Everything was done beforehand. Everything was fine until the last month and then the BP went nuts. Such things aren't all that unusual.
Only had the one (it was suggested that since she didn't do so well...). I figured out what caused it. ;-)
-- Keith
Agreed. I opt for our "vision insurance" every other year and she buys glasses that year. They are progressive bifocals.
-- Keith
Oh man, why can't they keep things simple? Remember when the politicos promised to simplify the tax code? Then it kept ballooning and is probably north of 50,000 pages now. At some point I threw up my hands and now a CPA handles that for me, because I have other work to do. Like electronics design. Of course, he needs to be paid :-(
I bought the $1 glasses as well until our local Dollar store went out of business. Still have those 3x glasses from there in the lab for work on
0402 size parts. I wish they made magnifiers out of glass. Doing EMI work at clients I wreck one pair every few days when they fall into a unit and scratch up.Diabetes creates quite foreseeable expenses. In that case I'd sign up in a jiffy. It's the same for dental work. Some people have hereditary problems that will fester no matter how good their dental hygene is. As long as that expense is endorsed (it should IMHO since it's clearly medical but I don't know).
Good. That used to be different with our corporate plan. It reminded me too much of bureaucrats spending any and all remaining budget Dollars on totally unnecessary purchases. Wasn't their own money...
With the last election result I guess the chance of really good health insurance products like catastrophic-only coverage is then pretty much zilch.
And once they've driven all the evil businesses offshore they sit there and their tax base has eroded. But I don't expect them to understand such complicated matter.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
There is a 10% early withdrawal penalty if it's taken out before age 59-1/2, except under certain circumstances. It's the last two words that are sorta confusing.
...and how many lawyers would that put on the street? The chance of that is?
I see all sorts of numbers, but USA Today puts it at 60K pages:
Don't forget that each state has another set of rules. Here it's fairly simple, if you make above $90K or so. Below that not even the state can figure out the tax code (property tax "prebate").
My taxes are fairly simple but next year could get "interesting".
One set of mine are glass. They're +1.75s though and I prefer
+1.25 or +1.50 at the most. +1.75s make me dizzy.I found the rules for the savings accounts were much less stringent than what *they* were going to fork out for. The diabetes thing hasn't been much of a problem, at least financially. In fact, since it is an existing condition the deductibles don't apply to her checkups (regular doctor or ophthalmologist). The meds she's on are maybe $30/mo.
Again, I'm not the tax expert, but this changed about two years ago. It's worth a gander at anyway. I decided the other plans were better in my situation but ten years ago it would have been different.
The governor here is now a Republican (a really good guy). Unfortunately, the legislature now has a veto-proof Democrat majority. I'm not sticking around to see how this plays out.
They simply raise the taxes more to compensate.
-- Keith
Probably hardship cases like disability. Under the IRA rules they specify that quite clearly.
After the last election it is zero :-(
Same here. We've got Arnold but he can't move much because they block him a lot. Problem is that most conservative states have very harsh winters and my wife does not like that. I you do move check out the tax stuff thoroughly. I'd avoid any state that has hyper-inflationary property taxes. IOW there has to be something like we have here. Prop 13 caps the increases at 2% per year and any tax increases must now be blessed by a 2/3 majority. That aspect of CA is quite nice, gives you at least some planning security.
But there comes a point when that reaches the practical limits. Sweden has hit that ceiling before.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
So you had some warning, at least. That sounds good. In such cases, and if possible, it's definitely worth the trouble to do it in the hospital.
I think the first child _should_ be done in as safe a setting as possible. Too many unknowns. In my case, it was the third child and we pretty much knew the drill. We also were aware of a variety of problems and risks (not everything, of course) and my wife was adamant about doing this last one at home. That's enough for me.
Our first was a 27 hour labor. I've heard the first tends to be the more difficult.
By the way, no episiotomies were ever performed or any drugs used to reduce pain. No ripping in any of the three births in our case.
Jon
No, it's even more difficult than that. There is a 55-1/2 subclause and an exemption if you're "laid off" or "retired". The law doesn't go further to explain what "retired" means or if you have to be "laid off" or "retired" (whatever that means) after age
55-1/2 or can't withdraw until then in these cases. Like most IRS rules, it's meant to be confusing.True. The likelihood of tort reform has gone negative.
I'm already living in a state with a hyperinflationary property tax (6-10% per year, depending on the town). Anything is better.
We're looking hard at Kentucky, though work might be a bit hard to come by. Indiana is a close second. Kentucky property taxes would be about 1/3 what they are here, for similar houses. THey also don't have a state tax on pensions.
The Democrats here don't understand that stones don't give blood. This is truly an amazing state. You either have to be dirt poor (a quarter are on public assistance) or be a trust-fund kid.
