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EDITORIAL  Health Care And Retirement Issue BY YADUNANDANA PADA DASA EDITORIAL, Jul 17 (VNN) — Dear Badrinarayana Prabhu, All glories to Srila Prabhupada. I absolutely love the idea of trying to work together on the health care and retirement issue. I also see sincerity in your words. Thank you. I must say, however, that I was left daunted and untrusting with ambivalence after my team and I were literally barred from the January 2005 Temple presidents meeting in Dallas by Gopal Bhatta and those who advise him, when we offered to come and present our health-care and retirement packages. This, by the way, according to the Sunshine law was supposed to be an open meeting. And, as you also mentioned, your thin response letter to our 'Mayapur-GBC-meeting PowerPoint-presentation' did not help your teams' credibility either in my mind's eye. However, putting all that in the past for the sake of cooperation and the health care and retirement mission, but with caution in mind, I would like to propose the following before I pledge myself again: 1. You say we should learn from each other on how to go about getting health care insurance. As you know I have done my research and come up with the Blue Cross Basic Plan 40 PPO for the asrama devotees of the western United States for starters, which you and Svavasa Prabhus (and all US TPs and GBCs) were presented with back in January 2005. I am sending you the details of this plan yet again for your team's perusal. I would like to see ahead of time what your team has come up with so far and I would like to conference with your team long before the October meeting (say next week) to discuss the variables of your found health care plan and ours. a. Please keep in mind that Group-health-care is not sold without employment certification of an IRS W-2 (Source: Blue Cross and brokers) b. Therefore all plans without employment need to be individual plans c. Therefore, our discussions for strategies need to focus on whether to employ our devotees or simply give them the best individual plan available, which I believe I have found. 2. Once we have chosen the best Health Care plan available (as above), I would like a sign of good faith that this is not yet another three-year term of discussions on the importance of health care. So I propose a condition to my involvement that we temporarily implement (for all asrama devotees and fully temple dependant householders all over the Southern California GBC zone) one of the above comprehensive plans until our October (or later) meetings bring about better findings. This would also serve as an exemplary lead for other temples. a. Where would the money come from? i. As was agreed by Amarendra Prabhu and I, we have looked at the numbers and it is literally pennies out of the incoming dollar. ii. As I have outlined in my PowerPoint presentation in Mayapur: 1. There are several donation sources that come in constantly for large and small festivals that need to be *openly* excised by less than 5% to 10% to cover the cost of those individuals who are putting on the festivals. 2. By cutting back on festival paraphernalia, flowers and feast dishes in the similar amount of small percentages. 3. By setting aside a small similar percentage from the SKP party for their own health care. 4. Ditto on restaurants and gift shops 5. Etc, Etc, Etc, in small percentages. 3. Finally, that the above chosen health care plan be implemented in real time (signed, sealed and premium paid) no later than Janmastami of this year 2005. After all, buying health care is like buying anything else; you pick up the phone and you make a payment. We can switch at any time in the future when we find a better deal. If your team can meet these three conditions, I will give myself to you in service to help research and implement better plans and strategies for the future. Otherwise, I leave the baton in your hands. Hoping this meets you in good spirits, Your God Brother Yadunandana Pada Dasa ---------------------- Subject: Re: A balance picture Dear Yadunandana pada prabhu: Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. We both agree on the urgent need to provide for the health care and retirement needs of the devotees. That is 90% of the issue right there. Our only disagreement is over how to best go about achieving this shared goal. Rather than expending energy arguing, why don't we see where we can both learn from each other? My humble suggestion is that we see how to get together a group of mature and experienced devotees who share an interest in this vital concern and work together to address it. A natural place to do this would be at the next meeting of the teams working on strategic initiatives, on October 1st and 2nd in New Vrindaban. In the meantime, we could work on putting together the best possible team and doing the research work necessary to assure that we have the most positive and productive meeting possible in New Vrindaban. I apologize for upsetting you with my earlier letter. That was certainly not my intention. I appreciate your deep concern for the care of the devotees. Let see if we can work together to help provide shelter for the Vaisnavas. Your servant, Badrinarayan dasa Contact VNN about this story  Send this story to a friend
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