that you get the sick people and the healthy people coming together in the pool, and the healthy people paying premiums into the pool and offsetting the costs of the sicker people."

Pooling employees enables larger employers to pay lower health insurance premiums than small employers do.

In the United States we're divided among numerous separate insurance pools, which is inefficient, wasteful and costly. From 1997 to 2003 administrative costs of private and public insurance grew at a much faster rate than medical expenditures. In dollar amounts, administrative costs nearly doubled during that seven-year period. (Health Affairs, Jan/Feb 2005)

In 1993 the New Mexico legislature and Health Policy Commission hired the health-policy consulting firm, The Lewin Group, to cost out three different models of health insurance coverage. Lewin's study concluded that the state would save billions of dollars over time if New Mexicans were in one pool. Studies in Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut, Missouri and California reached similar conclusions.

So what is "fair" about the current insurance system?

Is it fair that the numbers of uninsured continue to rise? U.S. Census figures show that from 2000-2004 the number of Americans without health coverage grew by six million. 21.4% of New Mexico residents - over 400,000 people - had no insurance in 2004.

Is it fair that growing numbers of Americans are unable to pay their health care bills and too often are forced to declare bankruptcy?

Is it fair that employers are faced with unaffordable double-digit increases in health insurance premiums?

Is it fair that we're paying more for the deteriorating quality of our health care?

Systems of universal coverage have been shown to do a much better job in terms of lower per capita costs, life expectancy and infant mortality. The latest Commonwealth Fund-sponsored survey revealed that Americans pay more when they get sick, receive more confused, error-prone treatment, and are much more likely to forgo needed care because of cost, than their counterparts in New Zealand, Britain, Germany, Australia and Canada, whose populations are in large "community-rated" health insurance pools.

Our private insurance system has failed and increasing numbers of people are concluding that the fairest arrangement is one where we're all in it together. An Albuquerque Journal poll, released September 17, 2004, reported that 47% of New Mexicans surveyed favor a national government plan that covers everyone.

We cannot afford to wait for our fragile health care system to completely collapse. Congress does not seem willing to address serious health care reform. In New Mexico, however, we have a choice and an opportunity. We can choose to support an "unfair" broken system, or we have an opportunity to set up our own statewide health plan that guarantees coverage for all New Mexicans, freedom of choice of doctor and a comprehensive benefit package. The Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign believes we cannot afford to miss such an opportunity any longer.

Jane Blume, owner of Desert Sky Communications, is the Public Relations Consultant for the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign. Mary Feldblum is the Executive Director of the Campaign, a coalition of 108 organizations. The Campaign can be reached at 897-1803, www.nmhealthsecurity.org.

Employee Assistance Programs: Critical Investments in Your People
By Jane Hertz, Executive Director, Outcomes, Inc.

This article was published in the June 30th edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

At 3:00 one afternoon I received a telephone call about a murder-suicide that had occurred in front of a local financial institution - and many of the employees had witnessed it. At first the manager didn't think that the employees would need counseling; but at 6:00 the next morning I received another call saying that the security guards who had been on duty were displaying signs of severe trauma. Members of our staff went over there immediately to provide "critical incident debriefings" to help the affected people cope with the tragedy.

Unfortunately, a local auto dealer experienced a similar incident, refused assistance, and suffered business reversals later.

Although devastating incidents such as these happen relatively rarely, our response to the one I described above is one example of how an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) can benefit employers and the people who work for them. For-profit companies, non-profit groups and government agencies are increasingly relying upon EAPs to keep their people emotionally healthy and productive.

EAPs began in the late 1960s when Eastern Airlines detected evidence of alcoholism among its pilots. Since it is very expensive to train these critical personnel, Eastern chose not to fire them; instead, its medical director set up a rehabilitation program to get the pilots off alcohol so that they could return to work and fly safely. The success of Eastern's program led the other airlines to quickly adopt it, and then similar programs spread to industries and companies throughout the country.

