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- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
- Personal attacks on other community members are unacceptable, practice the good manners your mama taught you when engaging with fellow Dawg fans
- Use common sense and respect personal differences in the community: sexual and other inappropriate language or imagery, political rants and belittling the opinions of others will get your posts deleted and result in warnings and/ or banning from the forum
- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
Comments
I got a buddy getting ready to move there later this year.he said it was just a better life there with non of the political bs we have here in the U.S.
There’s pros and cons for sure but at the end of the day.... you’re considering it; strongly enough to post.
I think it’s worth a few months down there before making “permanent” decisions. At the end of the day, you can just come back home if it no longer suits your needs.
You're one of many that feel that way. I was trying to be nice. I live in a glass house, so no stones thrown from here.
I thought the Obamacare premium credits got the poorest 35% their much needed health insurance. I was told that’s why my premiums and deductibles skyrocketed - to help pay for the deadbeats who needed insurance.
Bank. The truth is health care costs have increased at a fast rate for over 40 years, and they will continue to do so as long as the system is corporate without checks on those increases.
Anybody who has owned and/or traded stocks should understand exactly why it is built into the current structure.
Publicly traded companies are legally bound to work in the interests of shareholders and what is in shareholders' interest is to have their share value increase. If you've ever studied what makes share prices go up it's twofold...1. have a good current financial report and 2. project GROWTH !
The solution isn't to move the parts around like The Affordable Care Act did, it's to change the structure. We see the solution in privately owned utility companies. The rates they charge have to be set by the government, so how to make their stock attractive to investors ?......DIVIDENDS. Conservative ( often older) investors who are already well off want to protect their wealth while still getting a good return. If a person puts 100 million into a rock solid dividend stock and gets a 5% annual return, that's 5 million a year with little to no risk.
The trouble is it's not cool enough for the Ocasio Cortez crowd and not ''free market'' enough for the far right. What it is though, it's the way to get cost under control without completely taking over the industry.
A few of you like to think you're representative of something, you're not.
What you are is a few oddballs who can't hold their own in debates and/or be interesting enough to get attention, so you focus your bitterness in odd ways, like on me.
I've been there 3 times for business and pleasure. It's a remarkably beautiful country, and Tico's are awesome people. Because you're a Gringo, you'll pay double what the natives do to visit national parks. CR is not the bargain it once was, so your dollar will not stretch as far.
I'd reach out to senorlorenzo to get the inside scoop from someone that lives there. I would not recommend living in San Jose due to crime and traffic issues. If you're going to test the waters for six months make sure you checkout the local healthcare situation, hospital, doctors etc.
RayGoof. They have wifi in Costa Rica, I'll still post, that might be beyond your level of comprehension.
Love the Tamarindo area but the secret is out and CR has become much more expensive to retire to and live comfortably... we are checking out the next best thing- Ecuador.
How will your health care costs be covered in CR? Can you move there and still have coverage under our system if you fly “home” when you need major medical care? I wonder if the ex-pats living there abuse the system in this manner
Now, for anyone who wants to scream “off topic”, please recognize that I am discussing this with the OP. His thread. His choice. For anyone else- Your choice is to STOP READING right now if you suffer from the mental defect of being unable to tolerate diverging conversations
WC, I apologize - this is a long read.
Stock prices, other than the fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder value, have little to do with premiums charged There is some influence but they are not the major driver of increasing coats
First of all, insurance companies are not incentivized to reduce payer premiums. The public has not recognized that profitability of the insurance company has very little to do with premium dollars in vs premium dollars out. The profitability of the insurance company is based on “assets under management”, so the insurer wants to charge high premiums and then use the money to make more money before paying the doctors. That’s why you can walk in to any medical facility and pay a lower “self pay” charge than what the insurance company has negotiated. That’s a problem politicians on both sides have been paid to sweep under the rug.
Second, the premiums, by default, had to skyrocket when they allowed people to insure their already burned down houses. The insurance companies were told they could no longer assess their risk(pre-existing consitions) and in exchange the government said it would offset the loss of business that would occur when people couldn’t afford the premiums by paying a large portion of those soon to be outrageous premiums, based on income level. The cost of covering preexisting conditions was spread across the board, and that pool of people tends to be much older - thus the significant jump in costs
Why did the government agree to this HORRIBLE one sided deal with the insurance companies? Because the folks running government at that time desire a system that creates legions of government dependent citizens.
I wonder what the model would look like with uniform premiums regardless of age (costs don’t increase with age, and therefor higher for younger people than at present) with a subsidy to cover the higher premiums based on income. The subsidy for income threshhold would tend to cover younger folks, but wouldnt necessarily vanish with age if a person decided he or she enjoys being a government dependent.
That might help to address the fact the 45-65 crowd trying to cram money away for retirement are being **** dry by health insurance premiums that increase with both age AND inflation, much more so than prior to the ACA - unless you qualify for a subsidy in which case you arent making enough to save anyway. Large corporate employees and government workers are the exception here because of their benefit packages, but small business owners are getting KILLED by the ACA
Either way, none of this works to control costs until the issue of insurance company profitability from assets under management is better understood, acknowledged, and somehow addressed.
And the prescription drug thing is also an important piece, but we cant stymie innovation by trying to limit profits.
Bank. I'm not far enough along in my prep to know how I'll secure healthcare coverage. It might be I just get a catastrophic policy with high deductibles and pay as I go for the rest.
As for the correlation between healthcare cost and publicly traded companies, I think you're incorrect. I think it's at least as big as the fact we have so many unneeded and expensive tests done in this country. If you're insured doctors will prescribe far more expensive tests than are needed because the profit margins are huge. Really even those expensive tests are tied to corporations wanting/needing to squeeze more money from the system.
Meh. It’s complicated, but I disagree. The private market is offering alternatives in these arenas. You can get blood work done at private labs now. MRIs are another example. Northside Hospital had to reduce their charges from $1500 for MRIs because of a company here that setup doing strictly MRIs for $550. The doctor who owns it does a full video explanation when he reads the results. I think he does two every hour on each machine. I know for a fact Northside Hospital changed their prices because of these type companies because I personally know people in their finance department who told me the private MRI companies were causing the hospital’s MRI machines to sit idle so they did a price match.
I lived in Central America for 5 years & think C.R. is overrated & overpriced.
It is absolutely beautiful and the weather is amazing!
theft is an issue from what locals have told me. You want to stay towards the cities where technology is their biggest producers.
Food is great and attitudes are better.