Poverty No-Name

      I read a profile recently of Ophelia Dahl, one of the founders of Partners In Health. For over thirty years, this organization has tried to establish health systems in poor countries. PIH attempts to get the local governments to expand the projects the organization starts. The governments are good when there's a crisis, but when things stabilize, the government will often cut funding.
     This is frustrating to Dahl. "Think about the airline industry," she says. "Can you imagine how complicated it is to run a passenger air system across this world?" She wonders why the same sort of thing can't be done with health care for the poor. The author of the article gently points out that the airlines operate on the profit motive.
     Here's my modest proposal to alleviate poverty. Let poor people sell their naming rights to companies as a form of advertising.  Half the annual fee would go to the individual and the other half to their country's health care system. There'd be lots of little Amazons and Coca-colas, but any company large or small could tap into this tax write-off. The poor could sign up for multiple names and whole swaths of the population would look like NASCAR drivers.
     Even us people in the first world can help. We'll sell our personal naming rights and donate our fees to the poor. We could search out names similar to our present names. I wouldn't mind being Joe's Crab Shack McDonalds if it would help eliminate poverty.