georgerussia

huh? Of course they say it is optional. First, insurance company cannot force you to open HSA account, but they want to sell you a plan even if you do not want to open HSA. Second, not everyone is eligible to fund HSA (you must have taxable income), but again it doesn't matter for the insurer. Yes it is - look for "$0 after deductible" in covered services. It means the plan pays nothing for most things it covers until the deductible (which can be up to $10K) is reached. Then the plan pays for everything else this year which is covered (but still not for any possible medical expense - maternity is still not covered for most plans). If this is not "major medical only", then I do not know what is. I also asked you to provide a link to ANY HSA plan which YOU would consider "major medical only", and which would not cover any of things listed in federal requirements, except maternity. This is a cap for cafeteria plans, not for your regular HSA accounts. As far as I know, HSA contribution limits are set up by IRS. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Wow! So if he's real and wants me that much, can he suck my dick? You know, the Bible never says Jesus objected to that! Sure it didn't say he did it - but it also didn't say he was farting, pee, poop and a lot of other things he surely did, so the lack of mentioning alone does not stand as a proof he didn't do it. I don't need his guidance, I'm intelligent enough to make decisions on my own, and mature enough to take responsibility for my decisions. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Your perception is wrong. I have nothing against you for just being a Christian - as long as you're not attempting to force others, who are not Christians, to live the "Christian way". And gay bashing is just one example of it. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Only toward those Christians who are trying to force everyone else to follow their views. Surprisingly there is a lot of them. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

You mean, like Christian gay bashing, right? Excellent! Hopefully those who spew hate toward gays and abortion doctors would learn from your message :) * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I would say there is a significant difference between a tree and a "birth of Jesus Christ" scene. Don't you think so? And they might call it differently than Christmas tree. Myself I gonna set up a tree for a New Year, and it is definitely not Christmas tree - it has nothing to do with Christmas, and I usually set it up on Dec 29 or so (they're also much cheaper after that). So not every tree set up in December is Christmas tree. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I did. Just wanted to make sure you read it too. I have no desire to discuss a fox "news" article instead of actual bill. BC/BS HSA plans in California cover all those items except maternity care (some even cover maternity too). Actually I would be interested to see any current HSA plan from a reputable health insurance company which does not cover something in this list, except maternity. Note the bold. We discussed it before. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Read that. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This might work if you pay cash for your treatment or if you're insured, but not for uninsured. If you're insured, you'll pay a larget copay - something like $100 instead of $20. This is a good reason for most people to wait for the morning, and go to urgent care instead. However if you're uninsured and not going to pay anyway, you don't care about this increase, and for you going to ER is _cheaper_ than going to UC, where you would have to prepay for treatment. And people with insurance are not flooding ERs which are closed for non-payment. The access to _emergency_ care does not change. Everyone had it before, and everyone will have it. What changes is that some of those who only had access to emergency care before, and therefore often used it for non-emergencies, now will have access to other options as well - therefore reducing load on emergency services. Yes, there is a chance that inflation might lead to 1M/year being minimum wage, and six-pack will cost $600, but I'd say we might as well discuss alien invasion. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Since the average health insurance premium in 2009 for a family is is $13,375 - ten times more than you pay, I would say your situation represents very insignificant minority. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

No it doesn't. Yes, it does: Judge Crabb's main ruling that display or ownership of the Ten Commandments by a city is unconstitutional was not overturned, thus the bible edict remains on private property. Another court case Settled cases. Read from #4. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This seems to be US-specific things. For example, in Russia people set up trees and put gifts under them on New Year's day; nobody sets up trees for Christmas. Has its own benefits though - I usually volunteered to be on-call on Dec 25 - the company gave two paid day-offs, and since I don't give shit about Christmas, it's not a problem to me. Also Orthodox Christmas (Jan 7) was not even a holiday a few years ago, and Catholic Christmas (Dec 25) is not a holiday at all. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Quote the bill, please. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Such policies are available - if you want catastrophic coverage only, get something like HSA policy with a 5K deductible. And it's cheap. This is not really routine, as some people do not go to doctor when sick with common cold, and some people develop other illness, and go to hospitals or even die. A visit to a doctor due to common cold might also uncover other health issues (like AIDS). Let's count. Regular carwash price here is $11.99 + tax. Assuming $5 copay, this is $7 direct cost to insurance. Since they can negotiate better rates because they bring customers, and since administering claims cost money, I assume those counter each other. For four car washes in a year, the direct cost would be $28. If there is $20 deductible, the direct cost would be $8. Oil change is more expensive - around $30 here; let's say $10 copay and $22 direct insurance costs. Having it twice a year the cost will be $44 with no deductibles. Now the insurance for my car is $700 a year. In the worst case I see 10% increase. This is not significant. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Urgent care is not hospital or ER. It's like a regular doctor office which employs several doctors, does not require appointments and charge the same copay as doctors. They do not treat uninsured as well unless you pay cash. It's also close to my home, and since I do not have my doctor, when I feel sick, I just go there. So what I quoted was charge (actual amount - I received it on "explanation of benefits"). My point was that ER charged significantly more for the same service, and it's likely because their costs are significantly larger. No, they are not. UC clinics are not required to treat uninsured, or even to accept state insurance or Medicare, so every service they provide is paid for. This is not the case for ERs. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

