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Posted (edited)
On 12/10/2025 at 9:09 AM, gernblansten said:

I could easily be wrong, but I think you can collect unemployment for about 6 months. So, maybe claims are down because people have been unemployed so long they no longer qualify?

It's not like we can't go look up the data at the department of Labor: 

Screenshot_20251212-081046.thumb.png.8ebd5bb41430abfb2bd89a98b3a4dfd4.png

 

Edited by elfenix
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Posted
2 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

Trump's plan was to give each person on an exchange plan a total of $1500.  Per year.  Unless you are under 50 years old, in which case it was $1000.  Per year.  In an HSA.

2 hours ago, VABuckeye said:

Trump logic.  Gotta love it. 

37 minutes ago, miguelito said:

It's a banana Michael, what could it cost, ten dollars?

He knows his audience can be bribed for cheap.

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Posted (edited)

A lot of people just want stimmies. And they'll happily accept them even if in exchange they are now getting screwed harder than they were before

Edited by elfenix
clarifying
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Posted
7 minutes ago, elfenix said:

A lot of people just want stimmies. And they'll happily accept them even if they are now getting screwed harder than they were before

I mean, I'll certainly spend it, if it comes. but yeah, I would prefer a healthy economy

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Posted
23 hours ago, elfenix said:

A lot of people just want stimmies. And they'll happily accept them even if they are now getting screwed harder than they were before

This is why I said last year Biden should have announced in the summer and then sent out in September 2k per family. We would not be dealing with these assholes

1 minute ago, hobbes2702 said:

CVS. 

Fuck CVS

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Posted
On 12/13/2025 at 12:06 PM, elfenix said:

A lot of people just want stimmies. And they'll happily accept them even if in exchange they are now getting screwed harder than they were before

Most people are stupid.  You could tell them that their groceries will cost $50 more per week in 2026, but they're gonna get a $1,500 stimulus check, and they'd gladly agree.

Also, the check will be because Trump and the GOP care about working people, and the higher grocery prices will be Biden's fault.

 

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Posted
35 minutes ago, Okie State said:

I also saw something where Trump wants to give everyone $1,000 to help buy a new car. Average car costs like $50K now. $1K off should do the trick. Problem solved.

He also thinks that's enough to fly commercial like 100 times, so you wouldn't even need a car.

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Posted
On 12/13/2025 at 1:51 PM, Disco Strangler said:

A lot of Republican voters want free government money, but Socialism is where they totally draw the line.  

It does feel like we are in the land of "That's not fair, if they get free stuff, I want free stuff too" even if it means everyone is the worst for it. The poor have never been able to see the forest from the trees but at least we had pride. Now just despair and hopelessness and cruelty.

Posted
23 hours ago, Okie State said:

I also saw something where Trump wants to give everyone $1,000 to help buy a new car. Average car costs like $50K now. $1K off should do the trick. Problem solved.

Lada sales. Connect the dots, sheeple!!!

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Posted
On 12/12/2025 at 9:17 PM, Texas Jeff said:

Anyone heard Trump going on about how he wanted to give money directly to the American people, so they could buy insurance, rather than giving it to the insurance companies?

I looked up that plan.  It failed in the Senate, but the plan was to establish health savings accounts for each person and have the government make a contribution to the HSA so that the person could buy insurance.

Trump's plan was to give each person on an exchange plan a total of $1500.  Per year.  Unless you are under 50 years old, in which case it was $1000.  Per year.  In an HSA.

To buy health care.

For the year.

That's what he meant by not giving money to the evil insurance companies and instead giving it directly to the people.

Since it never went beyond bill status, you never know where it would have ended up but there were many unanswered questions. First, you can't pay insurance premiums with HSA funds. You can pay deductibles and most other legit healthcare costs but there has always been a rule that HSAs can't be used for premiums.

Also

  • the GOP had to insert language to eliminate abortion and gender transition care from HSA reimbursement.
  • create more low premium plans (good!) most likely with shit plans (bad.)

I also have to wonder that if someone received this HSA funding of $1000 or $1500, was there anything preventing someone from cashing this out to buy groceries. Yes theoretically you would owe income tax on that transaction but HSA reimbursement is pretty much the honor system.

Overall I think HSAs are great tools but they've pretty much failed the original goals because Americans don't save.

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Posted (edited)

Is there any way to estimate how the tariffs have impacted prices on major items? Yesterday I got four new Continental tires and it cost me about $1,700 at Discount Tire after everything. I wonder how much of the cost, if any, was due to the Trump Tax. 

Edited by Bookman
Posted
16 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Overall I think HSAs are great tools but they've pretty much failed the original goals because Americans don't save.

It's worse than that. Americans buy the wrong insurance for everything. People should be choosing the highest deductible plans they can afford, because the more they insure, the less they get for their premiums.
The worst aspect of ACA is that it eliminated catastrophic-only HDHPs and required all plans to cover this huge range of routine, predictable expenses you should be using an HSA for. Most people at professional income levels do not need vaccinations, routine checkups, or even generic and low cost meds to be "free", but I'm forced to prepay for those things with insurance, which is just a handout for the carriers and PBMs.

