However, after spending the last few days reading over the Bacchus Bill that was passed by the finance committee and I have to agree with my Republican friends that this is not the way to reform health care.

Why? Because government should not mandate that a person is required to get health insurance. If someone wants to take the stupid risk of not being covered, risking bankruptcy and collections, that should be their option.

So, here’s my solution for health care reform.

1.      Allow insurance to be sold across state lines. If someone wants to purchase cheaper insurance from another state because they have fewer mandates, so be it.

2.      Create non-profit insurance co-ops that are subsidized by the Federal government. This insurance is available to anyone at rates set by true actuary terms – unlike Citizens Property Insurance in Florida. People within 300% of the poverty level pay lower amounts on a sliding scale, again subsidized by the Federal government. The amount and type of insurance would be up to the person buying the insurance.

3.      Require businesses to provide insurance to their employees and families. If a business refuses, they are charged a fee based on the percentage of revenues. Businesses with lower than $1 million in annual revenues are exempt. If they provide insurance, up to 50% of their insurance costs are a tax credit.

4.      Medicare premium payments are based on net worth or income, whichever is greater and create a sliding scale of payments up to 300% of poverty level.

5.      Make other changes to Medicare and Medicaid as shown in the Bacchus Bill. They are actually pretty good.

6.      Charge a 10% tax on all prescription drug advertising on television, radio and print. The doctor should determine what prescriptions to use, not an advertisement.

7.      Impose a sliding scale income tax on any individual earning over $65k who chooses not to pay for health insurance with the maximum being 5% for families earning over $150,000. (While I hate taxes, we’ll have to cover their healthcare fees when they have major health issues)

8.      Allow hospitals and physicians to utilize all credit collection resources as possible.

9.      Create a medical malpractice board – similar to the EEOC – which reviews all medical malpractice suits to their merit before being filed.

10. Limit payments to medical providers from the co-op to market rates for care, i.e. Tylenol would cost the same in a hospital as it does in CVS.

11. Establish a list of medical practice standards – such as time in the ER, number of patients readmitted, errors in care, malpractice suits – and lower payments to medical professionals and organizations who do not meet high standards and increase those to centers that outperform the standards.

I’m sure there’s more, but I think this covers most of it. It does a number of things, ensures anyone who wants insurance can get it, improves patient care, limits medical malpractice and lowers Medicare costs.

I charge a monthly retainer for my services. Those services include project management, which includes overseeing all design, printing, photography, advertising buys and the such. My clients pay me a fair wage to make sure those things are taken care of so they can concentrate on their business.

Still, I get asked often if I want 10-15% of the purchase of product to go to my pocket. What I would really like is for the vendor to provide the lowest price to my clients and pass the savings on to them. It's all about customer service and making sure your clients love working with you and understand you have their best interest at heart.

Again, maybe I'm naive. I know its standard practice to mark up a price. But it still doesn't feel right.

As such, I'm not a fan of 100% socialized healthcare in America. I believe the private sector can usually do a better job than government, and in most of healthcare, that is the case. But what happens when the private sector fails you as it has failed me?

As chronicled in this blog, I left my job - and health insurance - in March. Granted, it wasn't the best health insurance. I was paying over $800 a month for employer-provided health insurance. But I didn't complain. My family was fully covered and I could afford the payments.

When the packet came for Cobra, I declined. After all, I was forming a small business and have no intention of going back to employer-driven insurance unless it was from my company. I decided to go out on the free market and buy my own insurance.

First, I tried Cigna. I spent hours researching all the finite details to fill out their multipage application and I waited. Weeks went by and I finally get a letter from Cigna saying I was declined because I could not name all prescriptions for the past 10 years for a family of five. I called to talk to them about it, to find out what I missed. They never called back.

Then I went to Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Again, after significant time spent on the application, I waited for weeks. Another letter came saying I was denied because my name was misspelled. The funny thing was they had called a week earlier asking to verify the spelling - which I did. I'm convinced that phone call resulted in my denial letter.

There was hope. I was able to reapply to BCBS and did so. This time they called and spent a few hours with my wife and me going through a health interview. They called back again because the underwriter didn't understand my wife's Thalassemia Minor, a genetic blood disorder that rarely causes any medical issues.

Another few weeks go by and finally I get a letter in the mail saying three of my five family members were fully covered. My two-year-old daughter has full coverage unless she gets an ear infection because she had tubes put in her ears when she was a baby. Not covering a simple, minor illness popularly found in children is unbelievable. But the fact my wife was denied health insurance for one year, at which time we can reapply, is unacceptable.