As far as I know, none of those loans you described were guaranteed by Freddie/Fannie, which only guaranteed "conforming" loans - those requiring good credit score, downpayment, income guidelines and fixed payments. Non-conforming "liar loans" were NOT guaranteed. And I don't let Republicans off the hook, as they sat on the same committees, in fact they led them. So long as they got their pork projects, anything the Dems wanted to add so that everyone could have a house they could not afford was fine with them. But mainly I believe the American economic troubles were driven by a public that wanted it all, the big house they could not afford, the new car, make that multiple cars, the boat and RV, the $100K in credit card debt, and a negative savings rate. We do want it all and we want it now. In 1955 the typical new home was 1,100 square feet, with the family having more than three kids. They saved up until they had a 20% or greater down payment. In recent years, every newly wed young couple I knew was buying a 3,000 square foot house, 100% financed, and then they financed the furniture to go in it. And the cruise, not to mention the $50K wedding. Add to that American company management that outsourced most of its manufacturing. GE and Wallmart literally created China as a major manufacturing nation. Those who said we could have a "service economy" and do well on it were nuts. The prime way to create wealth is to turn raw materials into something valuable. We used to do a lot of that. Today we have largely service industries that merely spread existing wealth around. Sooner or later you run out of national accumulated wealth to spread around. It is quite the mess. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Only very small part of it is prepaid, and this is pretty much negligible. For example, all insurance plans I've been on only covered one routine checkup per year - not a significant source of savings. So if insurance company pays the doctor up to $100 for this visit, subtracting a $20 copay (assuming you're on a good plan) you're prepaying $7 a month for this routine checkup. Not a significant source of savings. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