-- Keith
Absolutely. Though, I can only imagine what three weeks on the maternity floor would cost these days! IIRC the bill then was just north of $7K, of which I paid maybe $150 (our insurance was fantastic at the time).
Well, she really has the last word on this one. ;-)
She had a caesarian. The kid never turned, but even so the c- section was known far in advance.
I've since read that episiotomies were on the way out. Even if there is some ripping it usually healed faster than the episiotomy, kinda making it a foolish procedure.
-- Keith
On the flip side that means you can also challenge them easier.
Yesterday night I took a hard look at the Kaiser Permanente high-deductible plans plus HSA. Somewhere in there it is mentioned that the HSA money is not bound to med expenses after a certain age, 65 or so. Have to study it more, it does indeed look enticing. Would drop our premiums to about 60%.
"The" problem: There is no data on what regular procedure such as health checkups, colonoscopies etc. cost. How much would we have to pay for those out of the HSA? Only if those questions can be answered will an educated decision be possible. With Kaiser it seems there is the added restriction that you must buy at the "company store" or it's not counting against the deductible. So I guess you can't shop, something that would otherwise be very possible for any non-emergency treatment or health checks. Being a capitalist at heart I don't like a closed and non-competitive market.
[ ... ]
They eventually will. But then it may be too late because the debt starts escalating and they are locked into excruciating union perks. Let us know what comes out of your search for greener grass. While we do have Prop 13 in California it is still not the most biz-friendly climate. So we are also looking.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
... snip ...
Under Clinton, and a Democratic Congress, the country was prosperous and the debt was being reduced. Under Bush and the Republicans we have unemployment (or underemployment) and mounting debt. Would you have preferred to be looking for work in 1998 or today?
Your polemics make no sense whatsoever. Fortunately the country seems to be coming to its senses.
-- Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
at
I was insured for the first two kids, being temporarily an employee for a few years around the first child, some of the very few years in my life where that was the case; and having taken a COBRA long enough after to cover the second. But the third was on me, so to speak. I don't think that played into my wife's decision, at all -- she had her own reasoning and had wanted to do this from the very first time.
But if I were facing $7k in bills, you can bet I'd be making decisions about what not to do and what to do and, where things were clearly needed to be done, negotiating like a bat out of hell. When we were asked to have an MRI scan by my oldest's neurosurgeon, I faced a bill of $830-835 (memory fades on the nickels) and negotiated that down to just $185 in 15 minutes of phone calls made right at the office while I waited with him to get the service done.
When I'm paying my own bills, 100%, you can bet I'm a demon about paying the US's traditional high costs. On the other hand, when it's only 20% savings (assuming insurance only asks me for 20%), I won't work nearly so hard at it.
Indeed!
Did you get to watch? I have watched one. Learned a lot. What stood out most in my mind was the "poof" that took place when they made the quick cut across the uterus (a burst, of sorts) and the rather rough shod stitching back up. I had imagined she (the surgeon was a woman) would spend all this time neatly trimming and putting the pieces neatly back together like an experienced seamstress or something. Instead, it was like pinching two dissimilar pieces of meat together and quickly putting in a few stitches to keep them loosely held.
I thought.... "You don't want to do this, unless you have to," and, "It is a good thing that the body knows a little something about repairing this at the cellular level, because it is darned sure the doctor isn't trying to aid it much."
I'm glad to hear that. My last was 1986. At the time, it was still common. We'd read books (like a lot of people do, I suppose) and one of them was Spiritual Midwifery from "The Farm" in Summertown, TN. It was a pretty interesting approach and it recommended some ways to reduce the likelihood. We used those methods. Not sure if they were the reason, or not. But we felt like they worked better.
I'm glad to hear that doctors are (or have earlier) re-aligning there ideas about this.
Jon
Eh? What kind of weed are you smoking? The unemployment numbers are at a near record low of ~4.2%
Yep. Unfortunately the weenies are leading. Heaven help us when disaster strikes.
Why is it that Democrats are universally ignorant?
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Even seen the show, "30 days" produced by the same guy who was in "Supersize Me?" I happened to be in a hotel on Saturday night, and that's what was on... the particular episode had the guy & his long-time girlfriend see whether or not they could make a living on minimum wage-like jobs (he worked as a "day laborer" kind of guy for a temp agency, making close to but slightly above minimum wage, she worked as a barista or similar). They actually would have made enough money at the end of the month to be OK if he hadn't been for two visits to the emergency room -- one for the guy's wrist that he sprained while doing lawn work, and the other for the woman who needed a prescription for some sort of infection "down there." They bills in each case were something like $500 & $800... absolutely incredible!
The guy, at least, had tried a free clinic earlier, but even though he made an honest effort and got there early, there just weren't enough doctors that day to see him.
What I find most interesting about this, though, is that (1) none of the doctors volunteered to tell them what the prices were going to be (nor did they ask) even though their clothing would suggest to most, "hey, these people are of awfully modest means" and (2) ok, fine, the free clinic didn't work out, but the *emergency room* for a sprain or an infection? They apparently were unaware that "urgent care" takes cares of all the non-life-threatening problems when you don't have a regular physician... plus I imagine you've got much better abilities to negotiate at an urgent care center than in the emergency room.
Had they truly been indigant, they wouldn't have ended up paying their emergency room bills anyway, but presumably it still might have dinged their credit rating.
It was, however, at least good to see an example where, yes, a couple can still make it on minimum wage, even though it's a pretty meager existence at that level (although they did have enough to buy bottled water -- the woman is a vegetarian, and from seeing her in other episodes I wouldn't be surprised if she's one of those people who figures that bottled water is somehow generally better than city water, or perhaps she really just didn't like the taste of the city water), and they could have possibly slowly gotten ahead with a little bit better education on healthcare. One area where they really "cleaned up," so to speak, was in finding an all volunteer church-run thrift store that not only had pretty decent furniture, free for the asking, but even had a delivery truck and people to help you haul the couches up the stairs; the people running that store deserve a lot of credit for their donations of time and materials.
---Joel
No. I don't watch movies much. I don't watch broadcast TV or cable, at all. No newspapers, either. By design.
Yes, it is very high.
Since I grew up poor and spent most of my life either self-employed or as a business owner, I've learned to negotiate most everything related to medicine. It's the bigger unintended expense and it can bring a struggling family to their financial knees.
And the expenses are not congruent with what you may expect, either. In 1982, when my first child was born, the little blue plastic water glass that they set next to my wife so she could drink water was itself billed as $25. That's the same kind of glass, wrapped in the same kind of baggy, that you find in hotel rooms in groups of 4, hotel rooms that at the time cost less per day than that water glass did.
I learned to ask for the details first, before accepting any service. Even that doesn't protect your budget, though. My wife nearly missed an oncoming truck and went over an embankment, rolling the car two or three times in the process. The truck didn't stop (we still don't know who else was involved -- this was in 1983 or 1984.) But she had lost her short term memory for a while and they finally figured out how to get ahold of me, only after a lot of service had been performed. So even when you negotiate those things that are 'elective' there are still those things that will happen that are not and you cannot get the prices reduced, beforehand.
So I also learned how to negotiate them down, after the fact, too.
I don't imagine that anyone doing a minimum wage-like job movie would really have lived the life, learned the skills to survive, etc., that might allow them to bring down the cost of those two bills, on the fly. It would take them some time to learn and a month just won't cut it for that.
The medical system here is rather specialized and narrowly blindered. A clinical practice doctor has the main job of producing revenue that supplies themselves and their employees with income and pays the other bills. From my limited perspective, it seems as though the doctor _may_ be involved in setting pricing and policies, depending on partnerships or hospital circumstances, but that they really don't think about these things when they are working. They seem to leave the whole billing question side of things to others in their employ.
So the discussion usually starts with those responsible for actually doing the billing, itself. They are the ones who must actually work out the bill and if you don't have them "on board" with you, you are screwed. It doesn't matter if you've had all these wonderful discussions with the doctor, or not. If the billing department sees it differently, you get billed quite apart from what you may feel you agreed to with the doctor. So I start with the billing department.
That isn't enough, though. They are just "following orders" and will start out telling you the way they think things are. So you need to make your point clear and also ask to talk with the doctor, too. Then follow back up with the billing department to ensure "closure."
Sometimes, the folks in the office won't even let you talk with the doctor about these things. At this point, I face a choice. Press on and take a risk of starting out a relationship with some damage or else find someone else. I don't have a formula for that. I just go with the circumstances. If it is important to me, I'll press on and insist or just show up and insist on having a hearing. If it isn't, I just find someone else I can talk with more easily.
You can negotiate anywhere. No exceptions I've found yet. Just some things are more difficult than others. Urgent care centers can be very difficult -- more so, at times. I often look at them as more like a dentist office (which is VERY HARD to negotiate with, but possible.) On the other hand, an emergency room is more traditional and I've been able to make arrangements there. Once or twice. Neither is my preferred negotiating circumstance, though.
One of the things I've been through in my own life and perhaps many others here have not, is going through "means tested" criteria hoops. These things are quite arbitrary and capricious. For example, one case required that my income fall below a certain level for exactly the one prior month to qualify and qualification, once determined, lasted for six months. If that just happened to be my only 'good' month of the six, I was screwed bad and would fail to get much needed help. On the other hand, if that was my only 'slow' month, I benefited more than I perhaps should.
Systems are like that, in the better of days.
I don't think it does anyone much good to intentionally shirk paying bills. It teaches one to not deal honestly with others and this isn't a good trait to encourage.
I don't mind socialized health care. In fact, I'd embrace it. But if you live in a system that doesn't provide it, that doesn't mean you 'work the system' by developing a level of dishonesty, dishonor, or disingenuousness with others. People without much means still need and deserve basic health care, though. Which means that our system has serious problems that need resolving. But hopefully, not without asking people to develop disrespect for themselves and others.
That reads to me like a "Marie Antoinette" attitude. Like someone who can somehow 'afford' their food-piety. If you are _really_ living as others must in poverty (and I've been there), you can't afford to stand on some ridiculous ceremony of buying bottled water.
One of the things my wife said to me (and I've only known one girl in my life -- her -- and we've known each other from childhood, except that she grew up in much more middle class circumstances than I did), was that she was impressed that when I didn't have 'regular work' to do (better paying based upon my education), I would always go out and find something to fill the time and keep bringing in _some_ cash. This meant typing, digging, putting in phone systems, inventory counting, etc. I didn't care. That impressed her.
It's fine to be a vegetarian when that saves money when you are poor. But you usually cannot afford to buy the "vegan sherbet" instead of the "cheap ice milk with guar gum thickener" when the desire for a cold desert hits and you think you have a nickel to spare for it.
Those were much more plentiful in my younger days. You could go to almost any of the Goodwill shops, for example, and find such excellent deals on excellent stuff. It was trivial to do and the prices weren't just at some discount, but almost free. That's all gone, now. There are too many people in circumstances where these things are important or where they can make more money reselling what they find there and the scavengers are picking things pretty clean, pretty consistently. And the prices are no where near as cheap, by comparison, with new items as they once were.
But there are still such places. However, furniture was never high on my list of things I'd spend money on when poorer. Food and a place to stay and some heat in the winter were much higher. I learned to sleep on the floor with ease. In fact, despite my circumstances being one of some modest independence now and my age over 50, I still sleep on the floor without a bed. Our whole family does, in fact. Beds are a complete waste of resource, I think.
Jon
A mattress on an uninsulated floor will get condensation on the bottom, then mold in short order. If it doesn't ruin the floor it will at least ruin the mattress.
A bed prevents that -- and a 'hollywood' frame costs a lot less than the replacement mattress that goes on it.
-- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/ "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April. See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
I don't use mattresses.
But I don't use them. It's hard to ruin what isn't there.
I don't use mattresses. Just the floor.
Jon
Tim, this whole thing got me to thinking about what someone assumes I would mean when I write "bed." I was surprised you'd misunderstand me so completely as to imagine mattresses present. It was as though you were simply unable to cope with how we sleep here -- too foreign to you, to impossible to imagine, that you just had to insert the idea of a mattress because you couldn't imagine doing without them. Which is why you talked about that. I find that misunderstanding frankly interesting.
When I say "bed" I th 1. a. A piece of furniture for reclining and sleeping, typically consisting of a flat, rectangular frame and a mattress resting on springs.
I meant the whole thing. We don't have any part of them here. At all. Nowhere in the entire 5000 sq ft of home. Not one. We don't use them. We literally sleep on the floor. Literally. I mean hard floors or the occasional rug. I use a blanket or a simple bedsheet, if it is too warm. That's all.
Jon
So you're the one who got up on the wrong side of the rock ?:-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Don't you have to keep the house a little warmer to compenste for the lack of insulation (or relatively thin insulation) between you and the floor though?
[snip]
I saw the episode and was amused. While I applaud Spurlock's idea, he and his lady made quite a mess of living 'lean' -- the people trying to prove to us that you couldn't live on minimum wage proved themselves painfully obviously unqualified to do either. They are, unwittingly, elitists.
They made far more money than they needed, except that Mr. Spurlock over-exerted himself working at manual labor--to which he was clearly a stranger--and then wasted a bundle going to the emergency room when he should've just gotten an ice pack (and learned how to better handle a shovel).
She goes to the ER for a urinary tract infection, something which, if not handled or prevented by home-methods, could've been treated for much less at a doctor's, or an urgent-care type place.
His (babe) veggie girlfriend's sanity somehow demanded celebrating her birthday at a pricey ethnic vegan restaurant, setting them back. And there was the bottled water...
But for these extravagances they could've easily gotten by on his earnings and saved hers, with money to spare.
In the end they proudly concluded that which they'd set out to prove--that you can't live on minimum wage--but those of us who already enjoy living simply just saw two well-meaning silly people.
Best, James Arthur
"Economy is the art of getting the most out of life." --George Bernard Shaw
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