Taro T

Your wife's company's insurance company (as do all the others) sets premiums such to make a profit off the TOTAL $'s expected to be expended in a particular year (or other relatively short time period). They used their experience and actuarial tables to estimate what that would be and then pooled the payment out to all the members of the insurance pool (apparently the risk pool for her company is the company's employees and their families). While the risk was there that some within the risk pool would get cancer, which can be astonishingly expensive to treat; it looks like the probabilities that were used were either incorrect, or the employees were just "unluckier" than would have been expected. Either way, if you want the insurance company to continue to provide coverage to your wife's company, they are going to have to get premiums from the members of the risk pool large enough to cover the total expected expenditures (which are now significantly higher with 3 people being treated for cancer than they were in previous years). You claim the insurance company will NEVER lose money, but they most likely did last year; and to keep from losing money this year, they raised the rates. Those premiums that were "faithfully" paid in years past were used, primarily, to pay for the health care of everybody else in the pool in those years. That is the entire point of a "risk pool," everybody puts in a relatively small amount of money, but more that the healthy people would be expected to pay in a particular year to cover the people that do end up getting sick. And, as an aside, if you want to get an idea of the probability of an event happening, price out insurance on the event. If you are afraid your house worth $200k might burn down, and the insurance to cover replacement costs $2.2k; then factoring a 10% profit, there would roughly be a 1% chance that your house will be destroyed. (Not quite exactly correct, as there are things that could happen to your house that would damage it without destroying it, but that's roughly how it works.) The insurance companies work in a competitive environment. A single company can't take you to the cleaners because the next guy will sell you a policy cheaper than the 1st one.

So doctors, nurses, PA's, PT's, pharmacists should all be benevolent and work for free?

It should be good enough. She isn't an evil corporation, so her having intended to press the brake should be equivalent to her having pressed the brake. Actually, Toyota should be expected to pay for ALL damage she caused (and maybe double or treble, just because they're evil), because being the evil corporation that it is, it should have known that someday an unfortunate individual would make such a readily expectable and easily curable problem. Heck, she should get additional compensation for the trauma Toyota caused her by having its electronic gas pedal control her mind and make her press it to the floor when she wanted to brake.

And another case of faulty accerators is proven. Linky OK, well this one is driver error, but I'm certain EVERY other one was due to faulty accelerators.

So where are Hedd, Conner, pBills, Deb, etc telling us what a wonderful thing we'll have imposed upon us this weekend?

Not sure what Riker would have done, I'd expect Picard would have hit it.

He sure wouldn't have played chess with something that hideous.

Am I the only one that saw this thread title and thought "that'd make a good title for a Star Trek episode?" The Tholian Web; The Pelosian Construct. Hopefully Kirk gives the Pelosians hell in the end.

Yes, it should be. And as far as I can tell it has been adhered to (at least in this particular matter). I dislike almost all of the policies that are supported by this administration. But with so many legitimate issues to criticize it for, I don't see the point of harping on his alleged non-US citizenship. All that can come of it is the Bishop Hedds of the world gain some credibility in their claims that people oppose him just to oppose him. And the Bishop Hedds of the world are more batshit loony than most any "Birther" could ever hope to be.

That's what's scary. They aren't dead, but they should be (at least in this current incarnation). Until the stake has been driven through the heart of the health care/insurance/whatever they want to call it reform bill, it ain't dead.

But wait a sec, didn't Lofton and White used to play for Green Bay? Mr. Wisconsin must have had a heck of a time w/ that. All those guys messin' up Coach Lombardi's squad.

Nah, she's very open-minded. Unfortunately, most of it seems to have spilled out that opening.

Yes, because the constituents and those reps realise that the "free federal money" game is a loser means that once the money has been added to the national debt those same reps should double (triple, whatever) their losses and make sure that while their constituents will get saddled with the additional debt they won't receive any of the benefits of that debt.

Sorry son, you are just going too far w/ this crusade.

But of course, the Big Kitty only shows up to eat from the kitty litter pile. So it wouldn't seem that way to her. Sorry big kitty. I jest. It must be cool, because it's all comedy. Even though I'm not a professional comedian, I've watched them on TV, and I know this is good stuff and just because you appear to hope to aspire to have an intellect as high as Conner but can't quite get there, the joke won't be lost on you.

Pelosi, Reid, & crew definitely still want to push this through. I'm not convinced they have enough votes to get the house to go along w/ the reconcilliation route. Unless something surprising happens in the next 8 months, the Dems will take a bath in November. At that point, I can see the lame ducks being willing to push this through; it can't cost them their jobs after the election and it can get them cushier lobbying jobs.

My guess is that after the 1st week in November, they DO ram it through. As long as the current Congress (House & Senate) are in office, it was my understanding that all bills are active until voted down. If the House waits until after the elections to vote on the Senate's bill, can't they approve it when they know the majority of them will be lobbyists? I know Barry will sign it as soon as it crosses his desk.

Nowhere in his post did he say Palin would be a good President. He said she'd be better than what we've got now.

That one was funny, but the creepiness factor knocked it down a notch. And who knew Abe Vigoda was still alive?

That one was definitely the best. Yeah, hard to see what was "offensive" about the ad. Although Tebow tackling his mother was rather bizarre.

As KT stated, people aren't slamming the Pres for saying "Hey, we need to tackle the deficit." They're slamming him for saying we need to tackle the deficit while proposing a budget w/ well over a $1T deficit which includes new spending not covered by his "freeze", said freeze coming a year after he blew the previous year's ridiculous amount of spending right out the window. People are slamming his words for not even being minutely correlated to his actions. I'd love to see him actually become financially responsible but I don't see any way that happens; at least not in 2010. I don't see where a one time $5,000 reduction in employee cost will do much to sway the businesses over to making that additional hire. It will sway some, but as LA states, the majority of companies that will take advantage of the $5k are companies that were going to hire anyway. Basically, Obama's saying "hey, you were going to hire anyway, here's $5k; remember that name O-B-A-M-A in '12."

Nope, he missed the game in Minnesota.

You do realize that Hostetler was the Giants' QB in XXV, right? Simms played against the Broncos.

While what you write is accurate, I'm disappointed you popped in. This frick said, frack said thread was highly entertaining and I was curious to see how it would all evolve w/ no external interferences. Oh well, maybe they'll get another dialogue rolling. It's a little early for beer and popcorn, but I might have to make an exception for that.

Cool. Glad to read he's doing better.