unless they can afford to pay out of pocket for insurance which will cost a lot more than usual because of their preexisting condition.
The relative cost/benefit of health insurance against all the other "necessities" is a choice you make. Saying "the cost is too high, so I'm not going to buy it" is cutting off your nose to spite your face. As I said before, health insurance is more important than any other necessity in your life short of food.
Move into a cheaper house (or rent), get a used car (or a cast-off), and get better health insurance.
Every insurance company I have dealt with (and I switch plans often) will cover people with pre-existing conditions if they have maintained continuous coverage (when I had them five years ago, BCBS, for instance, only required that pre-existing conditions have a previous 12-months of uninterrupted coverage).
It is essential that you get health coverage early, and do not let it lapse (You must view health insurance as a necessity, instead of a luxury. It's more important than your mortgage). If you lose employment, and you're on your employer's plan, you should sign up for COBRA immediately (COBRA is typically better than private health insurance).
I went the emergency room last week. The total bill was $5,000, and I didn't pay a dime because I have awesome (but expensive) health insurance. Anyone can buy health insurance. The only question is: how important is it to you?
I don't want to hear folks complaining about not affording health insurance when they have a 60" LCD on a payment plan, and an $80 AT&T bill every month. They didn't prioritize correctly, and it's their own fault.
For folks who truly can't afford health care, they don't have to pay, already.
Even though the linked article paints a militaristic view of US involvement in foreign aid, it concedes that US "military" aid is often anything but. The article does state (and rightly) that our aid dollars are not being spent as efficiently as they ought to be, and that civilian organizations can often do a better job (private foreign aid from the US topped $122 billion last year; I read it and lost the link. Sorry).
Now, as for the HRI index: it blasts the US for giving goods instead of writing checks, and for designating cash for specific humanitarian projects, which is nit-picking IMH(and unfamiliar)O. Particularly specious is the political argument; our aid means less because we haven't signed "key" international treaties, which casts a political light on the HRI.
22% is "military aid," which still leaves the US as the #1 producer of non-military foreign aid. Now figure out what percentage of that 22% is in the form of disaster relief and other aid operations using the US military (classified as "military aid" by the state department.
the rest of the world suffers at the hand of the Federal Government
Yeah, all those poor bastards that suffocate under that avalanche of foreign aid we send out every year*. This is confirmation bias as work: if all I do is look at what you do wrong, you're a complete f'ing bastard to me.
*I have no doubt whatsoever you have found a way to prove that our foreign aid is an evil machination, as well.
Sure, you can read all about it in The Protocols of the Elders of Christianity. The televangelists and the free masons are in it together. It's an American theocracy!
As a man "cursed" with male pattern baldness, I'll say here that going bald had a significant effect on my social standing, but not in the way you'd expect. Before, I had a thick mop of hair that would never comb right. After I started balding, I started shaving my head every morning. The general consensus among my acquaintances is that I look better now than I did before I was balding. It helps tremendously, of course, that Smallville is as popular a TV show as it is these days.
Men, do not fear the razor. The Gillete Mach 3 is your friend.
Please. Spare me the demagoguery. Your hero-worship notwithstanding, RMS is not "highly influential." Twenty years ago? Sure. Today? A little too loony for most people's tastes, even in F/OSS.
About your second point: you accept "magic box" services every day of your life. You put your money in a bank and trust that they're gonna give it back when you ask for it. You pay a cable company to provide you internet, and trust that none of their techs are reading your email. You use your credit/debit card at countless businesses, and trust a whole chain of people not to swipe your card number.
If I was going to be paranoid about lack of transparency and control in paid services, there are a dozen other every day things I would be more worried about than my GMail account.
The correct answer to the question, if you're an evangelical Christian, is to say, "yes, I believe that," (or risk being theologically dishonest, since both candidates profess adhering to evangelical protestantism), but then support with full force Jefferson's presupposition that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," chief among these being the absolute freedom of religion, and separation of church and state (for the foremost purpose of allowing people to worship [or not worship] as they see fit).
Any other answer will no doubt please a minority of people and piss off everyone else. It's the reason why I don't like religion being a part of the election cycle.
You should go back and play Diablo and Diablo 2. I think you will find that the "new Disney" art direction is more consistent with the franchise than the fan-made mock-up's.
Self-identification is meaningless in this election. You've got swathes of people trolling the internet, pretending to be Republicans for Obama, Hillarycrats for Palin, aliens for Kucinich, etc. Everyone jumped into the same slimy, lying cesspool this time, so just ignore the (R) and (D) next to people's names and identify them by their policy stances.
Slashdot Mirror
The relative cost/benefit of health insurance against all the other "necessities" is a choice you make. Saying "the cost is too high, so I'm not going to buy it" is cutting off your nose to spite your face. As I said before, health insurance is more important than any other necessity in your life short of food.
Move into a cheaper house (or rent), get a used car (or a cast-off), and get better health insurance.
Every insurance company I have dealt with (and I switch plans often) will cover people with pre-existing conditions if they have maintained continuous coverage (when I had them five years ago, BCBS, for instance, only required that pre-existing conditions have a previous 12-months of uninterrupted coverage).
