Y2HH

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 01:52 PM) If you stay on their land and use their resources however, they're very likely to bill you for it, or have you arrested for trespassing. Are you currently located within the territorial borders of the United States? He already pays taxes for the use of those other things.

Jesus, 70 hours a week? That's close to having two jobs.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 10:35 AM) I bought the Fire for my 10 year old brother last year solely based on the feature that limited what kids could do on the device and how long they could use it so that my parents wouldn't have to stress over controlling him over his tablet use. Turns out it only works for apps installed from Amazon and not side-loaded ones. If done right, that feature alone would sell a ton of Kindle Fires and I guess for most people, it does the job fine. I'm sure you'll be able to do stuff like that on Android/iOS soon, too. Until it works on the fire across the board, it's kind of a half assed implementation. I'd recommend the Nexus...why use a fork of Android when you can use the real thing? I see nothing the Fire offers over the Nexus, other than a broken experience. You can still use Kindle on the Nexus, so I see no compelling reason to use a Fire...ever.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 02:53 PM) And the alternative here is 45 million+ uninsured. I'll take my chances with a faulty website versus having to go through another time period uninsured when things actually go wrong with the health of a family member. And you won't hear me argue.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 02:45 PM) I dont trust them and I in constant shock as to the sheer number of people who still do. I don't trust them, either, but the alternative is to never make any investments. So, I'll take my chances with my investments vs locking money under a bed.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 01:48 PM) Nobody is thinking this is something new. I'm not sure why you're being so smug and assuming that anyone is thinking that. I don't know what I'd be without my smugness.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 01:34 PM) But your Ford/Chevy example still makes no sense. And I don't see Crimson (or anyone else) wishing or naively believing that for-profit private companies have some moral obligation to consumers. Recognizing that general principle doesn't mean any journalism to show it in practice is stupid. It makes absolute sense. If I own a Ford dealership, my job is to sell you the car at the highest possible price. Even if I have another dealership selling the same cars for less, my job isn't to get you to go there first...first I'd like to sell you something for 20k, and if I can't get 20k, fine...I'll take 15k at the other place. If making 5k more off of you is the difference in you being too lazy to do some research, so be it...that's on you, not me. I'm not morally obligated to save you anything. Do that part yourself. The same can be said for in-store coupons at practically ANY store you visit. Or hell, even worse, those Preferred cards at some grocery stores...the price is 5$ with a free preferred card, but 8$ without that same free card. It's not the stores fault if you're too lazy to get a card, regardless of how f***ing stupid it is. This practice is all around, and here you are thinking it's something new.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 12:38 PM) No, it's not. Even the plans from the same company were cheaper on the exchange website. It's like taking your Ford to the dealership and they tell you that your car's brakes are shot and will cost $1000 to replace, when they're advertising on a website that new brakes are $500. It's really shady. Edit: for the record, BCBS of North Carolina's prices listed on the exchange website were the same as the quote they sent me in the mail as part of my "your current plan is going away" letter. The letter also said that the quote was for the most similar plan, but that other plans were available and I should look them up. I completely understand that, but you left off the final part of my post -- and my post doesn't mean much without it. You are, once again, wishing companies had such moral obligations, and they do not.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 01:04 PM) We fully understand that, which is why we want a socialized system. You aren't getting one.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 11:51 AM) Special Investigation: How Insurers Are Hiding Obamacare Benefits From Customers Kind of a stupid story if you ask me. Of course insurance company X isn't going to advertise for cheaper alternatives elsewhere. If you aren't aware of Healthcare.gov or the exchanges by now, it's incredibly hard for me to feel bad that if you go directly to Humana they pretend no alternatives exist. That's like expecting a Ford dealership to tell you, you know...you can get this same truck under the Chevy name for 20,000$ less. While a quandary many of you are unable to deal with, these companies are just that, companies...and they have no moral obligations as such.

QUOTE (Jake @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 08:47 AM) The vacation/golf stuff doesn't bother me either. We want the president to be working hard, for sure. Very hard. Do you think that working on literally world-changing matters every single day for most hours of the day is going to leave you working optimally? I'm happy for these people to take some leisure time. I want them rested, happy, and thinking clearly, not overworked, bitter, unhealthy, etc. I do get great amusement in the fact that the Republican presidents since 1980 have taken many more vacation days just because people freak out every time the Obama family goes on vacation Pretty much every President since I've been alive enters office with a full head of dark hair, and within 2 months of having that job are full on grey and look as if they've aged 30 years in 20 minutes. People need to stop pretending this is a disconnected world. Presidents have f***ing cell phones.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 08:21 AM) I don't think one of these guys could have done better if he'd been trying. Regardless of which you mean, this simplifies everything into the basic and incorrect thought that they caused everything that was set into motion 10-20 years before they were elected. It's ridiculous simplification of a complex situation.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 3, 2013 -> 07:53 PM) That's the part of this sequence of posts that you decide to call out as stupid? The reason I think it's stupid to rate a President, especially while they're in office, is for two key reasons. 1) A lot of legislation presidents sign into law won't mature for years to come, such as the ACA, as an easy example, which also happens to be on topic of this thread. 2) The Senate/Congress are probably more at fault for a lot of what we see than the President himself. People blaming or crediting presidents with the state of the economy is also ridiculous. As a lot of the consequences we see now was the result of laws signed in the 80's and 90's, and these new laws or moves by current presidents are reactions TO those laws. Needless to say, things are a LOT LOT LOT *1trillion more complicated than people want to believe. It's easy to point a finger and blame one guy for everything that's ever happened up until now, while disregarding the fact that a lot of what's happened over the past 10 years was set into motion a decade earlier. I think like most presidents before him, Obama is trying to do what HE feels is right, how he feels he can in the current state of the world, with the current makeup of the Senate/House. I don't, for a single second, think Obama, Bush Jr, or anyone else was purposefully trying to sabotage our economy or destroy the world.