Now, we are stuck. There are few options for my wife. We're looking into some of the low-quality insurance options, but I wonder how effective they will be.

I agree it’s not everyone else's responsibility to pay for my wife's health insurance. It's mine. And I would if the insurance companies would let me. But they won't.

So, now, God forbid, my wife has something major happen to her over the next 12 months. I won't be able to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in healthcare costs. Instead, it will be counted as a bad debt to whatever hospital she ends up in. That scenario, and millions like it, increases the cost of everyone's healthcare. Your procedure costs more to cover my wife's procedure which makes your insurance go up.

While it’s not your responsibility, it will become your responsibility in the long run. I believe it would be better to lower those costs at the beginning through insurance than to increase those costs through overall healthcare.

Is insurance the only reform needed? Absolutely not. There are plenty of things that need to be done. But for decades, we've sat by knowing there is a problem, but not doing anything about it. The president's plan is a start.

It's about time we try something different. Anything is better than what we have now.

Over the past 32 years, I've seen just about every part of Florida there is to see. I haven't been to all 67 counties - a goal of mine - but I've been to all the ones in the peninsula. Traveling the state writing a book on baseball certainly helped cover a lot of the state.

This week, I made my first trip to Jacksonville Beach. I've never been a huge fan of Jacksonville, although it has improved tremendously since I suggested they name the Jaguars the Jacksonville Smell in a column for Orlando Business Journal.

As I said, Florida never ceases to amaze me. The town is nothing spectacular, although I would have enjoyed it more when I was without kids as there seems to be an active nightlife downtown. I've certainly stayed in better places. We rented a condo in one of the older buildings that seem to be the majority here in town. It's much better than a cramped hotel room and allows us to hang out with our friends after the kids go to bed.

However, when we went to beach, it was one of the more amazing beaches I've been to. It was like we were on Daytona Beach without the smell of exhaust fumes filling the salt air. There was white fluffy sand to play in, shells were easy to pick up and the water had a gentle shallow slope that made the beach seem to go forever during low tide. Topping it off were the abundance of sand fleas and minnows in the surf. We even found a hermit crab - something I've never seen on the beach.

I thought it would have been hard to top many of the beaches in Florida, but look around any corner in this great state and you'll always find something new to explore. And you'll always be glad you looked.

It's amazing how life changing starting your own business can be!

Last night, I watched the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It was an awesome tear-jerking moving I usually like sitting through. (Yes, I like chick-flicks more than most action films). It was also three hours long. It was also just the second movie I've watched on DVD since I started the business.

Needless to say, I didn't get any work accomplished last night, except for responding to an e-mail or two on the blackberry. Throughout the movie, though, I had the nagging guilt that I should be working - not loafing off watching a three-hour movie. It's not that I had anything pressing for this morning, and I suggested we watch the movie because I had lots of office time the next day.

I just felt like I should be doing something else.

Is there a cure for this? I didn't feel that way when I spent three hours watching the Magic's playoffs. I didn't feel that way when I was kayaking last weekend. Maybe its my inner self telling me that movies are not really a priority. The same with the three Ugly Betty's I have recorded but haven't watched.

Maybe it's just one more thing I've discovered about being your own boss!

Lake as a kid that I ran out of bread and used cigarette butts lying on the ground that I got hooked.

The wonderful thing about Florida is there are so many places where you can enjoy fishing. You can go to the local retention pond and catch a monster bass or take a boat a hundred miles into the Gulf of Mexico. One of my favorite places to go is the Mosquito Lagoon, home to some of the biggest redfish in the entire world.

While I love to fish, I usually come home pretty empty handed. Such was the case on Sunday, when Craig Bair and I launched our kayaks hoping to bring in a couple of fish. Very quickly, I knew the day would be good.

Kayaking and canoeing are special. There is nothing like reaching places that no motor boat could get to. It's so quiet you sneak up on critters and fish that can't hear you coming. And the lagoon provides ample opportunities for just that. Where else could you have a wild dolphin swim right beside you as you paddle the open water? Where else could a raccoon try and find food a few yards from your boat? Where else can you have stingrays create a mud cloud while an osprey carries a fish over your head?

The lagoon is less than an hour's drive from Orlando. My guess is most people - unless they fish or bird watch or duck hunt - have never experienced this Florida jewel.

Take the time to enjoy Florida. Things like Mosquito Lagoon are why we live here!