This has been already addressed in legislation - being in country illegally is against the law. It doesn't make any more sense to address it from a legislative branch - it is already illegal, and they should not be there. And I see you yourself have no ideas how would you provide healthcare to anyone but illegals. Have you read the bill? A significant part of it is devoted to how it is going to be paid for. If you're really interested, why wouldn't you just read it? The cost of illegal HC is already being absorbed, and will not increase unless more illegals come to the country - illegals already use ERs for non-emergency services. So are you saying that delivering letters is what most commercial delivery companies do, and is the core of their business? Because if it's not, then your example is kinda irrelevant, right? From what I know, majority of shipping revenue comes from packages, especially urgent packages - and this is where the main competition is. Note that despite this horrifying disadvantage USPS has over private companies, they are still in a much better shape than privately run Enron or GM. You need to read the actual bill, so your examples would represent what is being discussed in legislature, not what your pastor or favorite talk show host thinks about it. According to Wiki, they are in the same category "government independent agencies". You did not provide any proof to support your statement. This is my favorite. Since "not everyone wants their HC in the hands of the Govt", then public option should be obviously banned - and this is coming from Republicans, who claim they want to offer people choice! It is fine if YOU personally do not want to use public option - just keep your private insurance, the bill allows it. However there are people around who might find public option better for them in terms of price/quality. You might say that with shrinking pool of people willing to pay for private insurance it will cost you more, but then why should everyone subsidy your choice if they believe public option is better for them? You know, it's kinda socialist from your side to restrict other people choices by forcing them to do what YOU consider to be "the only right thing". Well, it IS the case. You just need to compare with what would happen with Amtrak if the government did NOT take it over - and you will see. I see no facts introduced by your cite, and you did not provide a link, so there is nothing to discuss. If you expect me to go to a library to request 2004 Chicago Sun-Times, then think again. You're saying VA is run poorly? Bring the numbers, and compare with the numbers from private industry I posted recently. Then we will see. It does, because VA system is not subscription-based, while the current larger system is. Because you're not discussing anything. You're trying to turn the discussion your way, pretty much as your talk show hosts do. As it doesn't work, you start your typical "avoided giving answer" drama. Unfortunately you didn't read the bill, so everything you're discussing did not come from the actual law, and there is little value in such discussion anyway. What program? You said Social Security is not running well by any standard. Well, by the standard AIG, Madoff and Lehman were running (and a lot of banks are), Social Security is running very well. This is pretty obvious why you didn't comment on the facts as they contradict what you said, and lowered yourself down to typical right-wing propaganda. Unfortunately, the facts are against you - somehow you expect the government to run things perfectly, and give huge leeway to private industries when comparing standards. No, this is not all I want - I would also like a free blowjob from Jesus. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Well, in this case you are wrong by saying "all else is permitted by the Holy Bible". You should have said "our interpretation of the Bible, which is not shared by majority of Christians around the world, says that all else is permitted by the Holy Bible". Then you're not really different from me, who says that only by sending me at least $100 check you gonna be saved from Hell, because of Matt 19:24. Personally I always find it funny that there is a bunch of people who call themselves Christians, say that their beliefs are based on the Bible, but do not agree even with basic things regarding interpretation. How'd you know? There is obviously no search engine on this book, and you may be just misled - after all, humans are not perfect, and making mistakes. Again, there is a lot of people calling themselves Christians, from Catholics to LDS to Jehovah Witnesses. All of them believe their way of learning Jesus is the only right way - pretty much same as you do, and most of them claim that if you adopted another Christian religion, you will not be saved. And all of them read holy bible - so apparently "god's will" means different things for different people! * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Ok, let's see the math. I went to ER once for a sore throat when I just arrived to the country and didn't know about urgent care clinics. According to insurance statements, the total cost of my visit charged by ER + physician was ~$2500, for which insurance paid $800 plus my $100 copay. This was in 2005, so the numbers must be higher in 2009. Now, checking urgent care: $25 copay, the facility charged $325 and the insurance paid $125. The difference I see is at least 4x in actual costs, and 8x in charged costs. If you have other numbers, please share them. As I always say, it's very easy to criticize everything. It's only when you start seriously think what would YOU do, it gets more complex, and then most of the bill suddenly makes sense. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

According to bill there are two categories which would see more taxes: those whose plan cost exceeds 24K (can't remember exact number), and those families making over 1M a year. In both cases all I can say about this - I wish I had their problems. So I'm looking to how would YOU fix this problem of lowering down the actual cost of delivering health care? You already acknowledged the cost is too high, and therefore something need to be done, but what? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

I'm not talking about taxes. Didn't your insurance premium go up at all during last 10 years beyond switching the age group? Then you're lucky, as according to statistics average premium went up 219% during last ten years. The cost saving goes from the fact that treating sore throat in ER is much more expensive than threating it in doctor's office or urgent care clinic. At this moment those have no other options where to go. Then the employer would just pay you more. Lawmakers obviously understand that, and that's why the fine will likely be higher (in my opinion it should be the same as the cheapest insurance which provides the amount of coverage required by the government standards). Note that insurance lobby would fight for it as well. Another issue here is that applying for insurance is not something you can do in five minutes (even now it takes a week or more), and if you have an appendix burst or broken ankle, you are unlikely to wait this week until your application is approved. Then it would likely eat all the savings from last five years. If you're a young healthy family, why wouldn't you just get a 80/20 HSA plan with something like 5K deductible? It would cost then something like $3000 a year, which is pretty cheap insurance policy for a family, and your medical expenses are tax deductible using your HSA account. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

Who heads them is irrelevant in discussed content. My point was that all those agencies are still part of the government. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

So you're saying then that because RonD interprets the bible differently from Catholic Church, then Catholic Church interpretation should be invalid, and not RonD's? They contradict each other, so obviously both cannot be valid. * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

So are you saying that Catholic interpretation of the Bible is invalid? * Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *