I was thinking that I should start saving up money for the aortic valve replacement that will be needed in a few years. It is apparently more than $50,000 -- which even with health insurance, is going to be $10,000 out of pocket. (Nope: out of pocket maximum on my current insurance is $3250 per plan year.) I was thinking that I could open a Health Savings Account, and put $100 a month into it, where interest would accumulate tax-free, and the amounts put in are deductible. In five years, that would be close to $6500 -- a big chunk of that cost.
But to get the tax-free accrual and tax deductible contribution advantages, you have to have a High Deductible Health Plan. As long as I work for an employer, I can't get the HSA advantage.
I had hoped at some point to retire and work on stuff that really matters, but I don't think that's going to happen in the next ten years. Unfortunately, the kind of stuff that I do that I consider important (like this study of state background check laws, or this analysis of Violence Policy Center's "Concealed Carry Killers") are not the sort of things that anyone pays you to do. I won't be able to retire, nor will I be able to find an employer who would hire me to work on stuff that matters. I am not happy about this.
UPDATE: An additional frustration is that Obamacare includes a new maximum amount that can be taken out pre-tax for a flexible spending account plan to $2500 per year. I sure wish that I could meet the people that think Obamacare was such a smart idea -- I mean, besides the big health insurers who are now guaranteed more customers.
UPDATE 2: One of the results of Obamacare (if not an actual goal) will likely be lots of people who have some assets quitting their jobs. In reading this discussion of the way that health insurance exchanges will work, it turns out that there will be tax credits for those who make 100% to 400% of the federal poverty line to help them buy health insurance. That means that a couple with an annual income of $62,000 a year will be eligible for this help -- and the plan will have an out-of-pocket maximum (deductibles and copayments) of about $12,700 per year. No one is saying yet what the premiums are going to be, but my guess from reading this June 28, 2013 Spokesman-Review article is that for a couple, it is going to be less than 600 a month. (It appears to be $410 a month for a 40-year-old with a family of four.) This argues that for an older couple with significant job skills, it makes more sense to not work, or only work part-time, so that they can get the tax credit and health insurance. (You aren't eligible for the health insurance exchange if your employer provides coverage.) Even worse: it makes sense to sell income-producing assets and pay off a house mortgage, since a lower income gets you tax credits and ability to join these insurance pools.
But who said that there was any value to having anyone working, anyway?
Senin, 15 Juli 2013
How Stupid Can You Be?
From Nampa KIVI channel 6:
Phillip Bernardino Chavez, 29, of Las Vegas, Nevada has pleaded guilty on Thursday, July 11th 2013, for illegal possession of a machine gun.
According to a plea agreement, in December of 2012, Chavez and his co-defendant, Ronald Alexander, offered to sell an automatic machine gun to an undercover Nampa Police Detective.
An arrangement was made, and Alexander and Chavez sold the gun on December 18th 2012, to the undercover agent at a cost of $3,200 dollars. Chavez presented a Pioneer Arms Corporation 7.62 X 25 rifle and three magazines to the agent and concluded the transaction. Alexander and Chavez were arrested a short time later.Alexander was already in deep trouble for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
Zimmerman Cleared Of All Charges
There seems to be some question as to whether the Martin family civil suit can go forward. Several readers pointed out that Florida law prohibits such civil suits if you have been found innocent in a criminal proceeding, but this July 15, 2013 USA Today article, while primarily about the U.S. Dept. of Justice pursuing a civil rights violation charge, also indicates that a civil suit is still possible:
Zimmerman would be immune to such a lawsuit only if he asked for a hearing under Florida's "stand-your-ground" law and a judge found he justifiably used force in self-defense in the face of an "unlawful threat," Reep said.
Zimmerman's lawyer, Mark O'Mara, commented Saturday night on the possibility of suits against his client.
"On the civil aspect, if someone believes that it's appropriate to sue George Zimmerman, then we will seek and we will get immunity in a civil hearing.
"We'll see just how many civil lawsuits are spawned from this fiasco."
Weakest Solar Maximum in a Century
From July 15, 2013 Fox News:
This year's solar maximumis shaping up to be the weakest in 100 years and the next one could be even more quiescent, scientists said July 11.
"It's the smallest maximum we've seen in the Space Age," David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., told reporters in a teleconference. [Solar Max: Amazing Sun Storm Photos of 2013This may explain why there has been no global warming for a decade now. A prominent German environmental scientist -- and former global warming believer -- has a book out on the subject, which is now appearing in English:
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/07/15/sun-2013-solar-activity-peak-is-weakest-in-100-years/#ixzz2Z7yQVhAO
Amazon is now showing that Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s controversial book Die kalte Sonne (The cold sun), released in German last year, is now coming out worldwide in English.
The title of the English version: The Neglected Sun, and the publisher is Stacey International in London.
Their book created quite a stir in Europe, especially in Germany. The warmist establishment pretty much had seizures over it.
Fritz Vahrenholt, chemistry professor, is also the author of the 1986 book “Seveso ist überall” (Seveso is everywhere), a book on the deadly risks of chemical pollution. That book made him one of the fathers of Germany’s modern environmental movement. Until just a couple of years ago Vahrenholt was a big believer in anthropogenic global warming, and accepted the IPCC gloomy reports as the final word on the subject – until one day he began taking a closer look at the real data. He couldn’t believe some of the shenanigans going on in the science, and so together with geologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning, he co-authored Die kalte Sonne.
Jumat, 12 Juli 2013
Corel VisualStudio X5 SP2 Crashes For Me...
As soon as I installed Service Pack 2, VisualStudio fails on startup with a very useless message that says to email the dump file to customer support...but doesn't give you an email address. I'm hoping support@corel.com does the trick. In the meantime, I would not install SP2.
Very Offensive Asian Insults From KTVU in the Bay Area
Michelle Malkin's blog has the screenshot of what KTVU in Oakland claimed were the names of the four pilots on the Asiana flight that crashed.
Say them out loud, although not on radio or television. They claim that the National Transportation Safety Board provided the names. Yeah, right.
UPDATE: Amazingly enough, NTSB did provide those names. The intern responsible, one guesses, has another job now. Perhaps chief of protocol for the State Department.
Say them out loud, although not on radio or television. They claim that the National Transportation Safety Board provided the names. Yeah, right.
UPDATE: Amazingly enough, NTSB did provide those names. The intern responsible, one guesses, has another job now. Perhaps chief of protocol for the State Department.
Heard From The Cardiologist This Evening
The problem is the aortic valve is narrowed, which prevents the heart from pumping enough blood, and back pressure into the alevoli is what is causing the breathlessness. The good news is that it isn't severe enough to require replacement immediately. He explained that this is one of the few surgeries where getting older is an advantage, because the older you are, the longer bioprosthetic valves last. Young people that need the aortic valve replaced get mechanical valves that last forever, but require them to take blood thinners for life. He also indicated that the steady improvements in bioprosthetic valves mean that if I can put this off for a few more years, what they put in may actually be lifetime.
The downside is that this is an open your chest up surgery -- but there is a new procedure called Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) where they install the new aortic valve rather like the way that they do angiograms and angioplasty -- through an artery. This sounds like it is roughly equivalent to replacing the valves in your engine by going up the tailpipe, through the exhaust manifold, and then through the open valve! The downside of TAVR is that while they don't have to open up your chest, it is currently about three times more likely to cause a stroke than the traditional approach. He also says that only about 10,000 of these TAVRs have been done so far, and he would feel more comfortable that the procedures and tools have been perfected when they reach the million operation mark. Yet another advantage of being able to put off this operation.
In the meantime, he wants to do an adenosine stress test so that they can run radioactive dye through my heart and see which arteries seem to be blocked or restricted. This is apparently a first step to figure out if you have blockages bad enough to justify the considerably more intrusive angiogram, which would lead perhaps to an angioplasty to clean out any blockages. He doesn't have much hope that an arterial blockage is the cause of my left nerve branch block, but he admitted that it was possible that the electrical failure was caused by lack of blood supply. At a minimum, it would be good to make sure that there are not any cardiac arteries that might suddenly preempt the need for aortic valve replacement in a few years.
It could be worse. It could be better. In the meantime, he encourages me to stay at the treadmill. He doesn't believe that it could actually help the aortic valve narrowing, and he even finds it hard to imagine that the improvement that I am feeling on the breathlessness symptoms could be related to improved cardiovascular fitness, because the improvement is too quick. But it won't hurt me, and the more fit I am, when surgery is required, the better I will recover.
The downside is that this is an open your chest up surgery -- but there is a new procedure called Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) where they install the new aortic valve rather like the way that they do angiograms and angioplasty -- through an artery. This sounds like it is roughly equivalent to replacing the valves in your engine by going up the tailpipe, through the exhaust manifold, and then through the open valve! The downside of TAVR is that while they don't have to open up your chest, it is currently about three times more likely to cause a stroke than the traditional approach. He also says that only about 10,000 of these TAVRs have been done so far, and he would feel more comfortable that the procedures and tools have been perfected when they reach the million operation mark. Yet another advantage of being able to put off this operation.
In the meantime, he wants to do an adenosine stress test so that they can run radioactive dye through my heart and see which arteries seem to be blocked or restricted. This is apparently a first step to figure out if you have blockages bad enough to justify the considerably more intrusive angiogram, which would lead perhaps to an angioplasty to clean out any blockages. He doesn't have much hope that an arterial blockage is the cause of my left nerve branch block, but he admitted that it was possible that the electrical failure was caused by lack of blood supply. At a minimum, it would be good to make sure that there are not any cardiac arteries that might suddenly preempt the need for aortic valve replacement in a few years.
It could be worse. It could be better. In the meantime, he encourages me to stay at the treadmill. He doesn't believe that it could actually help the aortic valve narrowing, and he even finds it hard to imagine that the improvement that I am feeling on the breathlessness symptoms could be related to improved cardiovascular fitness, because the improvement is too quick. But it won't hurt me, and the more fit I am, when surgery is required, the better I will recover.
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