It is essential that you get health coverage early, and do not let it lapse (You must view health insurance as a necessity, instead of a luxury. It's more important than your mortgage). If you lose employment, and you're on your employer's plan, you should sign up for COBRA immediately (COBRA is typically better than private health insurance).
I went the emergency room last week. The total bill was $5,000, and I didn't pay a dime because I have awesome (but expensive) health insurance. Anyone can buy health insurance. The only question is: how important is it to you?
I don't want to hear folks complaining about not affording health insurance when they have a 60" LCD on a payment plan, and an $80 AT&T bill every month. They didn't prioritize correctly, and it's their own fault.
For folks who truly can't afford health care, they don't have to pay, already.
Dude. That is so retarded. Every American knows we beat Englind in the Revoution, and so they're, like, a tortilla of the United States of USA.
I learned it in Allamance County public schools, NC.
You in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. You come upon two level 5 presidential candidates.
Now roll for initiative.
or... ebola?
enema?
emulsified?
or.. or... OR...
excremental!
Here's a link with the number from a critical source: http://www.alternet.org/audits/93893/u.s._foreign_aid:_more_guns_than_butter/
Even though the linked article paints a militaristic view of US involvement in foreign aid, it concedes that US "military" aid is often anything but. The article does state (and rightly) that our aid dollars are not being spent as efficiently as they ought to be, and that civilian organizations can often do a better job (private foreign aid from the US topped $122 billion last year; I read it and lost the link. Sorry).
Now, as for the HRI index: it blasts the US for giving goods instead of writing checks, and for designating cash for specific humanitarian projects, which is nit-picking IMH(and unfamiliar)O. Particularly specious is the political argument; our aid means less because we haven't signed "key" international treaties, which casts a political light on the HRI.
22% is "military aid," which still leaves the US as the #1 producer of non-military foreign aid. Now figure out what percentage of that 22% is in the form of disaster relief and other aid operations using the US military (classified as "military aid" by the state department.
Yeah, all those poor bastards that suffocate under that avalanche of foreign aid we send out every year*. This is confirmation bias as work: if all I do is look at what you do wrong, you're a complete f'ing bastard to me.
*I have no doubt whatsoever you have found a way to prove that our foreign aid is an evil machination, as well.
Sure, you can read all about it in The Protocols of the Elders of Christianity. The televangelists and the free masons are in it together. It's an American theocracy!
As a man "cursed" with male pattern baldness, I'll say here that going bald had a significant effect on my social standing, but not in the way you'd expect. Before, I had a thick mop of hair that would never comb right. After I started balding, I started shaving my head every morning. The general consensus among my acquaintances is that I look better now than I did before I was balding. It helps tremendously, of course, that Smallville is as popular a TV show as it is these days.
Men, do not fear the razor. The Gillete Mach 3 is your friend.
Exactly. The number one priority of being an informed voter is making sure we are never exposed to the other side.
</snark>
That way the whiners don't have to see idle.slashdot.org stories anymore.
Please. Spare me the demagoguery. Your hero-worship notwithstanding, RMS is not "highly influential." Twenty years ago? Sure. Today? A little too loony for most people's tastes, even in F/OSS.
About your second point: you accept "magic box" services every day of your life. You put your money in a bank and trust that they're gonna give it back when you ask for it. You pay a cable company to provide you internet, and trust that none of their techs are reading your email. You use your credit/debit card at countless businesses, and trust a whole chain of people not to swipe your card number.
If I was going to be paranoid about lack of transparency and control in paid services, there are a dozen other every day things I would be more worried about than my GMail account.
None of RMS's concerns are related to the concept of "cloud" computing. His issues are with proprietary computing.
The correct answer to the question, if you're an evangelical Christian, is to say, "yes, I believe that," (or risk being theologically dishonest, since both candidates profess adhering to evangelical protestantism), but then support with full force Jefferson's presupposition that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," chief among these being the absolute freedom of religion, and separation of church and state (for the foremost purpose of allowing people to worship [or not worship] as they see fit).
Any other answer will no doubt please a minority of people and piss off everyone else. It's the reason why I don't like religion being a part of the election cycle.
That song is an abomination and a betrayal of my childhood. How dare you, sir!
It's time for warning stickers. Or at least Vaseline coupons.
If both sides of every conflict missed every single target like on the TV show, I would, indeed, find it hilarious.
Do mirrors work against high-energy lasers? Say, the kind powerful enough to fry a person?
You should go back and play Diablo and Diablo 2. I think you will find that the "new Disney" art direction is more consistent with the franchise than the fan-made mock-up's.
I like it, too, but you gotta remember: this is the internet. For every 10 happy people who won't post, there is 1 whiner who will.
Maybe not fine, but, given the pedestrian nature of the work emails, hardly nefarious.
Self-identification is meaningless in this election. You've got swathes of people trolling the internet, pretending to be Republicans for Obama, Hillarycrats for Palin, aliens for Kucinich, etc. Everyone jumped into the same slimy, lying cesspool this time, so just ignore the (R) and (D) next to people's names and identify them by their policy stances.