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joec
ParticipantI think over the next 3 years at least, the ACA plans will have a ton of issues. However, you can put me in the camp of this will eventually sort itself out…I’m all for single payer as well like 100% of the other top 20 industrialized nations or some number where it works…at least better than our crappy system now.
If top or specialized hospitals want to drop people on ACA since they are, say for profit or what not…I say let them. If the 1% or 10% can pay the higher prices, by all means, let those people do it. If you had a condition that no one else can treat, well, I’m so sorry for you that your issue is that specialized or unique.
I’d be the first to say if it cost me and my family say 5-10 million to possibly extend my life, I’d be the first to put a stop to that and sign the rest of the half of my life over. Maybe this is the downside of the ACA or Obamacare, but I think there should be cost limits for everything. Like I see people try to prolong the life of a pet and spend say 5-10k to do it when the dog has cancer, just make his/her last moments as comfortable as possible and move on. In the end, we all WILL die anyways. People die everyday as well. No reason IMO to bk your family or everyone else in America to try to save you.
My reason for the 3+ years is because the universal healthcare in Massachusetts took, I’ve heard 3 years+ before things started to work and stabilized. This one is on a much larger scale so expect more “reports” of problems, dropped coverage, death panels, etc…I’m all for it.
In the end, being a supporter of some universal health care solution (and I’m NOT a democrat or a Obama supporter), at least something is being done now.
Like many others have said, if you are anywhere familiar with shopping for health insurance yourself, if you had any pre-existing condition, you WILL be dropped or charged something so insane, you’d be bankrupt before long. The stress of even getting covered is insane as well.
Again, all his is coming from someone who has rarely, if ever used much hospital services and I have never to my knowledge stayed in a hospital neither for a day. For young (< 25) people, it sucks you have to pay more, but eventually, you'll be 35/45/55...and you will be glad you have healthcare. In the end, if a hospital drops 80-90% of their patients, good luck trying to stay in business and I'm all for it and more power to them if they can stay in business after that. I'd also love to see healthcare just dumped from companies since it sucks to have to stay at a job just to get the healthcare. I think what I'm hoping to see is ACA mostly works, companies see it, decides to raise people's pay a little, dump all coverage across the board, ACA gets more funding, insurance companies can lower rates with all these younger/healthier workers...and the US has joined the rest of the world in how healthcare is done and life is good...more or less, in health care finally. 🙂
ParticipantOut of curiosity, does anyone know if CS/programing/coding/IT jobs pay a lot more than some of the hard (as in more physical) engineering disciplines such as Mechanical/EE/Materials?
I ask because when I graduated and the tech boom happened, everyone I knew in tech (SV) was paid a ton more than “regular” engineers. Maybe I didn’t know that many of the other engineers actually since a lot of the companies were more software based/web…
Oh well, just wondering since I wonder if everyone would just learn to code in the future vs. the less (maybe?) lucrative fields of EE/Mech/Materials/etc…
From all the salary surveys I see though, it seems petroleum engineers make the most out of school so maybe my circle just wasn’t the EE crowd.
ParticipantThis is another reason why you DON’T want the government to start taking DNA samples from everyone as mentioned in another thread because “we shouldn’t have anything to hide if we aren’t doing any crime.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if a dirty cop “used” your DNA to crack a case and make Lieutenant sooner and be the “hero” for fame/riches/money.
Humans are morally weak and things like this would be abused to no end in my opinion.
ParticipantI agree that banding together with other tenants is a losing idea. Most of these large complexes have full time staff working while each individual renter is just that, an individual where the cost/hassle of moving far outweigh paying a little more per month.
At the end of the day, most of these places know the market rents since they deal with it all the time as it’s their job/business and they evaluate the market rent whenever someone moves out.
Maybe for the old landlord with 1 or 2 properties who want good tenants and less hassle, trying to do something like this seems like you’d end up just swallowing your pride and arguing, but retreating with your tail between your legs.
At the end of the day, people have to realize your “primary” residence is a home first and pretty much that’s it actually. It doesn’t matter as much as long as you can pay since you have to live somewhere. For people with school aged children, this is even more true since they are less likely to want to move their kids to a different area.
A house close by me just rented their place in like a week for much more than my mortgage. This looks like it’s 10-20% higher than 2-3 years ago as well so it seems people are willing to pay since they have no choice. One reason to just own so you don’t have to feel threatened and pissed off since you have no control as a renter.
Tough to buy with high prices/credit issues as well probably driving rents higher.
December 6, 2013 at 6:25 PM in reply to: Question for the Pigglords…. Overnight guest rules for tenants #768806Participant[quote=UCGal][quote=paramount]I’m sorry if I misunderstand or missed something, if I may are you renting her a room at your house?[/quote]
No – a detached 1 br. granny flat on our property.[/quote]Is a lot of the concern due to it being on your property and they or you share utility expenses?
I’m assuming everyone is on the same water/power/gas meter so her utilities just doubled…I was just thinking if this was an apartment or something, no one would know pretty much of a new person…
I moved in with my g/f -> wife way back and she never notified the management I don’t think. They didn’t seem to care really since they see me around all the time and I talk to the manager too.
ParticipantYeah, I think unless you work in tech with a chance to go IPO and make millions, you really can’t afford to live/work there. ANY professional compared to IPO tech millions including high income doctors/lawyers/you name it simply doesn’t compare. For people who have had it, you know it doesn’t even take many shares to make insane amounts…especially now with stocks at all time highs.
I looked up the “room” in a house I used to rent in the 90s in Mountain View and it recently sold for 1 mil+ for slightly less than 2k total sqft. 3 bedrooms
One reason we left I guess. A bit sad I didn’t hit it even though I had the chance (stupid founder didn’t want to sell)…but such is life.
This is also why Facebook is building dorms for workers since housing is so insane.
Participant[quote=CDMA ENG][quote=EconProf]In the never-ending debate about whether the more wealthy are generous, I am encouraged by the Bill Gates/Warren Buffett behavior. They and dozens of other uber-rich have pledged to give at least half of their wealth to charities or philanthropies at death or before.[/quote]
I think it was both. These gentlemen in thier early days were probably not so philanthropic…
They obtianed thier wealth and reflected upon it and relized there were better things to do with it.
Essentially the glimmer of gold lost its luster when thier eyes dulled with age.
That being said I really admire what they are doing with thier wealth…
CE[/quote]
What’s interesting with some of these folks is that Steve Jobs is viewed as someone who was not philanthropic at all and had that holier than thou attitude. Having known people who worked with him and interacted with him in the valley, it sounds like either you liked or hated him since he has such strong opinions and vocal management style…
I think Bill Gates actually saved Apple when it was near collapse by giving financing as well as allowing Office to continue to run on Macs…
Doubt Steve would’ve done the same…(I’m not a fan I suppose). Maybe this was caused by nearly going belly up though with Apple and being kicked out as well…
Participant[quote=njtosd]Ok joec, I’ll add you to the list.[/quote]
Feel free. I’ve added you to my ignore list as well. The great thing about the Internet is you can hate me and I won’t care and we can all still share our opinions and valid points.
Some words offend others more than others based on customs, history, upbringing, you name it…
ParticipantI gotta say I hate this Kim lady…But she would be considered one of the “I’m holier than thou” *ssholes in this world as mentioned in this article. I would not be upset if people used the c**t word on her too.
ParticipantHah, the presidency of Obama is pretty much over at this point. With the whole health care debacle and now this, he’s pretty much already a lame duck president after 1 year.
And this, coming from someone who supports his change (or at least some change) to the whole healthcare thing.
Not surprising our “guvament” is lying to us about unemployment…maybe it’s so they don’t have to pay those extended claims anymore?
Heck, you’re shocked if the government tells the truth about anything at this point…
…sad
ParticipantI can’t say I know at all how this bit coin works…Can someone summarize how one farms or get bit coins? I watch bloomberg a lot and they were saying how since there is a finite amount, some people may just end up buying it to hold instead of using it for commerce. The lack of stability in this thing makes it extremely limited in use if you have to worry about currency fluctuations…
November 16, 2013 at 5:59 PM in reply to: My experience getting a dedicated EV TOU 2 electric meter with SDGE #768015Participanthttp://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/vehicles/lithium-ion-battery-car2.htm
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1078138_toyota-hybrid-battery-replacement-cost-guide
From these articles, the old Prius NiMH batteries are much cheaper (probably 2k – 5k or so) compared to LIon. The other articles states cost of Lithium Ion at 4-5 times so you’re looking at 10-15k.
Maybe the 3k – 5k isn’t a lot for you, but if anyone wanted to lease a car instead of replacing a bat, there’s a car lease payment right there instead of replacing something. At least the old NiMH batteries do seem to be lasting well, I give you that.
For the newer tech Lithium, there is concern with limited recharges, constant discharges, etc…
Maybe like with those Eneloop batteries, maybe the NiMH tech is just so much more mature to have limited discharge as well as many charge cycles compared to Lithium.
Participant[quote=flu]
SK… That was exactly my point….
I thought all the hand waving recently about “tax the rich more” and “rich people should pay more” and all the tax changes was really suppose to do that.
Then I see this gem of new tax lax for capital gains, and it seems like it’s once again favoring rich(er) people who derive most of their AGI from capital gains versus people who earn salary at the same AGI.
In other words, I think it’s ironic that despite all the calls and hand-waving our politicians have been saying about “tax the rich more”, they really aren’t doing anything to change much.
Where they are taxing people are not necessary “rich”, but upper income people that are just below the rich who derive most of their larger income from wages (IE doctors, lawyers,etc)…..
It’s actually quite comical imho….
Not that I mind the favorable treatments on capital gains. But it does strike me as odd that we would go through tax changes, and fundamentally it’s new bosses doing old bosses same things..[/quote]
This is why for all the dems claim that they won the tax debate in the deal last year was it? setting capital gains still at 15%/20%, dividends same as before, etc, nearly everything I’ve seen states that the republicans actually “won” the debate when these tax rates were maintained for the foreseeable future. The dems “loss” when the social security holiday was upped by 2% since that affects the poor more.
I’m all for lower taxes all around since the govurnmnent wastes enough of our money…
There’s no tax increase that a politician doesn’t like.
ParticipantThere is some talk that doctors won’t be doctors if they changed to some single payer since they won’t be paid much, but I can bet nearly everything that if they balanced this with no/limited lawsuits and tort (is it?) reform, doctors will still make bank.
I come from a family of doctors actually and in these places that have low/cost FREE health care rated in the top in the world, the family people I know who are doctors are insanely wealthy. Maybe it was a mix of real estate or business as well, but no one was crying that they weren’t making much to be a doctor.
If anything, I’ve read numerous articles of US doctors having to file bk or hang it up.
That said, my dad was actually a doctor in the US and said if he stayed where we came from, he’d be making tons more bank than where he worked here (large hospital network).
He also never encouraged any of us to be doctors due to limited freedom/power, pay probably due to taxes, no power when under the insurance lobbies, etc…Just seems our system, as great as it sounds, probably isn’t…if people only knew how other people have it.
Also, how many people here would be actually willing to move to a foreign country to live? I think that’s what makes it hard for a lot of American born people to consider that else is out there since they just don’t know.
I know if I wasn’t settled and old now, I wouldn’t be against moving to asia for work since I think that’s where a lot more opportunity is.
The US is getting old/tired (like Europe). There were numerous funny videos on yahoo finance yesterday on how US politics is worst than China since in China, it’s actually a meritocracy where successful government people get more and more responsibility as they move up the leadership chain…Here, we’re left with people like Filner and all the lobbying where after getting elected, it all about raising money to keep your job.
If anyone saw the interview with the Baidu CEO on Bloomberg, it was funny how he said he/they don’t care what the US does anymore since the chinese market is huge already and it seems like they are doing less copying and more creating now.
Before someone say I should just move to China, no way the wife would go for that! so as a middle aged dude, I can just grumble and watch.
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