Early on, EAPs were directed only towards alcohol and substance abuse. However, in the late 1970s, McDonnell Douglas recognized that their employees' personal problems had a powerful impact on productivity. In the late 1980s, when record numbers of husbands and wives were working, employers realized that it was impossible for people to leave their personal problems at home. As a result, EAPs became a workplace "best practice," and have evolved to serve both employees and their families (spouses, partners and children up to age 18).

Today, employers have the option to invest in internal or external EAPs. Because their personnel do have legitimate concerns about confidentiality, most organizations choose to contract with external EAP providers who are capable of providing such programs in an easily accessible environment - which is critical in today's work world.

EAP programs are broad and comprehensive. Traditional EAP mental health services include - but are not limited to - evaluations, diagnoses, psychological counseling, and treatment for chemical and substance abuse and gambling dependency. Other services include wellness promotion, work-life balance and stress management.

Because we recognize that we don't have to wait for a dire emergency and that it is possible to prevent one, EAPs can and do provide on-site workshops in interpersonal communications, anger management, coping with holiday blues, and tips for maintaining healthy families. In addition, employees are encouraged to see a counselor right away if a problem begins to develop. As a matter of fact, a majority of individuals who seek EAP services come in on self-referral.

The value of prevention and early treatment has been well documented: people who deal with their emotional issues and the stressors in their lives need fewer prescriptions and doctor visits.

The widespread use of EAPs signifies that we recognize that human capital is our most important asset, and that it has to be invested in, not just managed and controlled. Every employer - no matter what the size - has an obligation to make a financial commitment to programs that will make a positive impact on employee attitudes, attendance, conduct, ethical practices and productivity. An organization cannot thrive without making these investments.

Founded in 1951, Outcomes Inc. is a private, not-for-profit agency offering counseling, adoption education, support services to elders, and career and job services to enrich and strengthen family life in New Mexico.

Alarming Health Statistics for African-Americans and Other Minorities: But There's Something We Can Do About It
by Joby Wallace, People of African Descent Health Network

This article was published in the February issue of The Perspective magazine.

When President Clinton proposed his national health plan over ten years ago, 35 million people did not have health insurance. The situation has continued to deteriorate since then: today more than 44 million Americans are uninsured (400,000 in New Mexico alone), and most of them have jobs. The National Coalition on Health Care, an alliance that includes big businesses, labor unions, health care providers, religious organizations and large pension plans, estimates that this number may jump to more than 50 million by next year.

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports independent research on health and social issues and makes grants to improve health care practice and policy, says on its website that "African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans all suffer disproportionately from chronic disease, cancer, and infectious disease." In other words, minority Americans lag behind whites in nearly every measure of health care:

Nearly one-half of Hispanics and one-third of African Americans lack health insurance.
Nearly one out of six African American (15.5%), one of seven Hispanics (13%) and one of 10 Asian Americans (11%) say they feel they would receive better health care if they were of a different race or ethnicity.
Approximately 60% of elderly (65+ years of age) white people have been vaccinated for influenza while just 39% of African Americans of the same age group reported receiving such vaccinations.
Compared to whites, minorities are less likely to be given appropriate cardiac medications, undergo bypass surgery, receive kidney dialysis and transplants, get appropriate cancer diagnostics tests and treatment, and have access to the most sophisticated treatments for HIV/AIDS. The disparities in treating heart disease, cancer and HIV infection are partly responsible for higher death rates for Americans of color.
Minority patients are more likely to receive certain less-desirable medical procedures such as lower limb amputations for diabetes.
A disproportionate number of minorities are enrolled in more affordable but lower-end health insurance plans, which provide fewer resources per patient and place stricter limits on covered services.

Clearly, this situation is unacceptable and growing worse. The National Coalition on Health Care has called for complete, systemic health care reform to happen quickly, but it does not appear that Congress will heed their call. However, we have an opportunity to do something positive right here in New Mexico.

People of African Descent Health Network is very pleased to be one of 90 members (and growing) of a statewide coalition called the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign, which has been working for over a decade on universal health care coverage. The Campaign supports legislation called The Health Security Act, which will be introduced in this year's legislative session by State Representative Luciano "Lucky" Varela in the House and by State Senator Carlos Cisneros in the Senate.

If passed and signed by the Governor, the Act will create a statewide health plan guaranteeing that New Mexicans - regardless of age, employment, income or health status - will have comprehensive health coverage and freedom of choice of provider, even across state lines.

What does this mean? It means that we won't have to worry about losing our health insurance or whether we can afford it.

It means that African-Americans will be able choose doctors and pharmacists whom they feel will treat them with respect. This will lead to more effective patient-physician communication, and therefore, better health care.

It means that we will have equity in our health care system: we can eliminate low-end insurance plans and strict limits on services that can be covered. The allowable covered health services offered under the health plan can be no less than what is currently offered New Mexico's state employees, who have a generous benefit package.

An independent, publicly accountable, geographically representative, 15-member citizens' commission will be responsible for running the health plan. Ten commissioners will represent consumer and business interests and five will represent health care providers. We will finance the plan combining public and private dollars into a dedicated fund. Funding sources include current federal and state monies spent on health care (Medicaid, for example) plus premiums from individuals based on income and contributions from employers (with caps).

The health plan will take three years to set up. The first year focuses on whether the Plan is affordable. The current system will remain in place until the public, the legislature and the Governor believe that it is ready to begin operations.

The Health Plan will not cover all New Mexicans. Federal retirees and active-duty and retired military will remain with their current coverage. The tribes and large companies that self-insure under a federal law called ERISA may elect to join. However, the result will be that all New Mexicans will have health insurance. That is very good news.

People of African Descent Health Network enthusiastically support the Health Security Act. It has been developed over a long period of time with input from people all around the state. The Plan set up under the Act truly meets the needs of New Mexico; it will lead to better health care for all, especially for minorities.

We urge all readers of The Perspective to get involved, to contact or visit your legislators, ask them to vote for the Health Security Act, and to ask Governor Richardson to support it.

We have an opportunity to do something about this growing health care crisis in a way that will put this state on the map in a very positive way. For more information about the Health Security Act, or if you want to get involved in the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign, call 897-1803 or visit www.NMhealthsecurity.org.

A Pre-Nuptial Pact Might Save the Business
By David H. Kelsey, Managing Partner, Atkinson & Kelsey, P.A.

This article was published in the January 27, 2005 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

New Mexico has seen the break-up of many businesses due to divorce – a huge ranch that had been in the same family for generations and a large auto dealership come to mind. After more than 40 years of practicing divorce and family law, I’ve come to the conclusion that pre-marital agreements should be seriously considered for first marriages, and they are a “must” for second and third unions - to protect the interests of the business owner and his/her children, and to keep the business in the family if that is an important goal.

People are more likely to seek a pre-marital agreement if they’ve had a very ugly first divorce. I recommend that they obtain such an agreement no matter what the first divorce was like.

Throughout recorded history (and perhaps even before) pre-marital agreements were put in place to keep assets in a family and to protect children of first marriages. These days, children can be provided for with proceeds from a life insurance policy and appropriate portions of an estate. This does not mean that the current spouse - who does not have an ownership or financial interest in the business or other important asset - will remain unprotected: you can accomplish that goal with life insurance proceeds or other financial compensations.

No spouse of in a second or third marriage can or should count on verbal promises: all arrangements must be made in writing.

Pre-nuptial agreements should specify that the family residence will be in both spouses’ names: a husband does not want to live in a house belonging to his wife only, and a wife doesn’t want to run a house that is not in her name, and in which she has no financial interest.

