A safe deposit box is a bad place for a will. You should make sure someone else you trust can legally access it if you keep your will there. Otherwise a death certificate and key is not enough, it has to go through probate court to prove ownership and by then you will is useless.
My kids had two bouts of fever about a month apart that had them each at fevers of around 105, one briefly reached 106. We controlled it with Motrin, Tylonel does not seem to work as well for fevers. We consulted with the Doctor, but that is a pretty scary high fever.
Since I've heard this discount thing several times I'd be very interested in comparing notes with you. I have paid cash before when I didn't have insurance (between jobs), and I don't think the discount you get is as good as you think it is. It may be sometimes, but not often. I have seen summaries from my insurance company where they are billed around $170 and only pay around $14 or less. I wish I was kidding. How the heck are you supposed to know that there is that much fat on the bill?
I'm not a big fan of socialized medicine, but "the market" just isn't going to fix this.
FYI on the kids, #4 is on the way and we're calling it quits. Children are a blessing, but you do need to limit yourself. 2nd of 8 myself, one income family.
Part of me agrees with this, but I am a father of three young children. When my kids get sick, generally an ear infection or strep throat, they all have to go to the doctor and usually my wife and I do too. Let's assume it's just my kids. By the time I pay copays for medical care and Rx's I'm out at least $75 ($25 / per). That doesn't sound like a lot, but it is to me and this can happen once a month in the winter. Add my wife and I to the mix, or one higher copay Rx and I can easily be up to $150 or more for one sickness that runs through my family.
The other thing you don't think about is how difficult it is to compare prices at different hospitals or locations (plus who wants to constantly switch doctors, it's not like grabbing toilet paper at Aldi's instead of Wal-Mart). I have no idea what things should cost and I have no idea what is required. I keep myself relatively well informed and it's still almost impossible to read the damn receipts. The ones I get from the insurance company are much better. They show what was done, how much the doc wanted to charge, and how much they allowed them to charge (the difference between those two numbers ranges from 10% to 90%, I'm not kidding).
So who is going to keep the docs honest? Consumers don't have the knowledge or the will (put a price on your life?, ok now put one on your mother-in-laws). To abandon the current system would cause at least a decade of skyrocketing prices. Then, when everything crashes and we get used to drinking a foul mixture of herbs in a dirt floor hut for medical care, things will climb back up and normalize. I would rather not see this turmoil.
FYI, I pay about $378 / month for medical and dental to cover my family. I fund a flex acount with $1300 / year which is pretty much gone now and it's not even May. So extrapolating that I would assume I have around $3000 in out of pocket expenses in a given year, this includes eye care. Family of 5 around $50k gross.
Yeah, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that if I got an MRI, I would get a letter from Anthem saying that the normal cost is $1200, but they only allow $450 and the doc writes off the rest.
You can't shop around for medical, my wife is expecting. Guess how easy it is to find out hospital costs. I have at least three major reputable hospitals near me, but there is absolutely no way they will give me an estimate of costs beyond the average amount people pay out of pocket when they have insurance. That's a pretty wide range too, like $700 - $1200. Would you go to a mechanic who couldn't nail down a price better then that?
Market forces will not reform health care. It's destined to fail.
The trick is to only sleep 1/2 at a time.
If you drive with one-eye closed on long trips, raise your hands! Freaks the wife out when I have the one eye she can see closed...
Yeah, I love to leave a little room to react and watch all the cars around me, until some asshole jams his Hummer in front of me so he can shave 2 seconds off his commute.
The worst thing is highway like roads that still have stop signs. There's a major state highway here, I used to live on it. The lights weren't synchronized and I swear it was like a drag race to each light. If you didn't keep up you'd end up half a dozen cars back each time you stopped at a light.
I haven't seen this mentioned, but if I had an employee who was probably costing me a ton on insurance because of a brain tumor, I might take an easy opportunity to get them off the books.
The same goes for the longevity of the newspaper - given that everyone can get their news off the web, why do newspapers still exist? Why doesn't everyone just read the same news via a laptop at the table?
