Just need to vent...

That was a thank-you like.

I meant heart attack as in from heat stroke and trying to hold such weight over my head with one arm. I have zero health issues other than not being a spring chicken no more. Normal blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, etc. I eat mostly home cooked meals from scratch by a heath nut wife with lots of veggies and fruits and whole grain everything. I love to hike, bike and skate.

 

Our local Home Depot has signs saying $19 an hour.
USPS & UPS hane help wanted signs every where around here too.

 

The federal minimum wage is $7.25. If you are doing a lot better maybe you should not quit your job.

 

True. But who says the federal minimum wage means anything any more. From 1938 to the early 60's it was also a living wage. Now it's a live-with-your-parents and get-free-rent-or-food wage.

With a $3,200/mo after taxes take-home pay, $1,177 insurance premium and rent (cheapest in the whole town) and insurance and gas and electricity, and two cell phone lines...

If I limit food for the family of 4 to $500/mo and all car expenses (fuel, insurance, repairs, maintenance) to $200/mo and got rid of internet and all extra spending (no recreation, no vacation, no clothes, no electronics, no savings of any sort, no subscriptions (not that we have any)) we would barely squeak by with nothing left over. Not even anything left so I could save up eventually for that $15,000 deductible and $18,000 out-of-pocket expenses in case we ever needed it.

 

Yeah all good. Left descending cardiac artery (LDCA) is called 'widow maker' by heart doctors because it can get asymptomatically partially blocked over time, and then snuff you (er, one) prompty. It is survival oriented to know one's LDCA status.

Let me play this out a bit further. LDCA stent insertion involves entry to a wrist artery, not the shoulder or groin cuts for other cardiac arteries. After this, one will have (from tourniquet) a remarkably enlarged and purple right hand. Not green like the Hulk, but pretty strange.

I went home the day after, all good. Hospital staff remarked that 'foreigners always want to leave quickly'. Not untrue. I see hospitals as places where infective (for anything) people are concentrated, and staff may not be seeing well to their roles as vectors.

 

Yipes! Now I have two reasons to stay healthy.

1. Because I can't afford it.
2. To avoid PTSD.

 

In 1961 the minimum wage was 1.25 with restaurant workers making less. They could not afford insurance, could not buy a house, maybe had one old $100 car and had hand me down clothes and a 19” black and white tv.

By the time I was working in the 80’s it took two good jobs to buy a starter home. I used a VA loan as well for $1 down. My wife and I have kept a good income ever since, crucial dual income 45 years ago. In a low cost of living state, not the Colorado mountains.

I believe in health care for everyone, however it takes effort by everyone. A lot of effort for a family of four.

 

I really don't know what cardiac assessment costs in US. I really don't know what 'medical tourism' for this would cost in S. Korea or the other (believe it or not) Brazil.

PriusChat has >187 thousand members, among which a number I cannot say will DIE in 2025 from undiagnosed and untreated LDCA problems. Correctable by simple detection and surgical interventions, but not timely recognized. I feel very sorry about that, but I am not the ruler of this most dear domain. It might be highest use of the complaining thread to keep people ALIVE so they can complain.

 

Interventional Cardiologists can stent the widow maker from the groin. Many patients prefer the wrist.

Guys without insurance won’t get a nuclear stress test. These days it may be their Apple Watch tracking their ekg.

 

What do you mean they couldn't afford a house? The median (not starter) home price was $11,900 in 1961. Interest rates were around 3% locking in mortages at around $50/mo or less on a median home (starter homes being even cheaper), the same amount you'd make in a week off of $1.25/hr as a single 40hr week minimum wage worker before tax, or you could say closer to a week and a half after tax if you want to get technical. Still much closer in reach of a minimum wage worker back then than today.

If the minimum wage and home prices had followed inflation at the same rate, those 1961 figures would be about $13/hr for the federal minimum wage and median homes would be around $130,000 with many starter homes less than that

Compare that to a median wage worker in 2024 who's health insurance just more than doubled, now accounting for roughly the same percentage of income as that minimum wage worker's mortgage payment in 1961?

Thanks for the advice. I get it. I've victimized myself for just wanting to vent what I just found out today. And if I want health insurance then yes, I need to force my wife to work more or get a different one, that's the obvious solution. I'm sure that ought to give all in our family a better life.

No wonder the average American family has less than 2 kids, with future generations expected to have even less.

 

The reason that the average American family has 1.9 kids (as opposed to 2.something) because most of us are navel-gazers who are too self-involved to raise more than just one kid at a time......and current economies trend towards two-income households.
Home prices and everything-else prices practically DEMAND it!

This is straight-up math.
Not even involving the socio-economic forces at work.

An engineer friend of mine put it like this:
Two kids are FAR more than twice the trouble of just the one, and THREE kids are nearly unmanageable for one person .....because one person ONLY HAS TWO hands!

IYKYK.