There are usually three reasons why a pre-nuptial agreement is set aside:

Duress. A spouse is given the agreement “on the way to the altar,” doesn’t have time to reflect on the provisions of the document, and signs it under duress. (In a case in New Jersey, the judge ruled that once the wedding invitations had been sent, it was too late to demand a pre-nuptial agreement.)
No advice of counsel. Each party to the agreement must be able to obtain advice from an independent counsel to ensure that the agreement is fair to both sides. It is unethical and a conflict of interest for one attorney to advise the two individuals involved.
No complete disclosure. Both parties must completely disclose their assets and debts so that each person knows what they’re getting into. (Such agreements are set aside more often when the man understates his assets – not when the woman underreports her liabilities.)

In an ideal world, we would keep all the verbal promises we make, never lie to our prospective spouses, and never need a written contract to protect our interests. Based upon what I have seen in the “real” world, business owners are well advised to obtain pre-nuptial agreements in writing before marrying. It will save them a lot of potential heartache down the road.

Atkinson & Kelsey, P.A. was the first law firm in New Mexico to specialize in divorce and family law in 1974.

Attackers Breach the Cybersecurity Walls
By Carole Petranovich, Owner, Computer Corner

This article was published in the November 11, 2004 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

This past year, a number of our clients have experienced invasions of their computers and computer networks:

Spyware or Adware probes: One client’s computer network was running too slowly; we discovered that over 100 “Spyware” probes had taken over the network’s resources. Whenever employees entered a website, downloaded information or researched a product, they opened a pipeline to their computers. Hackers utilized Spyware to acquire marketing data and other confidential information.
Virus infections: At another company, employees were unable to run various business-critical applications, including payroll. Thousands of viruses were running rampant on the network because the virus-scanning software had not been updated for several years.

Other companies of all sizes have experienced losses of critical data, files not responding to commands, and inadvertent send-outs of spam e-mail messages and viruses to clients and contacts in their e-mail address books.
Trojan Horses: After visiting various websites for research purposes, personnel at other firms have received emails and attachments with the subject lines in the messages reflecting the research topics. These innocent-looking e-mails were “Trojan Horses”: like the original gift of a huge horse hiding Greek invaders inside, the attachments, when opened, unleashed various “viruses” or “worms” into the computer systems.
Phishing: Other companies and individuals have received emails from purportedly legitimate enterprises, trying to con recipients into surrendering private information for purposes of identity theft.

Cyber-security professionals believe that various invasions have infected 90% of computers worldwide at one time or another. The International Security Association says that more than “60,000 viruses have been identified, and that 400 new ones are created every month.” A recent joint Earthlink and Webroot company study revealed that Spyware audits turn up an average of 26.5 Spyware and Adware traces per system scanned. Destructive applications attack computers running Microsoft operating systems, primarily.

You can protect your company from catastrophic system failures and disruptions:

Buy Spyware/Adware protection software. Your system is vulnerable to Spyware probes after a visit to any website. Some anti-Spyware software is free, but you may get what you pay for.
Establish firewalls. Hardware and software firewalls allow you to restrict in-bound and out-bound access to your network or computer. Otherwise, hackers can access data through one or more open network ports.
Purchase anti-virus software and update it regularly. You’ll receive maximum protection if your software licenses are current and you update the programs daily. At a minimum, perform weekly updates.
Thoroughly educate your staff. All the best tools will not protect you if they’re not used properly. Staff should never open email attachments from unknown persons.
Establish policies about emails, downloading software and web surfing. Limit website visits and email exchanges to business related purposes. Staff should not enter on-line contests or download programs or trial versions of software - unless they’ve been scanned for viruses or Spyware.
Avoid email access by outsiders from your company’s website. Take email addresses off your website, or invest in website encryption, which blocks outsiders from harvesting your e-mail addresses with automated “spider” software programmed for this purpose.

When you suspect infections or attacks, run your anti-virus or Spyware protection software (if you know how); otherwise, consult your in-house IT specialist or consultant immediately. If you don’t have a competent professional helping you, here is how to find one:

Make sure that the outside company or consultant has a business license. Determine how long this firm or individual has been in business and check references. Look at the credentials of the consultant or the company’s personnel: the top experts are MCSE’s – Microsoft Certified System Engineers - and this designation is on their business cards. Find someone else if your so-called expert isn’t solving your problems.

