This comment was made to someone who had young children and was complaining of burnout. Frankly for me a one night stay/meet would not be terribly relevant to my life and so I would rather go with longer stays. Some people want to connect with you and others just want to get in and out as fast as they can each morning and each night. They don’t all have the airbnb intended philosophy. Thanks for the cleaning tip. It is a good one but won’t make me switch to one night stands.
My opinion is that Obamacare was created so poorly so that it collapses and we end up with a nationalized health service. And like @anon67190644 said, it’s a russian roulette. If you’re really sick or really healthy, the high deductible plans are the best. You have a lower premium and then after your deductibles and out of pocket maxes are met you pay nothing for the rest of the year. So while we have to pay this $7000, if anyone else in our family gets sick 70% is now covered, and then after another $6000 we pay nothing. And our premium is a lot lower. And we have a health savings account (HSA) that we can put money into with before tax dollars, so for us basically we get a 30% discount at our tax rate for all medical expenses paid out of our account.
Sadly we’ve never had more than basic sick visits so we had never put much into the HSA. But we can do catch up deposits and change the amount going from each check so we’re taking advantage of that. Next year we’re going to pay a little higher of a premium and get the high deductible plan that has individual deductibles and not just a family one and that covers 80% and has a lower OOP max. Thankfully we’ve always been healthy, but with 4 kids we’ve been taking on a little too much risk than we want to take on going forward. All that said, if we’d have bought the plan that covers everything, the premiums would have added up to over $10,000/year, so it would have been a wash for us and with being a health family definitely wasn’t worth it on the risk of an injury. Even though $7000 seems like a lot, I think it will still be a break even for that plan. If we had someone with a chronic illness (diabetes, etc) then that plan would be worth it.
And @aeriol, I AM SO HAPPY I got those 5 1-night bookings. Because we have $7,000 in medical bills rolling in and I made $600 because of cleaning fees than the $450 I would have gotten if it would have all filled in one booking. And it’s on site and usually I get random single nights that fill in space. It’s just that usually it’s all broken up. The longer stays often are worse because the turnovers are a lot more work. And you’re nervous about having a lousy guest that messes up your place or breaks things and has more time to wreck the place. I love my 1-2 night stays. And while a 2-3 night stay is ideal for me, at this stage in the game while I’m not going to lower my price and I’ve raised my cleaning fee a bit, I want to be 95% booked til the end of the summer so I can get these stupid medical payments paid off ASAP so I can move on to the other stupid debt my husband and I racked up over the years so we can move on with our lives, lol.
3 Likes
I will admit I do not even understand the details of our health insurance system. There are still plenty of people who cannot afford health insurance.
Some people aren’t “poor” enough to qualify for assistance, but don’t earn enough to be able to fork out a few hundred extra a month. So they go without and just pay the fine for not having health insurance.
1 Like
What drives me nuts with the “affordable care act” and now this new “american health care act” is that instead of a few basic changes to actually make it more affordable to get insurance and drive down the costs of medical care, they made this huge bureaucratic system that makes insurance and medical care much more expensive and then they also force you to buy said insurance or pay a fine. And insurance by definition is supposed to be in case of emergency, and yet all these plans have a list of things they’re supposed to provide for “free”, thus driving up the premiums. That’s why I’ve always personally done the high deductible plans as I opt out of all the “free” stuff anyway and my family and I only go to the doctor when we’re actually sick. I may be a little conspiratorial, but why should I take healthy kids to the doctor several times a year to pick up germs and answer invasive questions about my family, lol. If I didn’t have to buy these plans that provide so much “free” and just bought a true emergency plan that covered nothing until a certain limit, I could afford a lot more of the things that I currently can’t do like lasik, chiropractic, etc, but there’s just nothing left in the budget after premiums and taxes.
2 Likes
I have an autoimmune disorder. I believe that the best bet (if you live in the U.S. instead of a civilized country with national health care) is HMO.
