Health Insurance 44

[tbonebanjo]

I was just wondering how many companies still have good insurance and how many have gone the way of Obamacare. I am in a small MEP firm in Maryland. Our health insurance just changed, our premiums went up and our coverage went way down. I have maximum out of pocket expenses of $12,500 per year, $4000 deductable per person, tnen start the copay schedules. Should I start looking for other employment or are all companies being affected this way?

 

[moltenmetal]

The dose makes the poison. Always.

Prohibition doesn't work, and cannot be made to work in an open society, since you can get heroin in a maximum security prison. QED.

If you want to reduce harm, that's one thing. If you want to enforce morality, that's something else entirely. Prohibition doesn't do the former at all effectively.

If you have public healthcare it makes sense to have taxes on stuff that prematurely kills people, including foodstuffs that contain nothing but empty calories. Most people don't mind so-called "sin taxes" and just take them in stride, so they're not all that effective, but they do deter some consumption. They also generate revenue to cover some of the cost of the negative outcomes from consuming these things, which is better than taxing income to do the same.

 

[IRstuff]

Actions should consequences -- but they're meaningful only when the consequences are relatively immediate. Smoking had been known to be a bad thing for a long time, but people continued to smoke because the consequences were remotely in the future, and few people would publicly declare having lung cancers. Had cigarettes been $30 or $40 a pack, fewer people would have smoked, or smoked less, mainly because a surrogate consequence - the emptying of one's wallet - would be immediate. When a single cigarette costs $3, I think there would be a drastic and immediate cost/benefit trade that would swing the decision to something else.

Of course, the downside would be that roast duck would probably wind up being $40/each instead of the current $16/each

Current sin taxes are not sufficiently high enough to be deterrents, simply because they're not really actuarially prescribed. Rather, the tax is usually something that would up as a compromise between opposing sides that paid lip service to being a sin tax. This would be the biggest obstacle to a true valuation of the life cycle cost of most items; their manufacturers and their lobbyists would be crying a river about loss of jobs, restraint of trade, blah, blah, blah.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[KENAT]

Well the other side of very high 'sin taxes' would be the criminal effort that will crop up to circumnavigate it ala prohibition.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[IRstuff]

That may be true; it's unclear how much of that will happen if there is a legitimate outlet for goods, as compared to prohibition, where there was no legitimate outlet for the liquor, otherwise. Taxes are pretty high on tobacco, but I've not heard much about duty-free cigarettes, but I've heard of a couple of cases of stolen cigarette shipments.

Another difference is that the manufacturers of cigarettes now are quite large and there really aren't any small-scale suppliers that could be suborned into supplying them duty-free.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[glass99]

America is the obesity capital of the world because it over consumes cheaply produced junk food. It is so cheap that a person living on minimum wage can afford to eat candy, soda and beer every day until they can't eat any more. This combined with longer life expectancy drives health care costs perhaps more than any other single factor. Diabetes is huge, especially when considering all the secondary ailments it causes.

Cheap junk food is actually the fault of we engineers - if we had not invented super efficient production lines, it would still be expensive and therefore not a health problem. Its kind of like the Formula One engineers who got the weight of the vehicle down less than the regulations allow, and you have to add a lump of lead in the trunk. Add enough tax to the Cokes and the Hershey Bars to bring the price back to what it would be if you actually made these things by hand.

 

[cranky108]

glass, how many carrots do you think you can grow? Have you priced gardening supplies lately?

Maybe we should be making people do exercise? No more snow throwers. No more Sunday football. No more netflix.

Maybe no more electric shopping carts.

The problem is not what we eat, it's because we don't have anything else to do. We eat because it makes us happy. Does TV make us happy?

Try enticing people to do exercise. Maybe actually paying prize money for winning local sports teams.

I really think the over weight problem is people are board.

 

[KENAT]

Actually glass99 I've seen some recent articles claiming that lack of exercise is probably a bigger direct factor than simple over consumption, or alternatively that just refined sugar (of any form) is the main issue not many of the other 'unhealthy' calories.

However, it's harder to tax folks for not exercising enough so forget I said anything.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[KENAT]

Actually, I just worked out how to do it.

Everyone gets govt issued pedometers (they may have to be implanted 'mark of the beast' style to cut down on fraud), you start off owing the govt X$ each day but for each bit of exercise over some sedentary threshold you can reduce that tax burden.

