What was the deductible on the company policy?
It is true that there is no advantage for a youngish healthy male individual, and you can include females only if the policy excludes coverage of child bearing. You can’t even compare the group rate to the average of individual rates because a number of the employees covered under the group policy will not be able to purchase individual policies at ANY price.
The healthcare bill addressed problems with people who had problems getting insurance. My rates went up because of it.
You’re right. By your stupendous logic doctors have the same preference for cash that they have for submitting the same paperwork 5 times to get paid.
Whew, that was a relief. Thanks for making it clear.
-Joe
it was an HMO with co-pays. So my savings example would improves in my favor as the deductible is met but I didn’t include that for discussion.
um what? do you not understand that cash payments save Doctors money in comparison to the labor spent collecting it from insurance companies?
No, I think that if my doctor wanted cash and accepted cash there would be some sort of notification making that clear.
There isn’t. Since you seem to think it is a mutually beneficial situation that only a fool wouldn’t post it, I wonder why that is?
Maybe I have no the only doctor in America who isn’t interested. That must be it. Feel free to post something intelligent next or I’m done with you.
-Joe
Or to families. Sure you can cover the 5K should something catastrophic happen. However, a family of 5 getting in a car accident? You have 25 grand sitting around?
I think it’s more likely that so very few people pay with cash, that it’s not generally considered. About 80-85% of the population has insurance. The rest probably rarely, if ever, go to the doctor.
I actually posted a website discussing the preference of doctors to get cash. I’ve also posted my costs and what my company paid. You’ve posted nothing. When you get laid off and are faced with paying Cobra you’ll understand. I hope that never happens but here is some free advice if it does: you should sign up for Cobra (but not buy it) so that you have uninterrupted insurance because insurance companies do not like to see gaps in coverage. That is true whether it’s health insurance or house insurance. After you’ve purchased your own policy you can drop Cobra without incurring any cost because there’s usually a 60 day waiver period.
Maybe you do have the only doctor who isn’t interested. I doubt it. You could take the trouble to ask like I did.
I survived 3 1/2 years of unemployment because I know how to handle my money. I still have my house, car, airplane and 96% of my retirement. I’m not hugely interested in your opinion on insurance because you’ve clearly not dealt with it in the real world. I posted my real world experiences for the benefit of discussion.
Best of luck with all your financial transactions and I mean that sincerely but I don’t see the point of discussing it unless you’ve actually been involved in it so I think were done here.
You’re such a gloomy [del]Gus[/del] [del]Charlotte[/del] 'luci, is weariness dragging you down?
Think of the up side to it all, guillotines would become a growth industry and the need for tumbrel drivers would lower unemployment to nothing!
… The gutter’s deep and red
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
the tumbrel driver said …
… I only go one way
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
There’s no gold coach today …
CMC fnord!
My impression is the lack of cooperation is due to how motivated, activist and conservative the current GOP base is. Large percentages of GOP primary voters believe Obama is a Kenyan, Al Qaeda manchurian candidate, Marxist, who wants to intentionally destroy the US economy and military so Muslims can conquer us. Views along those lines are not really unpopular among the dedicated base who make up a large % of primary voters.
I don’t know if releasing the long form birth certificate made a difference, but in February 2011, 51% of GOP primary voters believed Obama was not born in the US. Another 21% were not sure. Only 28% of GOP primary voters know Obama was born in the US, the other 72% either think he wasn’t are are not sure.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_US_0215.pdf
A 51% majority of national GOP primary voters erroneously think President Obama was
not born in the U.S. 28% know that he was.
What incentive is there for a GOP politician to cooperate with someone when 72% of your primary voters think he is a traitor who shouldn’t legally be president?
However even though the GOP is acting tough they did tell Wall Street that they would pass the debt ceiling increase.
Look, I think the Republicans are probably taking the no new taxes thing to the extreme but they do have a point about the deficit and national debt.
It’s only going to get worse if only because of the changing demographics in the U.S, way too many people are going to be retiring soon and if nothing is done to at least reign in spending and/or waste in social programs and all discretionary spending including the military this country will soon be going the way that Europe is going.
Actually I think the problem in Europe is still being minimized and has a good chance of becoming much worse.
I’m even considering withdrawing my cash from my money market fund because of the instability of the usually safe bond market and I’m usually not one to panic when it comes to investing.
It will be considerably easier to make significant changes now then wait until after the elections in 2012 but that’s probably what will happen anyway.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think social security or medicare is part of the federal budget (unless you count interest payments on t-bills bought with the social security trust fund). Therefore I don’t think the deficit getting worse would be due to social programs for the elderly. In fact, I can’t see the deficit getting worse unless the economy does. I think the deficit will continue to decrease as the economy gets better and cuts to the budget outlays will only accelerate this. That’s not to say it isn’t a big problem, it is, but it will get better if the economy improves.
It’s kind of like going to work and convincing everyone that you are needed even though you never do the work that your boss actually hired you to do. I get it!
That’s great, but you can live within your means by increasing your means.
I know people don’t like to get into the math on this, but reducing spending alone will not eliminate the deficit. It is a flat out impossibility; the difference is simply too great. The things the GOP cannot and has quite openly stated will not reduce are, by themselves, vastly higher than tax revenues.
That is not to say that spending cuts aren’t necessary; they certainly are. But what the GOP will inexplicably not admit is that tax increases are ALSO necessary, and that one of the cuts needed is to defense.
The likely outcome is that we try to default (just like Portugal) and find we can’t (just like Portugal) but then owe more interest on the new bonds sold as old bonds are paid off.
And some of the GOP know this (like Cantor, most likely) while some will actually be surprised when it happens.
If you take the realpolitik view of it, if that does happen then they can use it as an opportunity to push for further cuts to social programs and infrastructure since hte deficit will be even higher.
Sadly, the most likely possible outcome is that we will keep borrowing until the free market kicks in and the rating of US bonds is downgraded until people stop buying them. This is known as “reality kicking you in the balls”.
Is the US a latter-day Rome? Possibly not, but it’s looking more and more like a latter-day Spanish-Habsburg Empire every day. 
If we ‘try to default’, that does indeed show that the U.S. is a poor credit risk and interest rates will rise. Not as much as actually defaulting, but still not a good thing. (Recall the $120 million default in 1979 that cost the U.S. around $6 billion in increased interest payments.)
In the realpolitik view of it, trying to use the outcome as an opportunity to push for further cuts might backfire. I think that it would provide a greater opportunity to point out that no, the budget cannot be balanced without tax increases.