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Just a reminder that as of today, you can buy health insurance in California under the Affordable Care Act. That is, you can, if the website is up, which it mostly isn't, because of literally millions of people trying to get health insurance immediately. If you don't get insurance through your employer, and you're not on Medicare or MediCal, you are probably required to buy insurance effective January 1st, or you'll pay a fine (on your taxes) of the greater of $95, or 1% of your income. You must sign up by December 15th to do that. Open enrollment ends March 31st, 2014. After that, you can only enroll if you have a qualifying event (like losing your insurance). The reason there's a deadline is so healthy people don't just wait till they're sick and then sign up for insurance when they need it. The website is https://www.coveredca.com/
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Oct 2, 2013 04:01
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withak posted:My impression is that if you own a building in Vallejo and don't have someone watching the premises 24/7 then your building does not have any copper left in it. Yeah, this is pretty accurate I'm sorry to say. Even the Cal Maritime Academy gets their wiring ripped off all the time. Thanks for closing Mare Island Naval Shipyard, you fuckers.
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Oct 2, 2013 04:18
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Leperflesh posted:Open enrollment ends March 31st, 2014. After that, you can only enroll if you have a qualifying event (like losing your insurance). The reason there's a deadline is so healthy people don't just wait till they're sick and then sign up for insurance when they need it. I haven't heard of a enrollment deadline. Where did you find out about enrolling only during a qualifying event after March 31st?
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Oct 2, 2013 04:29
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Pigasus posted:I haven't heard of a enrollment deadline. Where did you find out about enrolling only during a qualifying event after March 31st? See: https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/open-enrollment-period/ If you want to enroll using the Marketplace, you have to do it during open enrollment. You can always buy private health care insurance elsewhere at any time, but the Marketplace is where you're using the power of collective negotiating power to get better rates, and also subsidy from the government if you qualify for that.
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Oct 2, 2013 04:39
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Leperflesh posted:See: https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/open-enrollment-period/ How in particular is the Marketplace exerting collective bargaining power?
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Oct 2, 2013 04:45
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agarjogger posted:How in particular is the Marketplace exerting collective bargaining power? The State of California has negotiated rates with a variety of insurers to provide specific plans. The State's bargaining power comes from the (presumably) several million Californians who will enroll using those plans. The State does not have to list every plan that insurers offer; it only has to offer a selection in each county, and it will pick the plans that are the best deal. In this way, insurers are heavily incentivized to offer good bargains, in order to get all those enrollees (a huge number of whom will be young and healthy, which is what they want). If you go to buy an individual insurance plan directly from an insurer, you have no way of exerting such bargaining power. Typically they will charge you much higher rates than an employer would pay on your behalf for the same plan; more commonly, they offer stripped-down plans that are sometimes deceptive (lifetime maximum payment caps, annual caps, annual minimum copayments, lots of procedures that are listed as voluntary, limited numbers of doctors who accept the plan, and so on). It can also be essentially impossible for an individual to compare different out-of-pocket plans, because each insurer uses their own nonstandardized way of presenting coverage information, and non-overlapping doctor/facility options. One of the mandates of the Marketplace is to provide standardized, side-by-side comparison of all of the plans available to you for your county. So you can see exactly what you're getting for your money, and exactly what you'd get for more or less money. Obamacare also included a variety of requirements to eliminate abusive insurance practices; for example, lifetime maximums, hidden fees, the ability to drop you if you get seriously ill, and most importantly, the ability to refuse you coverage due to "pre-existing conditions." Of course the biggest 500-pound gorilla in the marketplace is Medicare itself; that's why Medicare always gets the best rates from hospitals and doctors. Often procedures that would cost you thousands of dollars out of pocket only cost Medicare a couple hundred dollars. This is why other countries have the experience of single-payer being a fantastic way to reduce overall health care costs (at the cost, of course, of the profit margins for insurers, although not as much as you might think, since universal health care means healthy people are insured, which spreads costs; and also because if everyone has insurance, the power of preventative care keeps overall costs lower anyway). And if you don't like Medicare, there's another federal single-payer health care plan; the one military veterans get. We never talk about that because republicans enjoy strong support from the military and wouldn't want to alienate soldiers by suggesting that universal health care (for soldiers) is Bad, the way they argue that universal health care (for civilians) is Bad. Oh, and Congress also has single-payer health care coverage, but that's also not Socialism because of reasons. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 04:55
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Hey, great post. Thanks for the info. So did the crappy states' citizens dodge a bullet when many of those governors declined to set up their own exchanges and default to the federal one? It seems like there's a bit of involvement and effort in making an exchange-provided plan a better deal, and we're already seeing states like Florida sabotage their own navigators. On day loving one, naturally.