Excess exercise credits could be banked for future lazy days, or maybe even traded like carbon tax credits because we know that's a sure fire winner.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[glass99]

kenat: I could see an insurance company offering discounts on premiums if you carry a pedometer and you walk more than a certain amount. Its a little bit out there, but could be doable. I just got an iPhone6 which has a permanent pedometer built in which tracks my every step.

From a health cost standpoint, exercise is low hanging fruit. Maybe $1BB spent on a national exercise promotion campaign would save $100BB in chronic health problems. Suburban lifestyles are a culprit here.

When I was growing up in Australia in the 80's, they had this ridiculous "slip slop slap" campaign to get people to wear sunscreen when they went to the beach. Most Australians are lilly white Euro descendants, and in the 70's it was considered wussy to wear a hat at the beach. As a result Australia was the skin cancer capital of the world. Pretty much everyone in my parents generation got skin cancer in some form, but now its much more rare, in part because of the "slip slop slap" campaign.

http://www.sunsmart.com.au/tools/vi...lip-slop-slap-original-sunsmart-campaign.html

 

[Ingenuity]

When I was growing up in Australia in the 80's

It was a pretty interesting ad campaign.

Interesting too, that these days, school children are mandated to wear a hat (think French Foreign Legion type) whilst in the school grounds, or no outside play.

Also, have you purchased alcohol in Australia recently? About AU$50 for a case of non-premium beer. Lucky I don't drink!

Cigarettes will set you back AU$20 a pack - and the photos on the packs of past smokers with cancerous diseases! Lucky I don't smoke!

 

[IRstuff]

"The problem is not what we eat, it's because we don't have anything else to do. "

Actually, it is, at least partly. We've substituted starches and sugars for fats, specifically because of the USDA's "war on fat," which was specifically justified based on cherry-picked data. And, if we actually ate in moderation, we wouldn't need massive amounts of exercise to burn off the calories we ingested. Most restaurant meals contain twice as many calories as they should, and are often more calories than we need for an entire day. The Cheesecake Factory's walk of shame dinner clocks in at over 3000 calories.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[cranky108]

Our health plan does give points for steps walked, however a coworker told me that washing, and mostly drying the pedometers will add a bunch of steps. So much for counting steps.

A magizene years ago had a funny exercise plan that went like placing strong springs on doors, and placing push signs on pull doors. They likely reused it many times like most of there work.

The whole exercise thing could be helped by getting rid of the TV, or making the fire lanes at stores bigger so people have to walk more.

In any case the drought in Ca won't help as it will rase good food prices.

 

[glass99]

Ingenuity: AU$20/pack for cigarettes is both ridiculous and amazing. I remember in the 90's a JJJ radio presenter (Mikey Robins) making jokes about $20/pack cigarettes like it was this totally ridiculous thing that would never happen. But its good. Cigarettes are bad for you!

 

[Ingenuity]

The AU cigarette packaging is pretty hard core:

 

[hawkaz]

Hold on- What are you folks trying to do? If you raise the average life span, our social security and medicare systems will really be screwed (more than they are now). The government is counting on people dropping dead at a nice early age.

 

[glass99]

hawkaz: correct that long lifespans are the problem. But if you smoke it means you get sick and they plug you into the hyper expensive medical apparatus at age 55 through death at 75. If you go jogging every day before you tuck into your breakfast of whole grain porridge, you only spend the years from 80-85 plugged into the hyper expensive medical system.

 

[hokie66]

I agreed with hawkaz...until I reached 70. Now I am not so sure. But I still don't want to be kept alive just for the hell of it. I suppose everybody's definition of quality of life is different, and everybody's opinion of which of the population deserves "hyper expensive" medical care.

 

[glass99]

Live fast and die pretty.

 

[IRstuff]

Not trying to prolong life, just trying to make sure that the prolongation while in the hospital is effectively pre-paid through the sin taxes.

What's his face (actor) eschewed wearing a helmet and got into an accident, with head injury. I don't know if he paid for his hospital bills himself or through insurance. If the latter, then I would likewise advocate some form of "sin tax" that would cover those types of medical bills as well.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[davefitz]

I just saw a report of a Canadian woman who had her child while vacationing in Hawaii (US), and the US hospital sent her a bill for $600 K USD. Talk about post-partum depression.

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad "