I hear talk of these claimed "junk plans", but haven't heard a single case of a person who actually had one, yet alone in any degree of widespread use. My plan stated in writing what my out of pocket max was (as did every insurance plan I was aware of), and it wasn't "whatever was left after the insurance company cap hit". Perhaps it's possible the hospitals were left holding the bag, but it was not the individual. Again, if you can point to widespread examples to the contrary, please do. But I certainly neither experienced nor knew of a single person who had such a plan.
Just because you and your friends live in a consumer-friendly state where your insurance commission would never allow such plans, does not mean they did not exist.
I beg to differ. Before ACA, I had a HDHP HSA that was capped around 5 or 6k a year for my family. Now it _IS_ 10k a year, and my premiums are higher (all because I don't fall within the preferred "subsidies" segment of our society).
You misunderstand (sorry I wasn't more clear), when we talk about junk plans being "capped at $10,000/year", we're talking about plans where the $10k cap was on what the insurance company would pay, not what you would pay. That's right, there were plans which would pay $0 after the first $10k in a year, leaving you on the hook for every single penny above $10k. (Although $20k was actually much more common; but the $10k plans did exist.)
Now, would you agree that was a junk plan? Would you agree that such a plan was indeed what I called it--"outright bullshit bordering on fraud"?
If each Hammerfest machine delivers its advertised 1MW of power, then you need 1,000 of them to hope to match the output of a typical gas or coal-fired power station.
No, that's not "typical" at all. The largest coal-fired plants are 1-2GW; currently I believe there is no gas-fired plant anywhere in the world that is 1GW. So it would be more accurate to claim 200-500, while 1,000 is pure exaggeration.
Indeed, on second read, the sarcasm is apparent. I feel especially stupid.
Sarcastic parody yes, but it really wasn't that far off from what the right wing was suggesting. It's not your fault that it has literally become difficult to distinguish between what Republicans are proposing vs parody;-)
You appear to be suggesting that we keep the "pre-existing conditions" bit but eliminate the individual mandate. Do you have an explanation for why people would carry health insurance coverage while they're healthy instead of simply waiting to sign up until they need it?
Read it more carefully. I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic and parodying some of the ridiculous right-wing arguments, and agreeing with you, albeit in a somewhat subtle non-obvious manner.
What about healthy 20-somethings whose affordable plans (called "junk plans" by liberals, but perfectly adequate coverage for a demographic that very rarely needs anything but coverage in case of catastrophic events)...
Calling those plans "junk" was a euphemism. They were outright bullshit bordering on fraud. So, if a 20-something has a catastrophic event, how much will he be helped by a plan that is capped at $10,000/year? If a 20-something gets one of those rare cancers that affects young people, how much will he be helped by a plan which excludes chemotherapy? Yes, those are actual examples of restrictions from actual insurance plans. (Note: you may well never have heard of such restrictions. Before ACA many states forbade the worst practices; but of course some states allowed pretty much anything, so in some states you had truly awful policies for sale, and in other states the cheapest policy was at least somewhat decent.)
...were cancelled even after Obama LIED and said "if you like your insurance, you can keep it?"
Well the way he phrased that was unfortunate--careless, ignorant, stupid if you wish. But the ACA did not force insurance companies to cancel a single policy that was in effect at the time of his statement. Not one. It explicitly grandfathered them all in. But what happened, which O apparently did not anticipate, is that companies continued writing the policies in the time between the passage of ACA and its implementation, and new policies during that time were not grandfathered. So insurance companies continued to sign people up on plans that they knew they would have to drop in less than a year.
Now the hell would they do that? What sense does it make to keep signing up people to plan when you know you'll be forcing them off it soon? Guess what? The so-called "junk" policies which you want to defend, were not only extremely cheap, THEY HAD THE HIGHEST PROFIT MARGIN OF ALL POLICIES. And the second-tier insurance companies that were unethical enough to sell them in the first place were not going to stop until the very last second.
And then of course there were those of us with legitimate plans, who had our plans "cancelled", and were offered our choice of replacement plans, simply because the old plan was not quite ACA-compliant in some minor aspect that I couldn't even figure out, and our insurance companies didn't want to manage multiple nearly-identical plans. Yep, I'm one of those poor souls who receive a cancellation notice because of ACA. The entire ordeal consisted of: read the letter, check a box on the attached form, put the form in the postage-prepaid envelope, mail it.
The fact that many of the (very optimistically estimated) number of those who were added to O-Care rolls did not want or feel they needed it should be considered as well.
Bullshit. Forcing stupid assholes who do not have the intelligence to plan for the future to NOT free-ride is not a problem at all. Because those people get sick too, without insurance, and then burden the system.
In other cases, such as ones I am very familiar with, previously covered spouses were forced to move to their own plan if their work provider had coverage available. This means that although a new health care subscriber can now be counted...
Bullshit. There was a NET increase of 10,000,000 covered, not counting those who changed from one plan to another. If you want more info about how many people moved from uninsured to medicaid, uninsured to exchange policies, medicaid to exchange, employer-provided to exchange, individual to exchange, employer-provided to different employer-provided, individual to different individual, google it. Those questions are being studied by multiple groups.
..and it is those same urban areas that hold the most desperate and dependent populations of the truly underprivileged.
Bullshit. Urban areas concentrate their most desperate and dependent population together where they're easily visible. But the largest total number of the most desperate and dependent live in rural areas.
Actually, when Steve Jobs hired him as COO a couple of decades ago, there were articles at the time about the first openly-gay CxO of a Fortune-whatever corporation. He didn't publicly come out then, but he didn't deny anything, and it was obviously common knowledge within Compaq, Apple, and a whole lot of the Silicon Valley "community".
Because people who actually pay attention have noticed that Apple has been making privacy protection an important, heavily promoted, feature to help distinguish their products in the market. People who actually pay attention have noticed Apple's description of the lengths to which Apple Pay goes to be secure, and to provide NO tracking information. But go ahead and bash away if it somehow makes your day a little more tolerable;-)
After all, you can bet Google and Apple will try to resell ads and intelligence to the highest bidders, whoever those bidders might be, based purely on the data of the purchase history inside those stores.
The Catholic Church has not been opposed to these things for some time, regardless of the feelings of certain members of the Church who didn't bother to learn their Catechism very well.
True, and John Paul made some of that very explicit. *BUT* Benedict did backpedal a bit.
Whether it's convenient or not as long as you are not harassed while switching than a business has every right to try to sway you (within reason) and nothing you say or do will change that.
Exactly what gives them the right to FUCK WITH MY EQUIPMENT AND DISABLE A KEY FEATURE???
Our schools are not in danger of teaching students critical thinking skills any time soon, so businesses can stop worrying about what would happen if they accidentally hired some employees with critical thinking skills. I mean, that is the worry, right?
It's a block size vs available space issue so 90% full kills performance on small drives with big blocks (eg. SSDs from a couple of years back)...
OK, while I've not experienced that myself (no SSDs deployed), it certainly makes sense--much more so than the "blanket 90%" claim that people repeat mindlessly.
Perhaps more importantly, running at 90% of capacity kills your performance if you still use spinning glass platters as your primary storage medium (not so much when talking about a SAN of SSDs). In general, when you hit 90% full, you have problems other than just how long you can last before reaching 100%.
Do you have actual experience or data to back up that claim? Because my verified benchmarked experience is the opposite, 90% does NOT "kill" performance. Of course you're using inner tracks and getting lower transfer speeds, but nothing really dramatic like what you'd see with extreme fragmentation.
I will admit however, that when you get to 0.15% free (on a 4TB disk), performance really sux rox;-)
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What I don't understand is how someone could believe that they wouldn't get caught.
Sociopathy, "delusion of grandeur"...
I hear talk of these claimed "junk plans", but haven't heard a single case of a person who actually had one, yet alone in any degree of widespread use. My plan stated in writing what my out of pocket max was (as did every insurance plan I was aware of), and it wasn't "whatever was left after the insurance company cap hit". Perhaps it's possible the hospitals were left holding the bag, but it was not the individual. Again, if you can point to widespread examples to the contrary, please do. But I certainly neither experienced nor knew of a single person who had such a plan.
Just because you and your friends live in a consumer-friendly state where your insurance commission would never allow such plans, does not mean they did not exist.
I beg to differ. Before ACA, I had a HDHP HSA that was capped around 5 or 6k a year for my family. Now it _IS_ 10k a year, and my premiums are higher (all because I don't fall within the preferred "subsidies" segment of our society).
You misunderstand (sorry I wasn't more clear), when we talk about junk plans being "capped at $10,000/year", we're talking about plans where the $10k cap was on what the insurance company would pay, not what you would pay. That's right, there were plans which would pay $0 after the first $10k in a year, leaving you on the hook for every single penny above $10k. (Although $20k was actually much more common; but the $10k plans did exist.)
Now, would you agree that was a junk plan? Would you agree that such a plan was indeed what I called it--"outright bullshit bordering on fraud"?
If each Hammerfest machine delivers its advertised 1MW of power, then you need 1,000 of them to hope to match the output of a typical gas or coal-fired power station.
No, that's not "typical" at all. The largest coal-fired plants are 1-2GW; currently I believe there is no gas-fired plant anywhere in the world that is 1GW. So it would be more accurate to claim 200-500, while 1,000 is pure exaggeration.
Indeed, on second read, the sarcasm is apparent. I feel especially stupid.
Sarcastic parody yes, but it really wasn't that far off from what the right wing was suggesting. It's not your fault that it has literally become difficult to distinguish between what Republicans are proposing vs parody ;-)
You appear to be suggesting that we keep the "pre-existing conditions" bit but eliminate the individual mandate. Do you have an explanation for why people would carry health insurance coverage while they're healthy instead of simply waiting to sign up until they need it?
Read it more carefully. I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic and parodying some of the ridiculous right-wing arguments, and agreeing with you, albeit in a somewhat subtle non-obvious manner.
I'm sure those planets would prefer to be thought of as "free".
What about healthy 20-somethings whose affordable plans (called "junk plans" by liberals, but perfectly adequate coverage for a demographic that very rarely needs anything but coverage in case of catastrophic events)...
Calling those plans "junk" was a euphemism. They were outright bullshit bordering on fraud. So, if a 20-something has a catastrophic event, how much will he be helped by a plan that is capped at $10,000/year? If a 20-something gets one of those rare cancers that affects young people, how much will he be helped by a plan which excludes chemotherapy? Yes, those are actual examples of restrictions from actual insurance plans. (Note: you may well never have heard of such restrictions. Before ACA many states forbade the worst practices; but of course some states allowed pretty much anything, so in some states you had truly awful policies for sale, and in other states the cheapest policy was at least somewhat decent.)
...were cancelled even after Obama LIED and said "if you like your insurance, you can keep it?"
Well the way he phrased that was unfortunate--careless, ignorant, stupid if you wish. But the ACA did not force insurance companies to cancel a single policy that was in effect at the time of his statement. Not one. It explicitly grandfathered them all in. But what happened, which O apparently did not anticipate, is that companies continued writing the policies in the time between the passage of ACA and its implementation, and new policies during that time were not grandfathered. So insurance companies continued to sign people up on plans that they knew they would have to drop in less than a year.
Now the hell would they do that? What sense does it make to keep signing up people to plan when you know you'll be forcing them off it soon? Guess what? The so-called "junk" policies which you want to defend, were not only extremely cheap, THEY HAD THE HIGHEST PROFIT MARGIN OF ALL POLICIES. And the second-tier insurance companies that were unethical enough to sell them in the first place were not going to stop until the very last second.
And then of course there were those of us with legitimate plans, who had our plans "cancelled", and were offered our choice of replacement plans, simply because the old plan was not quite ACA-compliant in some minor aspect that I couldn't even figure out, and our insurance companies didn't want to manage multiple nearly-identical plans. Yep, I'm one of those poor souls who receive a cancellation notice because of ACA. The entire ordeal consisted of: read the letter, check a box on the attached form, put the form in the postage-prepaid envelope, mail it.
The fact that many of the (very optimistically estimated) number of those who were added to O-Care rolls did not want or feel they needed it should be considered as well.
Bullshit. Forcing stupid assholes who do not have the intelligence to plan for the future to NOT free-ride is not a problem at all. Because those people get sick too, without insurance, and then burden the system.
In other cases, such as ones I am very familiar with, previously covered spouses were forced to move to their own plan if their work provider had coverage available. This means that although a new health care subscriber can now be counted...
Bullshit. There was a NET increase of 10,000,000 covered, not counting those who changed from one plan to another. If you want more info about how many people moved from uninsured to medicaid, uninsured to exchange policies, medicaid to exchange, employer-provided to exchange, individual to exchange, employer-provided to different employer-provided, individual to different individual, google it. Those questions are being studied by multiple groups.
..and it is those same urban areas that hold the most desperate and dependent populations of the truly underprivileged.
Bullshit. Urban areas concentrate their most desperate and dependent population together where they're easily visible. But the largest total number of the most desperate and dependent live in rural areas.
This clusterfuck is all on them. If it wasn't so terrible...
How exactly is it "so terrible"; facts please, not campaign lies.
Sure. Oh, never mind, that it doesn't apply to true small businesses AT ALL. Somehow it's still driving them bankrupt.
Actually, when Steve Jobs hired him as COO a couple of decades ago, there were articles at the time about the first openly-gay CxO of a Fortune-whatever corporation. He didn't publicly come out then, but he didn't deny anything, and it was obviously common knowledge within Compaq, Apple, and a whole lot of the Silicon Valley "community".
why is parent not modded funny?
Because people who actually pay attention have noticed that Apple has been making privacy protection an important, heavily promoted, feature to help distinguish their products in the market. People who actually pay attention have noticed Apple's description of the lengths to which Apple Pay goes to be secure, and to provide NO tracking information. But go ahead and bash away if it somehow makes your day a little more tolerable ;-)
After all, you can bet Google and Apple will try to resell ads and intelligence to the highest bidders, whoever those bidders might be, based purely on the data of the purchase history inside those stores.
No, you can bet Google will, and Apple will not.
CurrentC is NOT aiming to create a "more secure" payment system. That is obvious!
The Catholic Church has not been opposed to these things for some time, regardless of the feelings of certain members of the Church who didn't bother to learn their Catechism very well.
True, and John Paul made some of that very explicit. *BUT* Benedict did backpedal a bit.
That's off the top of my head. I'd put effort into searching for more, but we both know you're just going to move the goalposts.
Seems like you're replying to the wrong person...
There's no profit in curing cancer. Big pharmaceutical conglomerates will find a way to shut down this research.
Well then, please explain why "Big Pharma" has delivered cures for multiple kinds of cancer over the last couple of decades.
Go ahead, we're all waiting...
Prison time for what, precisely?
Stalking.
Whether it's convenient or not as long as you are not harassed while switching than a business has every right to try to sway you (within reason) and nothing you say or do will change that.
Exactly what gives them the right to FUCK WITH MY EQUIPMENT AND DISABLE A KEY FEATURE???
Our schools are not in danger of teaching students critical thinking skills any time soon, so businesses can stop worrying about what would happen if they accidentally hired some employees with critical thinking skills. I mean, that is the worry, right?
...maybe I'm just harking back to a past that exists only in my mind...
I don't think so; your memory matches mine very well.
It's a block size vs available space issue so 90% full kills performance on small drives with big blocks (eg. SSDs from a couple of years back)...
OK, while I've not experienced that myself (no SSDs deployed), it certainly makes sense--much more so than the "blanket 90%" claim that people repeat mindlessly.
With today's 4-8 TB drives, it's easy to keep billions of of files on a single disk...
Uhhmmm, no, not quite ;-)
Perhaps more importantly, running at 90% of capacity kills your performance if you still use spinning glass platters as your primary storage medium (not so much when talking about a SAN of SSDs). In general, when you hit 90% full, you have problems other than just how long you can last before reaching 100%.
Do you have actual experience or data to back up that claim? Because my verified benchmarked experience is the opposite, 90% does NOT "kill" performance. Of course you're using inner tracks and getting lower transfer speeds, but nothing really dramatic like what you'd see with extreme fragmentation.
I will admit however, that when you get to 0.15% free (on a 4TB disk), performance really sux rox ;-)