One emergency room visit will change that.. I recently spent a few hours at the ER and the bills summed up to $6000. I expect the insurance actually pays a third of that price, but even if you are able to negotiate that deal yourself, it is still a burden. And if you get admitted to the hospital... you are screwed. Any major surgery will cost you 15-30k.
Agree. We get Kaiser here in Colorado, through employer, so not sure of the prices for individuals, but I can vouch for the services. Would not change it for anything.
Just found the numbers:
NHE (National Health Expenditure) $7,681 per person (for 2008).
Source: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/25_NHE_Fact_Sheet.asp#TopOfPage
And...
In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, among 26 countries with similar accounting systems in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), per capita spending on health care remained highest in the United States (US$7,290). The U.S. was followed by Norway (US$4,763), Switzerland (US$4,417) and Luxembourg (US$4,162). At around US$3,895 per capita, health care spending in Canada was similar to six other OECD countries, including the Netherlands, Austria, France and Germany.
http://www.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=media_20091119_e
The right way to compare it is how much it is spend in health care per person, no matter were the money comes from. If it is cheaper to pay taxes and get the health care via the government, so be it. If not, so be it too. Let's see:
If your numbers are correct, then $160 billion/ 33 million = 4800
We have health care plan through my husband's insurance, we pay 448 but his employer pays 700. this is for the 3 of us. We have copays of $30 for doctors visits (preventive once a year is $15), $100 for emergency room, $100 for MRIs, $700 for hospital admission. So lets assume 1 doctor visit, plus preventive, and one emergency room visit.
((448+700)x12+30x3+15x3+100)/3=4670/year/person - we are healthy our max copays/ person is $1000 so it could go up to $5500/person/year with one hospital admission and a few procedures.
If you consider variables, it is about the same in total cost
Yes. I do . Google wave is great for writing papers and for collaborative projects.
Simple enough that you can get projects started quickly with a bunch of people who never used it before.
I sure I watched star wars when I was a kid, but it did not make such a big impression on me. Sure it was cool, but it was not a life changing event, as it was for my husband.
Than I married a geek and started watching them again( and again, and again...). An even without the "stop raping my childhood" feeling, I can say the originals are much, much better than the prequels. Why?
(1) The originals are indeed darker, like everything else that was done in a time when we did not use to protect children from every single fact of life.
(2) The romance,... I will take Han over Anakin any time. The stupid love story combined with incredibly bad acting is too central tho the prequel's story, and it turns me off completely. Han and Leia have more of a sexual tension that works a lot better, plus, it is funnier.
(3) Abuse of CGIs. By all means, use it, but please, use it when you need it, not just because it is there. All in all, I think the lack of resources in the first movies lead to more creativity in general.
(4) Han shot first.
And as for everything else (cartoons, xmas specials, etc...), running the risk of joining the trenches : - George, please STOP it already! Haven't you have enough money? Can't you do anything else with your life? Don't you have any new ideas? Stoooooooooooop!
I was happy with my pre-paid t-mobile when I visited Canada. I had no problems with coverage at all.
So do I. And that is the reason I am happy to donate money as long as the organization use it wisely.
There are a lot of NGOs who do a great job even, if they are paying some of their people. And working for one of them is usually a big pay cut from what one would get on private companies, so you will get committed people even if you are paying them a salary.
Of course, there are the ones with 50% overhead as well as scammers, but that is our job as donors, to do a decent research before giving any money.
So, my question to you is: Can you volunteer full time, half time? Specially right know, who can afford to leave their jobs for weeks to go to Haiti to volunteer full time?
10% overhead is a very reasonable figure if we cannot bother to get our butts out of the couch and go there ourselves.
I agree that the media does this all the time and it was not different for the H1N1
That said... Maybe in the US we did not see a difference in the death numbers, but my dad and step mom are doctors in Brazil and it was a lot different there.
We do not really have a flu season. We do not even get vaccines for it. It would make no sense (and we do have a pretty comprehensive vaccine program, all free, btw). Not that we don not have flu, it is just not as dramatic as it it here. And you never hear of people dying from it, unless they are very debilitated already.
The H1N1 killed people there that nobody expected to be a victim of the flu. Young people, pregnant women. That was the difference. Plus, many of my friends here in the US got it, and although it was not fatal for any of them, it was so painful that I would not have wanted to go through that myself or worse, have my 3 year old in horrible pain for a week. I got him vaccinated with the mist (individual doses do not have as may preservatives) and now that it is widely available I got one for myself.
I would say we are pretty consistent:
in our teens, we want the bad-cool-cute boy
in our 20s, we want the hip-probably-gay guy
finally, in our 30s we come to our senses and discover the geeks....
As long as they provide an alternative access to the same info, what is the problem?
Or are they going to close stairways because some people cannot use them?
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
