Yeah that'll just be a huge pile of joy :-/ I'm crossing my fingers that my health plan doesn't go up -- I get it through my company, and I have a feeling that insurance companies are going to "equalize" the rates for everyone, which means even the corporate renewal prices are going to go up.

Honesly I don't believe the ACA is the end goal. I think it's just priming the pump for what their real agenda is -- a single payer system. At that point you may as well just call it a "tax" and a "social service" and be done with it, no matter what the labels are. I just hope we don't get to that point, because who is going to make the decisions on what reasonable care is then? How are we going to cover second opinions? How do we not force treatment on people in the name of being "preventative"? There are a lot of questions that lead me to very uncomfortable conclusions. I already hate my oligopoly power company and cable provider -- what makes me think healthcare would be handled any better? It's a slippery slope, and it starts with creating a tax for people who don't shell out for the "acceptable plan" in the first place.

I'm not saying it should be a social service -- reread my previous post. Canadians have health care as a social service included in their taxes, and their system is broken for entirely different reasons. I'm not here to debate whether healthcare should or shouldn't be a service -- but one thing that we agree on is that the current system is wasteful and needs to be fixed.

All I'm saying is that the law mandated a certain level of coverage to qualify as an insurance plan. Anything below that line doesn't qualify, and the law specifically mentioned a few types of coverage that need to be included, so that's why some plans are getting cancelled (because they didn't meet the spec).

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What people seem to think I'm arguing (and I'm not) is that medical care needs to be a social service rather than insurance. I love how people are jumping to conclusions :P

I was simply trying to point out the reasons that the line-item-veto for pediatric care and birth control won't work -- because if you get to line-item-veto those, I should get to line-item-veto cancer care, dialysis, and diabetes treatment -- and then it becomes individualized coverage where you may as well just pay for what you use. If everyone line-item-vetoed the things they didn't need to buy, then the collective insurance model would break down. That's exactly WHY the ACA mandated certain things be covered.

Like you I am mildly autistic and introverted, and my comments and thoughts are based on my experiences in the environments which created them. Perhaps the message that I was trying to convey was that it's worth it to be socially active, but it came out looking like it was all about the dollars. I don't think it can be overstated that you need personal marketing (as smooth as it may be) or you need politics when it comes to advancement at larger organizations though.

Obviously that's not the ideal, but it is the way that I've seen things go -- those who are more socially forward and better at highlighting their achievements tend to do better in large companies than those of us that struggle with it.

It's cool that me explaining how insurance works means that you can jump to conclusions about "People like you" and my political views (which were not mentioned AT ALL).

Whether you want to call bullshit or not, you're incorrect. When is the last time car insurance made you pay for the damages in your own auto accident? It didn't. When is the last time someone had to pay replacement value put of pocket on their home because of a fire? They don't. When is the last time you paid the entire hospital bill yourself because you had a baby? You didn't. So whether you like to admit it or not, you belong to a pool of insured people who all collectively pay for 'things that happen'. That means, by definition, that an individual's problem is everyone's problem. If you can't see that, you should talk to an actuary.

So, here's an idea: let's start a health plan where we kick out the fatties, the smokers, the reckless people, and people who engage in sex without birth control, and anyone who has a mental health issue? Medically, all of that stuff means higher costs for our insurance members. But that's the heart of the issue -- now it's illegal to not offer coverage for that stuff, so that type of plan would be NOT CALLED HEALTH INSURANCE. Which is why the plans are getting cancelled. Whether you personally like it or not (and I don't) all of that stuff is EVERYONE's problem now.

I hate to say it but the retention rate for programmers is higher than everyone else. So, when you go to advertise what you've been working on (and yes, it's advertising) sometimes you'll have to re-hash the conversation four or five times. The trick is to re-hash the ideas and talk about things in a different way each time so that the topic doesn't get stale to the audience.

I wish (as do many programmers) that advancement was about nothing but pure ROI to the company (including future ROI) but it doesn't work that way. It's hard to measure, is labor intensive to figure out, and is a waste of time in a small company. So, failing that, you rely on marketing. How you get along with people, small talk, casual banter, idea roundtables at lunch breaks, those all contribute to your "brand image" and you need to take advantage of that image to paint a perception of intellectual value at your company. Make sure you're good enough to provide deliverables to back up your image. You also need to pick one or two things to be REALLY good at so that other people can ask you for help. Helping people helps you.

Well, as an adult male in his thirties, I don't need to pay for dialysis, cancer care, endocrine problems, prescriptions, birth control, asthma treatments, vision care, women's wellness visits, or any other thing that's not catastrophic care. But, if you only paid for what you use, then why would you cover insurance at all? Just to get the 50% "I have insurance" negotiated rate?

I think you're missing the point of insurance -- that is, an individual's problem is everyone's problem. Stop treating insurance like it was capitalism. That's what got us into this mess in the first place.

Thank you for answering my post -- I'd give mod points if I could. My laptop supports HDMI 1.4 (not Thunderbolt or Displayport) so it's probably as good a fit as I can get for that. I would have many more options if I had a desktop, but unfortunately a lot of companies don't think of how many people use a multimedia laptop as a desktop replacement.

If you read my post before you replied, you'd know that yes, in fact, I do plan on sitting 3 feet away from my 39" display ;)

Exactly. My 15.6" laptop is 1080p, so 4k@39" would actually be lower pixel density than my laptop screen.

@Barlo_Mung_42: Yes, I'm under 40, but not by much ;)

I would love 4k too but I don't want to use it for a TV, I want to use it for a computer monitor (How many IDEs can you fit in 4k?). I keep looking at this particular TV and thinking about how much space I'd have to clear off on my desk to use it with my laptop:
http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/dp/B00DOPGO2G

Much cheaper than a lot of the 4k monitors out there, but is the image quality good enough to not make your eyes bleed?

Sadly, I think a lot of people want a lot of things from Congress right now.

I do too. Whatever area code I'm in plus 867-5309 and I've only seen it not work once.

I agree. The current iteration on the homepage is bad enough, but at least it lets you expand the page to full width, and doesn't have somewhat related stock photos taking up space on the page. I used to read Fark before they switched to a fixed-width, graphical intensive layout -- and now it's useless. When I go to slashdot, I want it to load fast, be free of BS and give me the latest without having to skip stupid stuff. If I wanted to see pictures and horiscopes and shit I'd set my browser to MSN.com.

Please, less with the attempted eye candy and more with the news for nerds. You shouldn't be trying to appeal to mass-market web designs, half of us still subscribe to USENET for God's sake.
 

So how do I opt-out? Where do I get away from companies releasing my information to third parties that track my identity or other things to allow other corporations to peruse at their leisure? Not only do you not get to tell companies where they can and can't store your personal information, you also can't dispute that information when someone uses it for the wrong reasons or enters things that you're not allowed to know about.

For example, let's say LexisNexis had an entry that said I caused a major auto accident involving 15 cars, because an insurance clerk pressed the wrong button that said I was at fault rather than being involved in the accident? How do I correct that data? How do I dispute that entry? How do I even find out about that information?

And how do I get them to delete my personal data rather than allowing their poor network security policies to expose my life to risk? Answer: I can't. I have no agreement with them to host my personal data. I'm not just upset about the breach, I'm upset about the lack of ownership and consequence of such regarding my own life.