Last time the Magic made the finals, I was a young reporter covering the business of sports. The entire start of the sports business beat at OBJ was because the Magic asked if we needed to be credentialed for games. Both my editor and I were basketball fans, but we needed a legitimate news angle. We figured since much of the lower bowl was our readership, there would be interest in the business side of the Magic.

Being a sports reporter was great fun. I sat courtside for many games. Shawn Kemp stepped on my foot. My nose was nearly broken by an errant pass from Karl Malone. I witnessed Nick Anderson steal the ball and the yearly duels with the Indiana Pacers - which were probably the loudest I had ever heard the Arena. Heck, I even witnessed a young Shaquille O'Neal have a bit of humility when he tried to pick up my ex-wife only to learn that her husband was a reporter.

But covering the NBA finals was a complete different story, and there were stories galore. I did a story on the roadside vendors selling Magic shirts. I did a story on the makers of the Horace Grant goggles that everyone seemed to wear. I did a story on television coverage and much more. The finals were full of business successes and the city seemed to benefit nearly everywhere.

For game three, I watched the game on my couch. Because I started it an hour late to miss commercials, I didn't pay attention to the twitter feed from all the reporters and people at the game. It was strange feeling isolated as the community reveled in the success of the Magic's first playoff game. I wanted to be in the action. I wanted to be covering the game once again.

While being a reporter was an incredibly fun job, I don't often miss it. I left reporting because I wanted to be a part of shaping the community, not the person writing about the people shaping the community. This was just one of those times where writing on it was just as great.

I remember my first job. It was flipping burgers at the Wendy's across from Florida Hospital Altamonte. It was very easy to get and in no time I had moved from prepping the food to cooking the hamburgers. It was a good first job, but didn't last long. My friend Melissa called one day and asked if I wanted to go to the beach instead of working. Of course I said yes and quit my job right then!

It's been very sad to see how he's struggled with getting a job. About 75 percent of the places just aren't hiring - a sign of the times. About 20 percent have transferred the role of filling out an application to going to the corporate Website and filling out an on-line application. Only 5 percent or so actually have an application ready to fill out.

By moving their hiring process to on-line, it's been very difficult to teach him one of the most important lessons in job hunting - the follow up. Are you going to call Burger King's corporate headquarters in Miami to find out about the job at the Burger King in Apopka? Do you just call the manager in the store?

I let him try to do this on his own. He's worked hard at it and finally I got him an interview at one of my friend's restaurants. Hopefully, he gets the job. If he doesn't, I'm still proud of his effort.

Then, Vincent Chase threatened to leave and all of a sudden you saw a human on the beach in Malibu wondering about his future.

Three months into this “own your own business” gig and it finally hits me that I could lose a client, something I never want to do, but invariably it will happen.

Why am I thinking the negative? A short-term project that I hope to turn into a long-term relationship are nearing the end of the short-term. I’m still confident they will continue toward the long-term relationship, but it probably gave me my first taste of being an entrepreneur, wondering where the next client will come from.

Luckily, I’ve done what any good business should do: I prepared a list of my top 10 prospects and asked what I need to do to bring them into the fold. I won’t land all 10, but at least it keeps me focused on the ones that I really want to work with.

Plus, in the meantime, I remain out in the public’s eye, reconnecting with people, meeting new ones. I hear of opportunities and look for referrals from friends, businesses and relationships that I’ve had for years.

While it’s always scary to think that a fifth of your income could vanish overnight, it’s still exhilarating and one I won’t trade for the world.

I’ve had plenty of debates on tweeting in church, but I think it’s OK and my pastor has even asked me to meet with the youth director to start moving into “techie” tools. Many have said it’s just wrong, but I feel that God has puts certain messages in my blackberry for a reason.

Here’s my argument:

·         On any given Sunday, there are a couple of hundred people who go to the First United Methodist Church of Apopka listening to the message of our pastor.

·         Let’s say that just 10 percent of the people in the congregation are using Twitter via their blackberry or iphone.

·         Of those 10 percent of the people, they average 500 followers (I have nearly 2000!)

·         If each one of those people Tweet one inspirational message from the sermon, the message from Pastor Thomas just reached 5,000 people instead of 200.

·         I think this is truly spreading the Gospel as the Bible instructs us to do!

No, it is not distracting to me. I can tweet faster than I can write something down. Plus, the inspiration is fresh in my mind when I tweet, especially when there are multiple messages.

Churches are only just now realizing the power of social media. The best way to do it is to encourage your congregation to tweet. It spreads the Word faster than anything!