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expensive healthcare
Thursday, April 3 2025
This morning I asked the woman who does operations (included human resources) what the "pay period" was for the health insurance I'd signed up for, since that made a difference in how much I would have to pay. Unusually, the company pays a weekly paycheck, and if the pay period was only a week, then the more than $200 I'd be paying per pay period for health insurance would be a lot. (Also, since there were only two plans, and they didn't differ much in cost, if I wanted insurance, it was going to cost a lot.) It turned out that the pay period the insurance was calculated on was indeed weekly, and my health insurance (for Gretchen and me) would indeed be 800 (or perhaps closer to 900) dollars per month. I've never spent anywhere near that amount of insurance outside of, say, COBRA. Indeed, the high-deductible Obamacare we have right now costs something like $300/month. But there is no high-deductible option at this company, and everyone ends up with "silver" of some kind, whatever that means (and I'm sure the definition of that term with respect to health care tiers is in constant flux). The operations lady made sure to emphasize that the company pays 60% of the premium. But 40% of a Lamborghini is a lot more than 100% of a perfectly good Honda Fit.
I'd promised the project manager guy I'd be at lunch today, and so there I was, eating another meal of leftover pasta and meatballs (I'd made a lot on Monday). Soon after sitting down, I semi-interrupted the conversation to bring up the topic of health insurance. Nobody else there seemed particularly troubled at the amount they were paying under the company plan, so maybe it is just me, and healthcare, at least of any quality, is extremely expensive, even when mostly paid for by the company. From there, the conversation drifted to the concept of words that people find offensive. (I think this was triggered because all of us have now been assigned to take an online anti-harassment course.) The Lunch King didn't want to say "oriental" because he'd been chided for saying it in the past. So he referred to it as "that word about Asians." "What, 'Mongoloid'?" I asked. I think that bought me a little credibility with the court. I also wasn't shy about saying "retarded" when that subject came up. I then told the story about how, when I was a kid, my mother (who was training at the time to be a special education teacher) chided us for saying "stupid" or "moron," saying that the proper word was "retarded." (This story may or may not be true, but it certainly rings true.)
Later in the afternoon as I struggled with the unpleasantness of reviewing code, something I was realizing I was very bad at on multiple levels, the CEO called me down to his office on the pretext of giving me a pamphlet about the company healthcare plan. But I think he just likes hanging out with me, and, to be honest, hanging out with him is the highlight of my workday (at last so far).
When I got home, Gretchen was about to go check out the new shingle roof we'd had installed on the Downs Street brick mansion (another $25,000 expense). When she left, I took the dogs for a walk, starting from the Woodshed Trail. As I was passing the woodshed, I saw a large black snake coiled on the ground next to it. The snake looked dead, especially around the eyes, and there were discolored patches on its skin. But later when I went to move her, he muscle tone showed she was still alive. I think she was just slow because of the temperature (which was in the mid 60s) and the weirdness with her skin and eyes was that she was in the process of shedding her skin.
Not far down the Stick Trail, Charlotte found a nice cow bone abandoned by one of Crazy Dave's dogs, and she pranced around with it in an effort to show off to Neville. She and Neville were slow to return from that walk, so I think Neville got a turn chewing on that bone, perhaps while Charlotte lay nearby feeling proud.
When Gretchen got home, we watched a couple episodes of a retrofuturistic comedy called Hello Tomorrow! set in a world where the idea of the future that people had in the 1950s came to pass. The æsthetic is entirely 1950s, including the clothes and the cars, though the cars hover and there are jetpacks. 1950s gender roles also seem largely intact, though somehow African Americans came to be fully integrated into society. We watched the show because our neighbor A plays one of the characters. Sadly, though, it wasn't a very good show, and we watched two episodes mostly because A wasn't in the first one and I was moderately hooked by the scam at the heart of the plot. I also enjoyed basking in that 1950s æsthetic.
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Meanwhile I was finding the fallout from Donald Trump's new insane (and deeply ill-considered) tariffs highly entertaining. (I am fully back to paying attention to the news, baby!) Trump has managed to surround himself completely with ketamine addicts and crazy people, and now he'd doing things that will conclusively destroy him and the Republican brand in a matter of weeks.
Charlotte with her bone today. Click to enlarge.
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