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Posted
3 hours ago, Bookman said:

Is there any way to estimate how the tariffs have impacted prices on major items? Yesterday I got four new Continental tires and it cost me about $1,700 at Discount Tire after everything. I wonder how much of the cost, if any, was due to the Trump Tax. 

I believe the total China tariff is sitting close to 30% right now. Other countries are lower and it’s more than likely your tires came from elsewhere but that doesn’t prevent discount tire from pricing all tires based on the highest tariff. So maybe 400-500 in tariffs.

of course maybe due to competition, discount tire is eating some of those costs or they haven’t applied the highest tariff costs across the board.

its so crazy how the Trump admin is literally bragging how much they’ve taxed US companies via tariffs. And therefore the customers of these companies.

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Posted
23 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Weird. What significant policy change was announced on the White House lawn in April? I can’t remember 

I'm only a keyboard expert on labor trends but something sure looks different for the data points starting in the 2025 spring/summer time frame and not just the color of the chart bars. Has anything major happened with the economy or jobs in the last 6-9 months?

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Posted
8 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I'm only a keyboard expert on labor trends but something sure looks different for the data points starting in the 2025 spring/summer time frame and not just the color of the chart bars. Has anything major happened with the economy or jobs in the last 6-9 months?

I think the tariffs and threat of same created huge uncertainty in a lot of sectors such that business plans were scaled back and put on hold.

Certainly true of many of my clients.

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Posted

lower cost and better coverage!  it's so easy!  that's why we haven't done shit about it for 15 fucking years. 

i'm pretty convinced they just want all of us to die.

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Posted

It's fair to push on the health insurance companies to ensure their products are being competitive and that there isn't any type of collusion involved keeping the prices high. Of course these insurance companies donate a lot to keep real reform from their front doors. 

Posted
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

It's worse than that. Americans buy the wrong insurance for everything. People should be choosing the highest deductible plans they can afford, because the more they insure, the less they get for their premiums.
The worst aspect of ACA is that it eliminated catastrophic-only HDHPs and required all plans to cover this huge range of routine, predictable expenses you should be using an HSA for. Most people at professional income levels do not need vaccinations, routine checkups, or even generic and low cost meds to be "free", but I'm forced to prepay for those things with insurance, which is just a handout for the carriers and PBMs.

Generally I agree, but as we shopped my wife's plans through her employer for 2026, the plan with the highest coverage/lowest deductible was going to cost less than $200 extra for the year so was a no-brainer for her to choose that one this time. Especially based on the script coverages. 

I did the math 3 times on it thinking something was off, since she usually does choose the high deductible plan. 

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

It's fair to push on the health insurance companies to ensure their products are being competitive and that there isn't any type of collusion involved keeping the prices high. Of course these insurance companies donate a lot to keep real reform from their front doors. 

Idk man, that’s not free market capitalism so it must be socialism so it must be evil

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Posted
9 minutes ago, Redneck Mutha said:

Generally I agree, but as we shopped my wife's plans through her employer for 2026, the plan with the highest coverage/lowest deductible was going to cost less than $200 extra for the year so was a no-brainer for her to choose that one this time. Especially based on the script coverages. 

I did the math 3 times on it thinking something was off, since she usually does choose the high deductible plan. 

Honestly it sounds like her employer didn't shop very well, but that aside - HDHPs are required to cover a lot more than they should so the difference is much smaller than it used to be.

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Posted
It's worse than that. Americans buy the wrong insurance for everything. People should be choosing the highest deductible plans they can afford, because the more they insure, the less they get for their premiums.
The worst aspect of ACA is that it eliminated catastrophic-only HDHPs and required all plans to cover this huge range of routine, predictable expenses you should be using an HSA for. Most people at professional income levels do not need vaccinations, routine checkups, or even generic and low cost meds to be "free", but I'm forced to prepay for those things with insurance, which is just a handout for the carriers and PBMs.

Being poor is expensive. It means you can’t buy the best value in many situation. 10k in hospital bills won’t bankrupt you or me. For many Americans, 10k or 200k has the same impact on their financial security. That’s the point of insurance.
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Posted
On 11/7/2024 at 5:25 PM, Derka said:

everything i’ve ever seen about trump’s economic plan is in line with this:

 

is this what’s really about to happen?

this is the OP ^^^. they said this would happen and it did. and we aren’t even one year in. the immediate future is bleak.

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Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, Tuco said:


Being poor is expensive. It means you can’t buy the best value in many situation. 10k in hospital bills won’t bankrupt you or me. For many Americans, 10k or 200k has the same impact on their financial security. That’s the point of insurance.

PLease don't take offense, but I'm going to repost the exact thing I said before, which you quoted, and put some things in bold. Forcing the entire working population into solutions optimized for "the poor" is a huge problem for the Democratic party in general and was (along with fealty to employer groups) the primary reason they couldn't get ever get healthcare right, not Republican opposition.
I said:
"It's worse than that. Americans buy the wrong insurance for everything. People should be choosing the highest deductible plans they can afford, because the more they insure, the less they get for their premiums.
The worst aspect of ACA is that it eliminated catastrophic-only HDHPs and required all plans to cover this huge range of routine, predictable expenses you should be using an HSA for. Most people at professional income levels do not need vaccinations, routine checkups, or even generic and low cost meds to be "free", but I'm forced to prepay for those things with insurance, which is just a handout for the carriers and PBMs."