1 Like
@Sarah_Warren. We are going to be on opposite sides of this. I believe in a country as rich as this, every person deserves decent health care. I don’t agree with your analysis of what the Affordable Care Act changed from the insurance system, or what this new Trump-Ryan plan will do in the future. But this isn’t the platform for such a debate.
That’s the hard thing with these mandates, no one can agree. I just know that back when I was a kid, my parents had a true high deductible plan that was truly cheap (not barely affordable like what I currently can “afford”) that didn’t cover anything other than major medical after a certain dollar amount. That’s what I would like to buy for my family but they’re not in existence, at least not in my state.
There are health sharing collectives that I plan to look into next year that fit the mandate that you get a letter each month of where to send your monthly check to a person/family. You pay for everything out of pocket for preventative care, and then any bill over $350 (with the one I was looking at) you submit to the company and then the next month you receive dozens-hundreds of checks to cover the bill. You negotiate cash rates and your price shop, etc. But with it being a collective, you have to fit certain requirements for that group/collective and usually can’t smoke and pre-existing conditions often aren’t covered for the first 12 months.
Regular check ups are how you find the beginning of a health issue before it spirals out of control. Also, don’t children go to the doctor to get vaccinations?
4 Likes
At some of the visits. I’d prefer to go when they actually need to go. Like with babies, you go every few weeks for nothing other than weight checks. I can do that at home and go if there are concerns. I think people are becoming personal health illiterate, but that also goes along with our obesity epidemic, etc. I think healthy kids going to the doctor too often causes them to pick up illnesses. My kids seem to always get sick after a “well visit”.
Around here, there are two waiting rooms… one for well kids and one for sick kids. You don’t have this?
2 Likes
At certain offices. We go to family practice so it’s just one big room. Plus not everyone at well appointments is guaranteed to be healthy. At our old pediatrician’s office they would rotate the rooms for some reason. How do you sanitize wooden toys? Plus it’s the same receptionists, etc that don’t have the same handwashing standards as the nurses, etc. Another reason why I hate urgent care, the ER, etc. You get what you went to get treated, and then everyone is sick for a week following. A hazard of living in a community of other people, I should be a hermit, lol.
I pay the same, and my deductible is $2000. What state you live in does make a difference. Here in MA, we have five companies that are non-profit offering insurance, and our hospitals are almost 100% non-profit. When profit becomes part of the health industry mix, things get weird.
And as a state, we are more healthy than many other states.
2 Likes
If only Bernie Sanders had won, a small touch of socialism, a tiny movement towards the left (or should I say center), would have been so good for the USA 
.
Total equality is never good for a society, but a state organizing inequality (healthcare, education) is not 21th Century.
I believe that healthcare and education should be almost free: Maybe $ 1,00 to go to a doctor, and $ 500,00 for a year at university. That’s what I would call progress.
4 Likes
I am going to have to sit on my hands.
1 Like
The problem is someone is paying for the ‘free’. And as far as a ‘non-profit’ it’s just a tax designation. If they don’t earn a profit they close. They just get the perk of not paying most taxes as a company if they can fit the designation.
100% right @EllenN. I had major surgery a few years ago because while we do have the NHS we don’t have a culture of regular check ups. Something I had been complaining about for ages turned out to require major surgery. I got the surgery for free but I’d rather it had been caught early.
The Danes and the Swedes would beg to differ @GutHend. They both have some of the most equal societies you will see and are successful models of capitalism.
I think you misunderstood my post, or maybe I explained badly.
I am PRO high taxes / redistribution of wealth / equal opportunities / social security / free education / state organized free healthcare / etc. …
3 Likes
The Danes do that and more. The wage difference between a cleaner and the CEO of the company that cleaner works at is much lower than other capitalist countries. In fact society is organised pretty flat… you said that a totally equal society wouldn’t be great but the Danes would beg to differ.