Sleeping Furball
Adventures In Obamacare
Correction: The small business requirement applies to businesses over 50 full time employees, not 30. This requirement has been delayed until January 1st, 2015. The 30 is the number of hours an employee has to work to be considered a full time employee.
I am one of the approximately 20% of the population that can take advantage of the new health exchanges that came into being to much fanfare and gnashing of teeth on October 1st. This is my story.
As an owner of a small business well under the 30 50 employee level which Obamacare mandates companies offer insurance, I purchase health insurance for myself on the open market. If I so chose, I could continue on my current health plan which I am assuming would equate to a platinum type plan on the health exchange. But that would be no fun. I currently pay about $250 a month for a fairly comprehensive $5,000 deductible plan. Let’s see how the health exchanges stack up.
I live in Illinois. Our state has decided to allow the federal government to control the health exchange signup procedure for anyone living in Illinois. This means that I go to www.healthcare.gov to sign up on the exchange. I attempted to do so on October 1st when the exchanges first opened and was met with a page telling me that the site was really busy and, if I just waited there in the virtual line, they will redirect me to the signup page as soon as possible. After an indeterminate amount of time, I decided to try again some other time. News reports were that people were waiting up to 3 hours to get past that screen. Since I had until January 1st, I decided to let them shake out the bugs and the onrush and try again later.
Today, October 5th, is later. I was once again met with the virtual please wait here message. This time, though, I was ushered in to the ‘Create An Account’ page after only a minute or so of playing mindless Flash games. Creating an account is fairly painless. The website itself is fairly snazzy. There are some bugs and I seemed to have to reenter the same information quite a few times, but eventually I was able to create an account and do the usual e-mail verification to get the account activated.
After that, you need to be able to verify your identity. The website contracts with Experian to verify your identity, but Experian was unable to do so for me. This is not an unusual occurrence for me. I blame the hyphen in my name and bad coding. As an alternative way of verifying my identity, I was able to scan and attach a copy of my driver’s license and let them verify me that way. Unfortunately, this takes human intervention. So now I wait.
Without proving that it’s me, I can’t yet choose a health plan. Given that it’s the weekend, I don’t expect the verification to happen until Monday at the earliest. I’ll post more about my adventures once I am me.
Now That’s Some High Quality Parody
I present to you OBAMACARE! the text adventure. A sample:
You are standing in an open field in west of a white apartment complex, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
> e
The door is locked. There is evidently no key.
> kick door
I don’t understand that.
> chicago jackboot thug kick
I don’t understand that.
> black panther power
You don’t understand that.
> power of greyskull
Fine. By the Power of Greyskull you open the door. You are in the kitchen of the white townhouse. A table seems to have been used recently for the preparation of food. A passage leads to the west, and a dark staircase can be seen leading upward. To the east is a small window which is open. On the table is a computer open to Healthcare.gov.
The Porno I Would Make
One of the major train lines into the city was shut down this morning due to a suspicious package being found at one of the stops. This, of course, got me to thinking about pornography.
If I were to make a porno, it would be called “Suspicious Packages”. In it, a crack unit of the police force, all female of course, would be called in to investigate suspicious packages throughout the city. The packages in question would be men just laying around in bus terminals, train stations, and airports. The women would have to poke and prod them to try to figure out what makes them tick (Which we all know is an impossible task, am I right ladies?). They would then have to work on “disarming” the men all while engaging in conversations about various feminist issues. There would also be a guy that the women can’t figure out how to disarm and they would have to call in a specialist which would end up being a gay guy. Because my pornos would be equal opportunity pornos. There would be jokes about controlled explosions and premature ejaculation and such as well. One of the guys would “explode” leading to the hospitalization of some of the ladies and they would have to go to the hospital to be nursed back to health. Oh, and there just HAS to be a scene with a bomb disposal robot.
A sex-positive, female-positive, funny porno. This really needs to be made. Time to start writing a script!
Congress Successfully Avoids Near Catastrophe
Subtitle: Inert Congress Passes Inert Gas Law
Who said Congress can’t do anything important? Oh, right, me. This time, though, they actually accomplished something. The Great Helium Shortage of 2013 has been narrowly avoided. It’s less popular than the strategic oil reserve, but the U.S. also has a strategic helium reserve. It was started when blimps looked like they could actually be a thing. Oops. The U.S. has been selling this helium on the open market since 1996, but the law authorizing it was about to expire. Now, this may not seem like a big deal until you realize that sales from the helium reserve account for 50% of total helium sales in the U.S. Ouch. This could have been disastrous. You may think of helium as just a gas that is used for party balloons and making your voice squeaky, but it’s used in all sorts of high tech manufacturing processes as well. Luckily, a new law was passed that avoided the shutdown of the reserve. The helium must flow.
