Shannon Marie Slagle and Jose Alfredo Chavez were married May 16, 2009, at the home of the bride’s parents in Owasso, OK.
The bride is the daughter of Cory & Kristi Slagle of Owasso. She is the granddaughter of Dan & Margaret Slagle of Tulsa, and Dewey & Oralene Sherbon of Tulsa. The bride graduated from Collinsville High School in 2005, and the University of Tulsa May 9th, 2009. She is employed at Family & Children’s Services.
The bridegroom is the son of Jose & Nena Chavez of Sonora, Mexico. He is a Sushi Chef at In The Raw in Tulsa. Honor attendants were Toni Renee Slagle and Julian Angel Gallardo.
The couple will reside in Tulsa.

TIME: FESTIVITIES WILL BEGIN AT 6PM
In City Park

THERE WILL BE A KIDS AREA WITH JUPITER JUMPS, CLOWNS, FACE PAINTING, BALLOON ANIMALS & OTHER GAMES.

OTHER ACTIVITIES WILL INCLUDE GAMES, WATERMELON EATING CONTEST, LIVE ENTERTAINMENT, AND CONCESSION STAND.

FIREWORKS AFTER DARK SO BRING LAWN CHAIRS & BLANKETS AND GET READY FOR A SHOW!!!!!

Every politician and pundit has an opinion about health care reform and the effort to cover the uninsured. Most of them would have us believe that universal care will cost more and be less productive. We seem to have forgotten during this discussion that every other industrialized country has a universal health care system which costs anywhere from a third to three-fifths of our cost. The data shows we have more than enough money in the system to accommodate comprehensive health care for all citizens with better outcomes.

The first note of importance is that health care and health insurance are two separate entities. The second is that Medicare and the VA, both government systems, outperform the private health insurance community both in cost and outcomes.

Currently, health care providers and insurance companies are constantly at odds because of their respective profit motives while the health care consumer suffers from their lack of ability and coordination. Perhaps a strong consumer protection effort would be useful.

Hospitals have taken it on themselves to manage risk by cost shifting. Keep in mind these are people that have an 80 percent error rate on bills, have one medical error per patient day and charge the uninsured up to 308% of Medicare reimbursement. If they were doing a good job of cost shifting, we wouldn’t see such drastic disparities in outcomes for the uninsured. Are they really qualified to underwrite risk?

Health insurance companies, on the other hand, have little community ethics and seem to be only responsive to the profit motive. There probably is a role, but it’s unlikely that it includes providing medically necessary health care in a universal system.

Some legislators tried this year to increase the percentage of premiums used for health care from 60 to 75 percent, but failed to get the votes. It’s hard to imagine that a health insurance company needs a 40 percent margin when Medicare gets by with 2 percent. Another measure some legislators tried to pass this year was prohibiting insurance companies from paying bonuses to employees who can figure out how to cancel a policy when the insured individual needs to make a claim. Again the votes weren’t there.

For the highest priced health care system in the world, we should expect the best health care in the world. Sadly, we rank 15th out of 25 industrialized countries at twice the cost. As we continue to hear about reform, it’s important to keep in mind that special interests will try to convince us health care delivery will somehow be worse if they don’t make big money. The truth is the special interests have to manipulate voters in order to continue a system which is too disorganized to be financially or medically efficient. That’s not fair to the rest of us.

For a full report on the waste and inefficiency in the health care system clink the link at the bottom of this column.

State Sen. Jim Wilson
Senate District
D-Tahlequah (6/16/2009)