Computer Corner has a free brochure about cyber-security that you can download from our website, www.compcorner.com .

What to Do When Divorce Comes to Work
By David H. Kelsey, Attorney-at-Law and Managing Partner, Atkinson & Kelsey, P.A.

This article was published in the June 17, 2004 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

With the high divorce rate in our society, if you are a business owner it is likely that you or one or more of your employees, managers or partners is already divorced, or will experience a marital breakup while working with you.

If you have already gone through this experience yourself - or with one of your people - then you know that it is a very trying time – both for the individual involved and for his/her friends, relatives and co-workers. The dissolution of a marriage is an emotionally and financially draining ordeal. The person’s workday is often disrupted by telephone calls from attorneys and others, and his/her lifestyle invariably changes – sometimes for the better, and sometimes for worse.

If you have not had this experience yet, you need to anticipate that if someone in your firm obtains a divorce, the organization will become involved to some extent because the employee in question will have to provide a lot of financial information in writing to his/her legal counsel. The lawyer for “the other side” will ask for it also; both attorneys need the data to determine the asset distribution. The larger the share that this individual has in your business, the more information the attorneys will want to obtain. In any situation where there are children involved, you can expect the divorcing parties to negotiate or try to obtain child support.

You can expect the parties or their attorneys to request:

Proof of income. How much does the employee earn in salary, bonuses, stock options, and profit-sharing income?
A copy of the health insurance plan. How much does the plan cost the insured, the spouse and their dependents? Does the plan actually cover dependents? How long will the other spouse be covered after the divorce becomes final?
Retirement information. Do you have a 401(k) plan for your employees? Where is it invested and who is the trustee? What is the current balance in this employee’s retirement fund? Who are the beneficiaries?
Profit-sharing plan. Same questions as above about where invested, who the trustee is, what the current balance is and who the beneficiaries are.
Ownership of the business. If your company offers stock options, has the individual in question taken advantage of the plan? If the answer is yes, how many shares does he/she own and what is the value of these shares? If the person is a partner, what percentage of the business does he/she own? What is its current value? How much is the entire business worth? Is there a buy/sell agreement in place?
Perks. What other perks does the employee receive? Does the company provide a car, a company credit card, an expense account, Country Club membership, promotional contests that award expensive vacations – or other benefits of working there?

In addition to the information above, you may also be asked to provide details about the past three to five years of the person’s salary and benefit history, and how much you and your employee have contributed to the benefits package.

To minimize interruptions and disruptions, you might consider providing all of this information to the attorneys at one time instead of responding to individual requests. Of course, it will be easier to do this if you have all of the financial information filed or stored in one place – both for you and for all of your employees.

Atkinson & Kelsey, P.A. was the first law firm in New Mexico to specialize in divorce and family law in 1974.

Painting a Larger Picture of Health Bills
By Jane Blume and Mary Feldblum, Ph.D.

This article was published in the June 24, 2004 edition of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

In Dr. Micha Gisser’s June 3rd column, “State plan should include the uninsured,” he wrote, “We need a solid economic study based on a fresh survey of uninsured persons in New Mexico.”

We respectfully disagree. We already know from previous surveys that the majority of uninsured in New Mexico – and in the U.S. for that matter – are working people who cannot afford health insurance, and neither can their employers.

Dr. Gisser is not alone in wanting to focus attention on the uninsured. The New Mexico Department of Human Services has received a $900,000 federal grant to study the uninsured with the idea of developing special insurance products that they might be likely to purchase. However, to make these insurance policies affordable, either the benefits will have to be severely limited, or the state taxpayers will have to subsidize the premiums.

Moreover, using public money to subsidize premiums actually rewards insurance companies who have not only failed to solve the problem of costly health insurance, but indeed have aggravated the situation by:

Parceling our insured population into small risk groups,
Making it nearly impossible for people with “pre-existing” conditions to buy health I nsurance, and --
Making it difficult for employers to purchase or retain good health insurance.

We suggest that instead of worrying about who among the uninsured is “truly needy” (Dr. Gisser’s words), or trying to design insurance products that will appeal to the uninsured, we focus on the larger picture. In addition to the fact that 22% of New Mexico’s population do not have health insurance (and these numbers have not changed very much over the past decade), even those who currently have health insurance are insecure.

Employers who provide insurance have seen double-digit premium increases annually for the past few years, and are shifting more of the share of the premiums to their employees. Federal retirees have seen their premiums rise, and private-sector retirees are losing benefits, too.

These changes are occurring in part because of cost shifting: This means that the insured end up paying for the uninsured through taxes and higher premiums. Moreover, cost shifting also occurs when payments to providers from Medicare and Medicaid are reduced. Providers try to shift those costs onto the private sector, whenever possible. If they can’t cost-shift, doctors may refuse to see patients covered under a specific health plan, or community hospitals may be forced to reduce services or sell to a larger (usually out-of-state) entity.

In addition, our health insurance system is inefficient: the insured are segmented into hundreds of insurance plans, with relatively small numbers of people covered under each plan. Small insurance groups are riskier to insure, and therefore, the costs are higher for these groups. Large numbers of insurance plans add to the administrative overhead of providers who must have sufficient office personnel to deal with considerable numbers of policies.

Solutions that only focus on the uninsured will not address the problem of rising health care costs, cost shifting, and an inefficient, segmented insurance system. Adding more insurance products to the market only increases the administrative burdens faced by doctors and hospitals. In a state with only 1.8 million people, this complex system does not make sense.

We think that the time is long past for patchwork solutions – they simply have not worked. We believe that systemic reform of the health care insurance system is needed.

For the past decade, the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign has been working on such reform. Our proposed New Mexico Health Care Plan returns to the idea of old-fashioned insurance, where we’re all in it together, sharing the risks. A large insurance pool covering most New Mexicans (no matter what their health, economic or employment status is) would diminish risk, stabilize costs, allow for bulk purchasing of prescription drugs and other medical equipment, and decrease administrative overhead.

The proposed Plan guarantees choice of doctor (even across state lines), a comprehensive benefit package, and a reduction in the cost of workers’ comp, auto and other insurance premiums (which have large medical components). According to a 1994 study commissioned by the New Mexico Health Policy Commission and the state legislature, had New Mexico implemented such a plan by 1997 today we would have saved $4.6 billion dollars.

Our health care system is deteriorating fast. The projections are not good. Focusing on one narrow part of the system will not solve this crisis. We hope that all New Mexicans will want to learn more about the Campaign’s proposed New Mexico Health Care Plan. It offers a clear path out of this growing storm.

Jane Blume is the public relations consultant for the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign. Mary Feldblum, Ph.D. is the Campaign’s executive director.

A Decade of Helping Women in Business
By Jane Blume and Sandy Cody

This article was originally published as "From the Executive's Desk" in the August 7, 2003 issue of the Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook section.

Recently the Northern New Mexico Chapter of National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) celebrated a decade of working for the women business owners of our state. Ours is one of 93 chapters in a national organization with 8,000 members, and it is the only dues-based national association representing all women entrepreneurs in all types of businesses.

Nationally, NAWBO traces its beginnings to a group of twelve women business owners in Washington, D.C., who in 1974 began meeting informally to exchange information about procuring federal contracts, bank credit and other important business issues. NAWBO officially began in October of 1976. Its vision is to propel women entrepreneurs into economic, social, and political spheres of power worldwide. Its mission is to:

Strengthen the wealth-creating capacity of our members and promote economic development,
Create innovative and effective changes in the business culture,
Build strategic alliances, coalitions, and affiliations – and –
Transform public policy and influence opinion.

When a dynamic public relations expert, Judie Framan, moved to New Mexico from California in 1993 and became Founding President of the Chapter, little could she and her sister organizers have imagined what the next decade would bring.

Several of our past presidents have risen into significant positions of political influence. After serving as chair of the state Democratic Party, Diane Denish (1996-67) was elected Lieutenant Governor last November. Joan Schlueter (1997-98) was recently appointed to the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) National Advisory Council, and is a founding National Partner of the 500,000-member Women Impacting Public Policy. Joan and Samantha Lapin (1999-2000), along with several other Chapter members, serve locally on the Central Area Workforce Development Board.

The Chapter‘s permanent Public Policy Committee has also made its mark:

1993-1994: The Committee spearheaded an investigation of women business certification procedures with the City of Albuquerque and State Highway Department, resulting in significant reorganization and more reasonable certification requirements.
1995: Chapter members comprised more than half of the New Mexico delegation to the White House Conference on Small Business; Diane Denish served as delegation chair.
1999-present: The Committee introduced - and continues to lead - seminars on Grass Roots Lobbying in New Mexico.
2002: The Chapter led the successful effort to defeat the mandatory requirements of New Mexico’s Family and Medical Leave Act (the voluntary requirements remain).

The Small Business Administration has recognized five of our presidents for their work to strengthen all women business owners. Judie Framan and Samantha Lapin won the SBA’s local, regional and national Women in Business Advocate of the Year Award. Joan Schlueter and Cheri Tillman Anderson (2001-02) earned this honor at the local and regional level, and Phyllis Boverie (2000-01) was named local and regional Home-Based Business Advocate of the Year.

The entire Chapter is firmly committed to a mentorship program for members with new companies and women-owned businesses that have received loans from such alternative lenders as WESST corp.

We have also nurtured some of the next generation of women business owners. Over the past seven years, the Chapter has raised thousands of dollars for scholarships to send more than 45 young New Mexicans to Camp Start-up, a national summer program that teaches young women ages 13-19 how to become entrepreneurs.

In addition to our presidents, many of our “regular” (!) members have earned important recognition, from awards in their areas of expertise to leadership positions in other business and professional groups, such as Executive Women International, Downtown Action Team and The Association for Women in Communications.

With our Chapter having grown from 40 members in 1993 to over 300 today, it is clear that “the word is out”: if you’re a woman who owns a business, NAWBO is where you want to be.

Band-aid Solutions for Health Care Are Not the Answer:
It’s Time for the New Mexico Health Care Plan
By Jane Blume CMC^®

This article was published in the January 23, 2003 Albuquerque Tribune. In addition to everything else that she does, Jane Blume is a member of the Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign.

In November of last year, the National Academy of Sciences released a report containing ideas “to address the mounting problems that threaten to overwhelm America’s health care system.” One of the recommendations in the report, which was written at the request of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, was that “three to five states be selected to embark on model projects designed to extend health coverage to all residents.”

The report also suggested that coverage could be extended by expanding Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Under our previous governor, the Human Services Department developed its own health initiative involving SCHIP that will use that program’s unspent funds to subsidize health insurance premiums at current market rates for small, private employers through private insurers. But this plan would only cover 10% of the estimated 400,000 New Mexicans – mostly the working poor and 24% of the population - who have no health insurance. (An estimated additional 20% are “underinsured” - a significant medical event could lead to financial ruin.)

Last fall, then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Richardson proposed that we try to stop the flow of doctors leaving the state by removing the gross receipts tax on their fees.

All of these ideas, while well-intentioned, do not respond to one of the major underlying problems: namely, that our insured population is currently segregated into separate insurance systems – Medicaid and Medicare, and hundreds of different private plans. This is inefficient and costly: with smaller groups covered, administrative expenses and premiums rise ever higher.

Band-aids won’t save a patient with a major illness. The Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign believes that the time has come for complete systemic reform. Our “home-grown” New Mexico Health Care Plan, which will be introduced int