Insurance is a risk management product. It is simply dumb to require people who CAN afford the group discounted out of pocket cost of routine, predictable events to prepay for them through a middle man. It's like using car insurance to pay for oil changes and tire rotations. The entire point I was making is that people who don't need to pay for things like flu shots on a biweekly installment plan (which is what our healthcare plans make us do) shouldn't have to. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Posted
34 minutes ago, Redneck Mutha said:

Generally I agree, but as we shopped my wife's plans through her employer for 2026, the plan with the highest coverage/lowest deductible was going to cost less than $200 extra for the year so was a no-brainer for her to choose that one this time. Especially based on the script coverages. 

I did the math 3 times on it thinking something was off, since she usually does choose the high deductible plan. 

All I know is that one year, the only year ever, my wife was SO frustrated with our moderate coverage, with HSA, and the PITA of administering all those expenses, that she insisted we do the "buy-up" expensive plan that had low-as-hell deductibles (but the most expensive premium).  Cost me an extra couple thousand in premium that year.  BUT...it was also the year my daughter had a critical infection and had to be hospitalized for a week, then undergo extensive treatment for months.  Total bill was $180k or so.  I wrote one $1,000 check for my deductible, and never worried about the cost of her treatment again.  Lucky timing.  If that happened today, we'd be out $6k or so (I think), at least.

Our system is completely fucked and fucky, and the GQP "fixes" are nothing of the sort.

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Posted
32 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Cost me an extra couple thousand in premium that year.  BUT...it was also the year my daughter had a critical infection and had to be hospitalized for a week, then undergo extensive treatment for months.  Total bill was $180k or so.  I wrote one $1,000 check for my deductible, and never worried about the cost of her treatment again.  Lucky timing.  If that happened today, we'd be out $6k or so (I think), at least.

For what it’s worth, your insurance broker (or whoever) shouldn’t have created that situation. In a structured  designed set of choices, your situation should have resulted in significant savings with an HDHP. 
In other words, a high deductible plan should always have lower total costs (ie premiums+deductible) than the lower deductible plan in a year where healthcare costs exceed the cost of the deductible+premiums. Otherwise, what would be the point of a high deductible plan? 

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Posted
19 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Yes, the answer to many problems is to stop being poor. We have many systems in place to accommodate wealthier people. 

 

The reverse: We do not have a healthcare insurance system for anyone except poor people, but unfortunately, we sell it at a huge markup to wealthier people. 
in other words- if you are making 100k-400k, your families is buying healthcare insurance products that are really designed to meet the needs of families  making <100k, who cannot afford said insurance products. 

Posted

No, that actual solution is great health care for every citizen, since we are so stupidly rich as a nation we could afford it by merely shaking out the couch cushions.

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Posted

We were in Belize and my wife injured her ankle to the point where we thought it was broken.

Our driver took us to the clinic and I took care of the check-in.  Of course, our health insurance was useless and they told me they don't take credit cards.  I was worried about the cost but the person at sign in told me it wouldn't be expensive compared to our US prices.

Doctor, x-rays, ace bandage (just a bad sprain), crutches and a prescription.  $98 and change.  That is how bloated the health care costs are in the US.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, VABuckeye said:

We were in Belize and my wife injured her ankle to the point where we thought it was broken.

Our driver took us to the clinic and I took care of the check-in.  Of course, our health insurance was useless and they told me they don't take credit cards.  I was worried about the cost but the person at sign in told me it wouldn't be expensive compared to our US prices.

Doctor, x-rays, ace bandage (just a bad sprain), crutches and a prescription.  $98 and change.  That is how bloated the health care costs are in the US.

meanwhile my Fox watching mom is scared to leave the country because "what if I get sick or hurt?"

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Posted

I met my 5000 dollar deductible at the beginning of the year with my deviated septum surgery. ENT recommended I get a dental scan for a mouth guard to bring my jaw forward to further mitigate the sleep apnea which I did this summer. Still waiting for United to give a thumbs up or down whether they'll cover it. Either way, I'm sure it'll be after New Year when my deductible resets to 5000 dollars. 

Posted
1 hour ago, VABuckeye said:

We were in Belize and my wife injured her ankle to the point where we thought it was broken.

Our driver took us to the clinic and I took care of the check-in.  Of course, our health insurance was useless and they told me they don't take credit cards.  I was worried about the cost but the person at sign in told me it wouldn't be expensive compared to our US prices.

Doctor, x-rays, ace bandage (just a bad sprain), crutches and a prescription.  $98 and change.  That is how bloated the health care costs are in the US.

When my kids were born overseas, I paid the hospital bill each time via one trip to the ATM machine downstairs - I think the more expensive delivery was about $350.  And this was in one of those swanky Bangkok hospitals the UAE / Qatar dudes use for medical tourism.



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