Do you remember the beginning of the Bourne Ultimatum? … [the CIA] detects Ross inquiring about “Blackbriar” with a colleague over his cell phone. … Noah Vosen arrives at the Blackbriar offices and takes command of their primary analyst team who immediately extract all possibly known intelligence on Simon Ross in an attempt to trace […]
Magpies are absolutely beautiful birds, and we have a lot of them living in this area. In fact, I do not believe I ever saw a magpie before we moved to Geneva. For years we have watched them try to build nests in the trees surrounding our building, fighting pretty gritty turf wars with the […]
As the institution of employer-based health care has matured, so has the population. The financial benefits of off-setting wage increases by a preferential tax system on health care plans decreases as the population ages, and the employers find themselves covering the insurance for their retired workers.[1] Moreover, health premiums continue to rise, and in 2004, […]
Aside from the inequalities in cost and availability caused by the employer-based system, there are a number of other problems caused by the unlikely connection between employment and health coverage. Many of these problems are overlooked in discussions on health care reform, because the debate is often between the merits of a public versus a […]
Inequality Employed individuals may lack coverage for a variety of reasons. Employers sometimes only offer health benefits to a select group of employees, such as those who work more than a defined number of hours. A pre-existing condition may exclude the employee from the health benefit plan. The benefit plan may require a cost-sharing employee […]
The voluntary employment-based system of health benefit provision evolved over the course of the twentieth century to become a strong social institution. While the employer-based system works well for a large portion of Americans, there are many on the periphery of the system that are unable to benefit from the arrangement. Small Businesses Of small […]
Experience-Rating The employee group is “the most effective mechanism for pooling of health insurance risks in the private health insurance market.”[1] The original health insurance plans, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, used a mechanism called community rating to price premiums. This meant that the “Blues” charged the same premium to each policyholder within a given […]
The “employee group” was the foundation upon which private health insurance began, as it was simpler to market and sell plans to an employer for a group, rather than servicing all the employees individually. The employees of the company comprised an already defined group on which to determine risk. Companies often provided a large enough […]
Way back in 2005 I wanted to better understand how the U.S. system of health insurance was established, as America clearly has an institutional apathy that once a system is in place, it seems nearly impossible to change. I wrote an awesome history of the employer-provided insurance system with some commentary about its evolution. Funny […]
Pinterest and YouTube have created a phenomena which makes DIY seem so easy and realistic. My dad was a craftsman with an entire garage full of tools that he actually used. I would play around in his workshop building stuff as a kid–one time I built bunk beds for my Cabbage Patch Kids, yes, I […]
