The real problem is that HIV and other incurable diseases aren't "events". Your house burns down, you receive money, the contract ends. You get HIV (or ALS or whatever) and you now require a constant money stream... until the insurance company figures out how to get rid of you (or you become unemployed and unable to afford to continue the contract).
Agreed. Yet another reason that the insurance model does not apply well to health care.
One way to fix the price obscurity is to eliminate that doctor-insurance company contract. Instead, the insurance company should send each patient a book "this is what we pay for ____:" and the patient can refer to that when asking (any) doctor how much the doctor charges. But then the insurance companies would have to compete for customers on a rational basis.
It isn't all it's cracked up to be. For instance, I have pet insurance to cover vet bills for my dog. Vet bills can get expensive, you know. The company I got the policy from publishes their benefit schedule online for the world to see.
I'm glad that they do it, but I have to say it wasn't very useful for comparison-shopping or even for determining if the policy was worth purchasing in the first place. For instance, the benefit for Arrhythmia is $95 for treatment, and $132 for diagnostic testing. I don't know about you, but I have no earthly clue if that is a reasonable payout for Arrhythmia--I don't even know what Arrhythmia is. I don't want to know, either. I'm not googling each and every thing that can go wrong with my dog (4 pages, 2 columns each, small print) just to get a feel for if the policy is worth it.
In the end, I bought the policy because it wasn't too much money, and I figured it would help a bit when my dog got sick, and it has. If she got cancer or something and I couldn't afford tens of thousands of dollars in treatments, I can always put her to sleep. I love her; but she is, in the end, just a dog. Obviously that's not an option with one of my kids, so I'd have to take a decision on human health insurance more seriously.
For me or a family member, I know I'm going to treat whatever they have, so I need a little more protection than "Well, you can have $95+132 for Arrhythmia". I need, "If your family member gets sick, you're not going to lose your house, your car, your savings."
It's a tough problem, but nobody in Washington is serious about solving it. They are only going to make it worse.
Wow. Did you really just champion Opera - king of bloat, with built-in email, web server, P2P, and quite possibly a kitchen sink - as a "lightweight alternative"?
Yes, it is. Opera might have more features, but it's still smaller and snappier than Firefox by far. It isn't bloat unless those features make it big and slow. They are in fact completely out of your way by default.
Does it/Do they look bigger in 3D?
The problem is that the geography of my state means that it is much more difficult to produce oranges here. Let's say it is easier to produce apples here. Doesn't it make more sense to produce 1000 tons of apples here and trade 500 tons to FL for 500 tons of oranges. Sure we would have the same amount of food but we would gain diversity.
We could do away with all unemployment by doing away with all modern farming technology. 95% of the population could spend 12 hours a day 7 days a week doing manual labor in order to provide food for all. Then every one would be employed, but less happy. I would rather be unemployed for a time then know I would spend the bulk of my life doing mindless manual labor.
I have no problem with innovation or efficiency doing away with jobs. New jobs will be created by those unemployed people. That is progress. Look at all the jobs people are free to do today because they no longer need to farm.
Will you please suggest some geographical areas where that ratio is significantly better? Preferably with programmer jobs available. I might consider relocating.
Also, what would you think is a reasonable house cost / income ratio, and where do you get that figure?
Please don't read any sarcasm into these questions, I'm asking out of sheer practical interest.
MW2 will be different again because no doubt there will be DLC that will be a required purchase lest the servers refuse you access based on an unmatched version.
...against all expectations on my USB modem using a metal bowl I had lying around (think of a paraboloid with a flat bottom). Boosted download speeds on 3 consecutive tests by 50% (with bowl over without). Also, 3 tests in a row with no bowl showed some variation, but didn't peak at the same speed as with the bowl. Whod've thunk it.
... they have this unique shape so that they are distinguishable from all other signs even when covered in snow.
It's also a good thing that they can be recognized when facing away from the driver, i.e. you can see when roads crossing yours have a stop sign.
You will have many recoverable tape errors.