From
NM Politics.net - By
Congressman Steve Pearce - The United States Postal Service (USPS) is about to default on its loan from the U.S. government. Many facilities, especially in rural areas of New Mexico, are faced with closure. Understandably, customers are frustrated, and want to know how it got this bad in the first place. They deserve answers and they deserve solutions. USPS officials and some members of the various postal employee unions recently stated that they believe a piece of legislation,
H.R 1351, United States Postal Service Pension Obligation Recalculation and Restoration Act, is the answer. This bill would bail out the USPS pension program. After all, we are told, USPS has overpaid into the Civil Service Retirement System by $50 billion to $75 billion since 1974. But the notion of an “overpayment” is simply false. In 1971, the Postal Department, a cabinet agency receiving direct appropriations from Congress, was disbanded, and replaced by USPS, which functions on revenue from stamp sales and other retail endeavors. The formula that USPS and the government agreed upon required the taxpayer to pay the pension costs for employees of the Postal Department, but USPS would pay the pension costs for any employee who remained with USPS after the Department’s dissolution. Since business began to slow a couple of years ago, USPS began calling this formula “unfair.” However, in 1973, the general counsel for USPS wrote a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives stating that the agreement was “proper” and that “the cost of this liability should properly and equitably be borne the by Postal Service.” Otherwise, taxpayers would have to foot the bill for USPS retirees. The timing of the “overpayment” allegation is curious indeed, and shows a trend within most government agencies – the inability and unwillingness to make tough decisions. I did not vote to bail out the big banks, and I will not vote to bail out USPS.
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I won’t vote to bail out the postal service
From the Rio Rancho Observer - BY GLEN ROSALES - When officials designed the new emergency room at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center, they turned to an auto manufacturer for some efficiency ideas. Several years ago, Toyota developed a track system to increase its manufacturing flow and eliminate waste. Hospital officials applied those tenets to the new emergency room at the facility on south Unser, which came on line this morning, just as the old emergency services room on NM 528 closed.The result for the new emergency room is a tri-track system that should improve patient flow, hospital officials said. Last year, the old emergency room saw more than 22,000 patients, according to Presbyterian spokeswoman Niki Craig. Projections for this year are for that to increase by about 10 percent, she said. Of those, only about 11 percent needed to be admitted to a hospital. So the new procedures should help reduce patients' waiting time significantly, said Maryanne Morelos, emergency room nurse manager. Within minutes of arriving at the emergency room, a patient should be seen for triage, she said. "We want to cut triage time to less than five minutes," Morelos said. The initial triage will determine whether to send a patient onto the acute track for serious issues, the lean-care track for less-serious patients that still need to be seen by a provider and a track in which a patient can be discharged to an urgent care center, or after scheduling an appointment, to see a provider later. "The goal is for patients to be seen by a provider within 30 minutes," Morelos said. "That's not always going to happen, but that's the goal." It also means that patients with serious issues will get seen quicker, she said. Read more
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