Even this no-brainer legislation almost didn’t happen. There was lots of argument on what to do with the money made from the sale of the helium. In the end, an agreement was struck that would put a token amount towards deficit reduction and the rest towards other program. Only one no-name person in the House voted against it. The measure passed the senate 97-2. Guess who voted against it? If you guessed Ted “there ain’t a thing alive I won’t obstruct” Cruz, you win a party balloon. The other was Jeff Sessions who, while I can’t fathom his reasons for voting against it, has proven to be quite the asshat in the past.
Calculate How Much Obamacare Will Cost You
The Kaiser Family Foundation has a fairly decent calculator to help you figure out how much your health insurance will cost you if you need to sign up under an Obamacare plan (which most of you will not have to do). Most states are completely flubbing getting information out to the public prior to the implementation of the signup tomorrow. It’s good that someone was able to collect everything and put it in one place. For instance, just try finding out any information about the Illinois plan. Sheesh.
The costs shown in the calculator are for the Silver plan and plugging myself in for various states seem to indicate that health insurance is going to be pretty affordable for those that don’t get a subsidy. $211/month for where I live. $270/month for the national average. This is comparable to what I pay now with a $5,000 deductible and fairly comprehensive coverage, but it’s hard to compare the two since items like that are not included in the calculator.
T minus one day till the exchanges open. Things are about to get interesting.
Movie Review: Rush
Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars
Bottom Line: Good story. Engaging characters. Made racing interesting. Excellent racing scenes. Beautiful backdrops.
Niki Lauda is a complete asshole. Everybody thinks so. Everybody says so too. But here’s the thing. James Hunt is equally an asshole, but everyone loves him. Well, except Niki Lauda. To Niki, James represents everything that is wrong with racing. James just happens to be an asshole in all the socially acceptable ways while Niki is not. In the end, they are two sides to the same coin. Driven. Frightened. Crazy.
“Rush” tells the true(ish) story of the rivalry between the two men. They are both the best at what they do and that’s drive cars at irresponsible speeds. The two best are bound to be rivals, but I think this is fueled more from the mutual recognition that there is something in the other that both James and Niki crave. James wants Niki’s methodical determinism. Niki envies James’ free spirit and devil-may-care attitude. The rivalry makes each better than they every would have been alone.
The storytelling is very effective. You quickly get a feel for both Niki’s and James’ character. Where they come from. What drives them. What their weaknesses are. It drags slightly during the middle third but only for a while. There is also a bunch of inside racing stuff that is sure to be fun for all the people who know more about cars than I do. Niki Lauda was quite a mechanical genius in addition to being a top driver. Changes he made during his time revolutionized the racing industry.
And since this is a movie about racing, something should be said about the race scenes, no? They are top notch. Filled with beautiful camera angles and spectacular cinematography. You get a good feel for why someone would be stupid enough to strap themselves in to a speeding bomb and race other people in an effort to see who doesn’t blow up. Friends who know much more about formula one racing than I do say that it was much more interesting in the 70’s than it is now. Like all racing, more interesting means more dangerous.
“Rush” is a great effort by Ron Howard. I don’t think it’s good enough for Oscar contention, but it’s certainly the kind of movie that generates Oscar buzz. Regardless, it’s a movie worth seeing.
The Meaning Of Life
I can think of no greater instruction on how to live your life that what Tim Minchin mentions here:
I have been an admirer for a long time, but this definitely puts him in the category of people I want to have in my neighborhood. I imagine him in some sort of M.C. Echeresque house for some reason.
Ode To Ted Cruz
At one point during yesterday’s fake filibuster, Ted Cruz read from the book “Green Eggs and Ham”. A man adamantly refusing to give Obamacare a shot reading a book about adamantly refusing to give a meal a shot. Irony meters hundreds of miles away burst into flames. And it also screams for a little parody.
"That President there! That President there! I do not like that President there!" "Do you like Obamacare?" "I do not like them you total square. I do not like Obamacare." "Would you like it if it helped the broke?" "I would not like it if it helped the broke. For all I care they can have a stroke. I do not like Obamacare I do not like it you total square." "Would you like it if it were cheaper? Would that make it a definite keeper?" "I would not like it if it were cheaper. That does not make it a definite keeper. I do not like Obamacare. I do not like it you total square." "But look, it covers preconditions. Surely that's a noble mission." "So what it covers preconditions. That is not a noble mission. I do not like Obamacare. I do not like it you total square." "What if the benefits were proven true? Then would it be the right thing to do?" "I do not care if it all were true. Just try and convince me till your face turns blue. You cannot combat the lies I'll spew. And to those this would help, a big FUCK YOU!"
DAWWWWWWWWWW!
I used to have a Siberian husky. This reminds me of him playing in the snow. Also, what a beautiful yard for a husky. I wonder how they managed to keep it devoid of holes.
[youtube http://youtu.be/7xEX-48RHCY]