 

How accurate can your typical wrist device get, say for instance - healthy diet & exercise at 70yrs yet unknowingly on the verge of experiencing hardcore peripheral artery disease (PAD) symptom. Nowadays the industry seemingly doesn't offer up stress echo's unless other symptoms have already manifested.

 

It must add a lot of stress too. Keep looking at schools, colleges, government agencies, city county federal. Although I don’t know your expectations about having a flashy career, these are not it. Buried in the woodwork careers.

 

Straight-up math, perhaps. But what about the unknown? How do you factor 1. An epidemic? 2. Sudden rise in housing costs? 3. Health insurance costs going from free, to around 15% to around 30% of a household's income with said income not even rising as fast as inflation? Just be willing to work that 15% or 30% or more every time costs go up and wages don't? I mean, it's math. If health care premiums go up $550 then $1,100, then that's either $500 or $1,100 less to spend elsewhere or $500 or $1,100 more that has to be made elsewhere, or one drops having any health care insurance plan for his family and hopes that nothing happens. Not that having a $18,000 out-of-pocket per year expense potential on top of those premiums wasn't already a cause to hope that nothing happens. In 2025, to be fully covered for health coverage in my area (and still be locked to certain HCPs and pharmacy restrictions) one must be ready to spend up to some $32,000 per year (and rising per year) in a worst case scenario. That's just the math of it. And ironically, even if my wife worked full time making the federal minimum wage 52 weeks out of the year, that would account for $15,080 before tax, not even half of potential health care costs for the family.

One sober point, the addition of children to a household being a family expense is similar to retired generations being a community expense. Yes, they may have saved up for retirement, but in terms of goods and services (which are the real economy that money only represents) these retirees no longer contribute to the labor force, and much of what they did contribute in their working days is now consumed and gone. This means that in a population where birth rates go down and the proportion of working individuals to retirees decreases, then the more those working individuals have to work to provide for the entire economy. No offense to those who worked hard all their lives and are now retired. But again, this is straight-up math. Hopefully AI and robotics can bring in money for all, not just the rich, and take over the jobs given up by retirees so that more people can retiree at a reasonable age without being a burden on younger generations in a world where population decline is imminent and life expectancies are higher than ever.

 

Food, housing and medical.

Thought I was well-covered on all three. But two recent Rx's, both $500USD , more or less prove me wrong. I did not fill either of them...

 

Ya, sorry. Hopefully things get easier financially with the new president and years that have passed since the pandemic and all.

Another rant. Same here. The wife is supposed to take an Rx that is also around $500/mo that will help relieve some daily excruciating pain. The $1,100/mo health insurance policy won't let me purchase it and pass on the figures towards the $15,000 deductible or $18,000 max out-of-pocket expense. Maybe if she took on more work to be able to pay for the $14,000/yr premiums and $6,000/yr meds and, while she's at it, perhaps also save up for that potentially $18,000/yr out-of-pocket expense, maybe she'd feel better. That would be only 100 more hours of work per week at the $7.25 federal minimum wage, assuming we don't end up owning any taxes on that what-so-ever. I bet she could do that if she put her mind to it. That would free me up some $500/mo on what I make so I can start saving up for a down payment on a house for the two of us or something like that.

 

Odds are good the Obamacare everyone with pre-existing mandate will be eliminated. So it’s incumbent to find good employer coverage for those of working age.

I will agree the days of easy success for unskilled labor may be in the rearview mirror. Even mechanics need to be skilled techs, businessmen and people managers these days to run a successful shop. I know some late fifties tradesmen heading to nursing school so they can have some accumulation before nursing home.

 

My daughter pays like 125/ mo on the ACA for the best kaiser plan, platinum. Maybe it’s $175. She pays very little for health care services. Her income is about like yours right now. That’s why I asked if you’re on ACA. The ACA may go, the revenge for the Obama roast, which was only a joke years ago, still burns. They have no other plan, never had. Nothing in 12 years or is it 14. Bring a better plan and I’ll sign it was the offer, never happened. ACA has saved thousands of lives and saved immense suffering from happening, good luck.

 

So in other words, the great majority of jobs in my area are not worth getting. I wonder how our community would survive if everyone demanded employer based health care and dropped their jobs. Ironically that would just make more undocumented workers make their way into the valley to take over those jobs. In small towns like these most employers are small businesses with zero interest (or ability) in providing health care for their workers. The city trash service was met with competition from another trash company that has lower trash removal rates, because they are a small business without benefits. Even the public schools here have found ways around providing benefits. Why is it up to each citizen to find a job that pays well and gives enough benefits? So that big companies can exploit more citizens? Right now I'm going through job listings and calling and asking if they have health care benefits. Nope, ok, Next!

We didn't have health care for the entire family until ACA came around. I don't know why my situation is different. Maybe she makes around the same as I do, but her numbers are before taxes and I mentioned after taxes. I also have to pay for both my wife and I. So far I haven't had to pay any health insurance for the kids.

 

That’s the way you do it…

I do it different…