Dear Santa,

I know you must be busy this time of year, what with all of the children’s lists coming in. Before I continue, let me apologize in advance for the outrageous list of demands my own two kids are likely to send your way. They both appear to believe that you are operating on a limitless set of resources. But as I told my son, Santa may be magical, but he’s not so magical to give you a pet alligator. It’s just not happening.

Anyway, I was hoping I could sneak in a little list of my own this year. You see, 2010 has been a pretty wild time for us in the life and health industry. I have only been on this scene for about half a year now (how fast time is flying!) and even in my short stay so far, I’ve seen enough turbulence to know that 2011 probably won’t be any less dramatic than 2010 has been. So while my list of requests is ambitious, please know that this isn’t just for myself; it’s for our readership as well.

Smooth implementation. Health care reform and financial services reform make up more than 4,000 pages of hastily written laws that will pretty much reshape a substantial portion of the L/H industry. Any chance you could try to keep the nasty surprises in these things down to a minimum, either by helping folks implement them smoothly, or by granting our fearless leaders the wisdom to spot and fix bad laws as they surface? Otherwise, these bills will be cures worse than the disease. A lot of folks think they are already.

Bi-partisan work in Washington. Nobody will blame the Dems and the GOP for refusing to work with each other when the new Congress first gets into session. After all, there is a lot of bad blood to get out into the open. But after everybody throws their introductory hissy fits, it would be great to see our legislators reach across the aisle. That goes double for President Obama.