I'm sorry to interject, but rating a president while they're still in office is f***ing stupid. So stop.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 07:07 PM) Fox = MSNBC all the others do not slant to either side with the same bias of the above. Sorry Y2HH Again, LOL. The audience split in the ratings amongst anyone not named Fox shows how wrong you are. But that's fine, ignore the ratings, they're not a tell tale sign of an audience or anything. You are right, to a degree, that neither are as slanted nbc or fox, but the others ARE still slanted left, albeit less than nbc. If msnbc was the only opposite of fox, it would command the entire liberal audience, but it doesnt, because it's not the only other avenue liberals have. Now, if we were taking talk radio, maybe you have an argument, or even non prime time Sunday morning shows that nobody watches...but that's not what we're taking about here.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 11:21 AM) That's a very odd system. Most places I've heard of, the employer pays a fixed percentage of insurance premiums for all full-time employees, regardless of salary. Apparently it's not widely used, but I think it's a superior system than most. To put this in another way, there are only three ways I know of to implement health care costs in an organization. 1) Nobody pays anything, and the costs are all baked into negotiated pay and are paid in full by the company. 2) Everyone pays the same amount. 3) A progressive tax like scale. 1 and 2 always benefit richer/higher paid employees, for obvious reasons.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 11:12 AM) Why can't you make $65,000 and have all of your insurance paid for? That's not an answerable question, as I don't create the plans/salary range/benefit packages where I work. In the system in which I work, everyone pays a portion of the health insurance costs, whith a much higher burden shifted onto the higher paid employees than on the lower. Also, a system designed as you are asking about always benefits the richer employees.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 10:35 AM) yes it is. There is a cost associated with every employee. When you build a compensation plan ALL costs are included. When their benefits cost more there is less to pay in salary. Think about this, if you have $30,000 to hire an employee, you can't pay him $30,000. Those benefits cost the company something. So subtract the cost of benefits from $30,000 and that is what is available for salary. Again, that's not what we are doing. We are shifting the burden for health benefits on the higher paid employees, we pay more, and it has nothing to do what's left to pay them in salary. In effect, the benefit package the lesser paid employees receive is actually better. Salary works in ranges, if you are a level 10 employee for example, you can make anywhere from 30-60k, which will overlap a level 11 and 12 to a great degree. They aren't paying them less money because their benefits are lower in this case.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:22 AM) A lot of software patents these days are so freaking trivial that they shouldn't be patents. From a financial standpoint, I don't want them to be banned. I can make a lot of money in the future off of them as a software engineer. But they're being abused so much that I don't think they should even exist anymore. At the very least, how long you can hold a patent and what you can do with it must be reformed. Plus it takes forever to get a software patent approved, the process is a joke. Yes, some of them need to be banned, but not all...there are some great things being done with software, and to outright ban patents on it doesn't make sense, either. As for those Nortel patents, many of them aren't software patents.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:56 AM) So they can leave out testicular cancer in policies that are written for women? That's essentially the same as ovarian cancer...so not quite the same.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:55 AM) When you hire someone you are looking at the total cost of their salary plus all benefits. How you want to divide that number is up to the employer. If I want to give you $20,000 in salary and $5,000 in benefits or $21,000 in salary and $4,000 in benefits, doesn't really make a difference. I don't think it means the CEO is a dick. Plus, I was responsible in two companies for compensation plans for the salespeople so I am well aware of the fully loaded cost of employees. That's not quite how it works, though. We aren't simply shifting cost like that. We aren't giving you 20k in salary and 5k in benefits. We are giving you the same salary, but charging you far less for your benefits, and charging the CEO a lot more. Essentially, we subsidize the employees that are making less, so they have the same coverage as we do.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:48 AM) So the company subsidizes to a greater degree the cost for lower paid employees. That is an awesome benefit. Usually where I worked the employee was free, the employee paid for spouse, kids, or family coverage. Everyone paid the same based on the plan you picked. How much the company picked up varied from company to company. One, paid 100% no matter what coverage you needed. We had single employees request a raise because other employees were receiving better benefits. It is, and I think it's a fair/good idea. How insurance works, I'm not sure you know or not (so don't take this as preaching), is you will come to us, and show us your employment roster...what's the average age of your employees, etc...the premium cost is based on these factors...and the negotiated group cost is then given to your employer. Now, how your employer divides that cost is completely up to them. That said, any employer that charges everyone the same amount of money, IMO, aren't being very nice. If you're CEO is paying the same for healthcare as your janitor, for example...you're CEO is a dick.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:45 AM) I recently read (and wish I could find) and article that challenged that claim. The main points were cost per calorie and preparing (not necessarily applying heat and cooking) healthy at home meals versus fast food meals. They also showed examples that used dollar menu versus organic, etc. But it is a challenge that involves training our tastebuds, being more involved in food aquisition and preperation. Those studies, while often correct, don't really take into consideration that a person living on a more meager means, often isn't "home", but stopping to grab lunch between their first and second low wage job. It's simply not reality to assume in these studies that a person making 14$ an hour is "home" as often as say, I am. My friend, who makes 18$ an hour, often works 12-14 hour days. So, the times he's not working, he sure as hell isn't shopping and then going to home to cook.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:41 AM) In 40 years I have never been in a plan where the health insurance premiums were basd on income. I have been in disability plans where the benefits and premiums were based on income, but never a health insurance plan. I've seen it multiple times at multiple companies now.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:41 AM) Read my 2nd statement there. I agree with that part of it, but the first part simply punishes the very people we're trying to help...and it won't stop them from eating fast food, since it would STILL be more affordable for them despite that added punishment tax.