Because of old people, how many under 30's do you know that get a daily newspaper?
My "bag of books" is about the size of a deck of cards and sits easily in my front pocket. I'm not so tired of carrying it I have to toss it down. That's what ebooks do for me. I read fast and always used to dread that moment when you know your going to be waiting around for along time, but your almost done with a book, or far enough in you know you'll finish it soon. Do you take a new book (which you might not like), carry two books, or just take the one and hope for the best. With a dozen books on my PDA, I never have that problem.
An added bonus is that if my boss walked by and saw me with some pulp sci-fi book open on my desk he would probably say something (or think something). But if I'm waiting on my PC or standing by the server, while it chugs away, I can pop my PDA out and read afew pages without anyone noticing (maybe I'm taking notes), it's great for boring meetings too:).
I was a palm lover for years, but I recently converted to an HP IPAQ 2950. It's great. I didn't realize what I was missing out on. The battary time is not as good, but I can still get a good day or more of reading books and really using my PDA. I do avoid using the wireless because it sucks down the battary, as do high intensity games. But for a PDA, ebook, mp3 device, it's really great.
I tried Firefox in our Citrix environment and it just flat out doensn't cut the mustard. I can't install or manage plugins for users. I can't push variables for all users or set anything via policies. IE is getting just as bad though. I upgraded to IE7 and half my users still have the damn welcome to IE7 page up because they don't know enough to click set-up, keep my settings. It's been at least six months and I see no way to disable that for all my users.
One morning I was watching the news and they had TSA agents searching people before they got on the city busses, to "remind people busses are under the authority of the TSA". It was total bullshit, especially since they only searched people at a couple stops.
In hindsight I suppose they probably had a tip and were looking for someone specific.
Paying less when a company is not doing well is a surefire way to lose your best admin staff to other companies. Admin and managers are professionals, they should be payed a set industry wage, bonuses should be merit based as with all employees, but the majority of a person's income should be set. I think industries that train their people to expect 10 or 20 percent bonuses are shooting themselves in the foot. It's not like these people will say "Oh well, we had a shitty year" when these bonuses aren't handed out, they view it as part of their salary. The money spent in these bonuses would be better spent in modest or even generous raises. Only people who work on commision should worry about heavy pay fluctuations.
I worked for a group of doctors for awhile, they had offices for everything from general pracitice and peds, to cardio and ENT. The general practice and peds doctors were so tight they squeeked (had to keep that money on their pockets), while the specialists would drop money on anything, they switched out 1 year old CRT's for all new LCD's to save space (in '02). Meanwhile we had ped's offices that still had green screens. I happened to see one of our surgeons (bariatric rip off) budgets while working on his laptop. His monthly budget was a bit less then my annual.:(
That joke is about as applicable as me laying claim to Mexico City because my maternal grandfather had was part Aztec. It's laughable to go that far back in history to establish a claim to something. Are white Americans going to move back to Europe, welcomed with open arms because that is where they are from?
I've bought meat at kroger that is red on the outside and brownish gray on the inside. I always thought they painted it. One of their meat counter guys told me meat turns brown when it touches other meat (an obvious load of crap). I don't remember if their meat is wrapped in cellophane or in an airtight container that might include CO. I always wondered why Wal-Mart packaged their meat that way.
My parents bought some cartoons from the 50's or 60's for my kids.
My wife was watching them and their was a scene where some characters were in a movie theater and they cut to what she thought was a gorilla sitting in the theater (hmmm). Only after the baby "gorilla" ate a big slice of watermelon and started spitting seeds did she realize that the "gorilla" was an insensitive representation of a black person.
Slashdot Mirror
A safe deposit box is a bad place for a will. You should make sure someone else you trust can legally access it if you keep your will there. Otherwise a death certificate and key is not enough, it has to go through probate court to prove ownership and by then you will is useless.
My kids had two bouts of fever about a month apart that had them each at fevers of around 105, one briefly reached 106. We controlled it with Motrin, Tylonel does not seem to work as well for fevers. We consulted with the Doctor, but that is a pretty scary high fever.
Since I've heard this discount thing several times I'd be very interested in comparing notes with you. I have paid cash before when I didn't have insurance (between jobs), and I don't think the discount you get is as good as you think it is. It may be sometimes, but not often. I have seen summaries from my insurance company where they are billed around $170 and only pay around $14 or less. I wish I was kidding. How the heck are you supposed to know that there is that much fat on the bill?
I'm not a big fan of socialized medicine, but "the market" just isn't going to fix this.
FYI on the kids, #4 is on the way and we're calling it quits. Children are a blessing, but you do need to limit yourself. 2nd of 8 myself, one income family.
sorry to reply to my own post, but aside from what I spend, I think my company contributes around $700 / month to my insurance.
Part of me agrees with this, but I am a father of three young children. When my kids get sick, generally an ear infection or strep throat, they all have to go to the doctor and usually my wife and I do too. Let's assume it's just my kids. By the time I pay copays for medical care and Rx's I'm out at least $75 ($25 / per). That doesn't sound like a lot, but it is to me and this can happen once a month in the winter. Add my wife and I to the mix, or one higher copay Rx and I can easily be up to $150 or more for one sickness that runs through my family.
The other thing you don't think about is how difficult it is to compare prices at different hospitals or locations (plus who wants to constantly switch doctors, it's not like grabbing toilet paper at Aldi's instead of Wal-Mart). I have no idea what things should cost and I have no idea what is required. I keep myself relatively well informed and it's still almost impossible to read the damn receipts. The ones I get from the insurance company are much better. They show what was done, how much the doc wanted to charge, and how much they allowed them to charge (the difference between those two numbers ranges from 10% to 90%, I'm not kidding).
So who is going to keep the docs honest? Consumers don't have the knowledge or the will (put a price on your life?, ok now put one on your mother-in-laws). To abandon the current system would cause at least a decade of skyrocketing prices. Then, when everything crashes and we get used to drinking a foul mixture of herbs in a dirt floor hut for medical care, things will climb back up and normalize. I would rather not see this turmoil.
FYI, I pay about $378 / month for medical and dental to cover my family. I fund a flex acount with $1300 / year which is pretty much gone now and it's not even May. So extrapolating that I would assume I have around $3000 in out of pocket expenses in a given year, this includes eye care. Family of 5 around $50k gross.
Yeah, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that if I got an MRI, I would get a letter from Anthem saying that the normal cost is $1200, but they only allow $450 and the doc writes off the rest.
You can't shop around for medical, my wife is expecting. Guess how easy it is to find out hospital costs. I have at least three major reputable hospitals near me, but there is absolutely no way they will give me an estimate of costs beyond the average amount people pay out of pocket when they have insurance. That's a pretty wide range too, like $700 - $1200. Would you go to a mechanic who couldn't nail down a price better then that?
Market forces will not reform health care. It's destined to fail.
The trick is to only sleep 1/2 at a time.
If you drive with one-eye closed on long trips, raise your hands!
Freaks the wife out when I have the one eye she can see closed...
Yeah, I love to leave a little room to react and watch all the cars around me, until some asshole jams his Hummer in front of me so he can shave 2 seconds off his commute.
The worst thing is highway like roads that still have stop signs. There's a major state highway here, I used to live on it. The lights weren't synchronized and I swear it was like a drag race to each light. If you didn't keep up you'd end up half a dozen cars back each time you stopped at a light.
That's what happens when you live in the north, damn axial tilt!
If he's sleeping in his care I'm going to assume he's also homeless, where was he supposed to store a seat?
I haven't seen this mentioned, but if I had an employee who was probably costing me a ton on insurance because of a brain tumor, I might take an easy opportunity to get them off the books.
The same goes for the longevity of the newspaper - given that everyone can get their news off the web, why do newspapers still exist? Why doesn't everyone just read the same news via a laptop at the table?
Because of old people, how many under 30's do you know that get a daily newspaper?
My "bag of books" is about the size of a deck of cards and sits easily in my front pocket. I'm not so tired of carrying it I have to toss it down. That's what ebooks do for me. I read fast and always used to dread that moment when you know your going to be waiting around for along time, but your almost done with a book, or far enough in you know you'll finish it soon. Do you take a new book (which you might not like), carry two books, or just take the one and hope for the best. With a dozen books on my PDA, I never have that problem.
:).
An added bonus is that if my boss walked by and saw me with some pulp sci-fi book open on my desk he would probably say something (or think something). But if I'm waiting on my PC or standing by the server, while it chugs away, I can pop my PDA out and read afew pages without anyone noticing (maybe I'm taking notes), it's great for boring meetings too
I agree ebooks should drop in price a bit.
I was a palm lover for years, but I recently converted to an HP IPAQ 2950. It's great. I didn't realize what I was missing out on. The battary time is not as good, but I can still get a good day or more of reading books and really using my PDA. I do avoid using the wireless because it sucks down the battary, as do high intensity games. But for a PDA, ebook, mp3 device, it's really great.
I tried Firefox in our Citrix environment and it just flat out doensn't cut the mustard. I can't install or manage plugins for users. I can't push variables for all users or set anything via policies. IE is getting just as bad though. I upgraded to IE7 and half my users still have the damn welcome to IE7 page up because they don't know enough to click set-up, keep my settings. It's been at least six months and I see no way to disable that for all my users.
this was meant to be informative...
:`(
I don't think that would assure anything other then a TSA pisssing match and alot of dead bystanders.
You can bet, if insurance cover its, they will find an efficient and unappealing way to harvest. :(
One morning I was watching the news and they had TSA agents searching people before they got on the city busses, to "remind people busses are under the authority of the TSA". It was total bullshit, especially since they only searched people at a couple stops.
In hindsight I suppose they probably had a tip and were looking for someone specific.
Paying less when a company is not doing well is a surefire way to lose your best admin staff to other companies. Admin and managers are professionals, they should be payed a set industry wage, bonuses should be merit based as with all employees, but the majority of a person's income should be set. I think industries that train their people to expect 10 or 20 percent bonuses are shooting themselves in the foot. It's not like these people will say "Oh well, we had a shitty year" when these bonuses aren't handed out, they view it as part of their salary. The money spent in these bonuses would be better spent in modest or even generous raises. Only people who work on commision should worry about heavy pay fluctuations.
I worked for a group of doctors for awhile, they had offices for everything from general pracitice and peds, to cardio and ENT. The general practice and peds doctors were so tight they squeeked (had to keep that money on their pockets), while the specialists would drop money on anything, they switched out 1 year old CRT's for all new LCD's to save space (in '02). Meanwhile we had ped's offices that still had green screens. I happened to see one of our surgeons (bariatric rip off) budgets while working on his laptop. His monthly budget was a bit less then my annual. :(
Exactly, we are both in agreement that the State of Isreal is nothing but a power grab, there is no right.
That joke is about as applicable as me laying claim to Mexico City because my maternal grandfather had was part Aztec. It's laughable to go that far back in history to establish a claim to something. Are white Americans going to move back to Europe, welcomed with open arms because that is where they are from?
I've bought meat at kroger that is red on the outside and brownish gray on the inside. I always thought they painted it. One of their meat counter guys told me meat turns brown when it touches other meat (an obvious load of crap). I don't remember if their meat is wrapped in cellophane or in an airtight container that might include CO. I always wondered why Wal-Mart packaged their meat that way.
My parents bought some cartoons from the 50's or 60's for my kids.
My wife was watching them and their was a scene where some characters were in a movie theater and they cut to what she thought was a gorilla sitting in the theater (hmmm). Only after the baby "gorilla" ate a big slice of watermelon and started spitting seeds did she realize that the "gorilla" was an insensitive representation of a black person.