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Oct 2, 2013 05:49
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No, the crappy states' governors hosed them in the rear end, because they are losing out on a huge amount of federal funding. Basically the mandate that, in expanding medicare, each state has to shoulder 10% of the increased coverage cost starting in 2020, allowed governors to claim that Obamacare would bankrupt them. But by opting out they are rejecting $8.4B in federal funding. And in many or all of those states, citizens who would have qualified for Medicare under ACA (people making up to 133% of the poverty level) may not qualify if they're making more than the lower ceiling the state happens to use. That's the main thing that Opt Out is referring to, but you asked about the exchanges in particular. Basically, it seems having fewer options set up by the federal government probably means paying more, although maybe nobody knows for sure, in the long run. For example, I found this article that discusses North Carolina, one of the states that opted out of a state-run marketplace. After describing how North Carolina plans arranged by the federal government cost more than the average for state-run marketplaces: quote:States with more competition had lower premiums. In the 36 states where the federal government is running the Marketplace, the average number of insurers was eight. So at least in the short term, the governors of those states have opted to gently caress over their constituents with higher-than-necessary health care costs. The reason seems to be directly related to the amount of competition, that is, how many options each county presents its residents appears to be directly related to how low the average cost of those plans are. But then, maybe those states are saving money by not having to run their own marketplace, which maybe benefits their taxpayers, and maybe most states make most of their tax income on property taxes (especially conservative states with no state income tax or sales tax), so maybe wealthier property-owners are better off and maybe that translates into electoral success for those governors. And maybe insurers are especially interested in not having to compete in such a marketplace, so maybe there's plenty of campaign donations from private insurance companies flowing to politicians who agree to fight against HCA. And maybe it's very convenient indeed for those politicians that poor people in poor red states have been convinced by conservative media that Obamacare is the Devil. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 06:45
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How do I show my income as a freelance filmmaker on the Covered CA form? Half my jobs are payroll from different companies, and the other half are 1099 invoice jobs.
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Oct 2, 2013 06:56
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I would be like $250/mo (single, 29) to get Kaiser here without subsidy. That pretty darn good given that I pay well over twice that from my employer (not including their share). My coverage is better (70% v. basically nada), but $250/mo for some fairy legitimate coverage is a steal.
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Oct 2, 2013 06:58
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EnsGDT posted:How do I show my income as a freelance filmmaker on the Covered CA form? Half my jobs are payroll from different companies, and the other half are 1099 invoice jobs. Do you do a lot of work? What are the barriers preventing you from joining the trade? Union dues? Specific type of work? If there is anything this state is good for is film industry benefits via the various unions. incoherent fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 2, 2013 07:15
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EnsGDT posted:How do I show my income as a freelance filmmaker on the Covered CA form? Half my jobs are payroll from different companies, and the other half are 1099 invoice jobs. I have no idea. I'm only answering because I think you might have been asking me, but I should be clear: I'm not an expert on ACA, I just spent some time learning about it so that I can force my chronically poor and underinformed CA relatives to get their butts insured finally, and what I've learned about it has made me generally positive towards the program (although I'd vastly prefer a single-payer system, and even more than that I'd prefer a completely nationalized health care system, but uh, I guess 'baby steps.')
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Oct 2, 2013 07:33
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incoherent posted:Do you do a lot of work? What are the barriers preventing you from joining the trade? Union dues? Specific type of work? It's also good for runaway production fleeing the state while unions twiddle their thumbs. The barriers can be pretty high, but can pay off if you can work consistently in the industry on union jobs for a long time. I'm not sure what a filmmaker is specifically ( not a specific enough job title ), but if he's a director, assistant director , unit director, production manager, the DGA initiation fee can range from $3500 to $11500. And that's if you got a signed deal from a employer thats a union signatory, otherwise they won't even send you an application. One option is to work for a larger agency or firm/studio as a contractor who will get you into a union , then freelance after that on union only jobs. I'm with IATSE , but I was laid off from a big union shop and I'm now work at another non-union facility at a competitor. I probably won't be in a Hollywood union again, my new job pays more, and has a better Heath care plan and benefits vs my old gig where my guild just bucked under studio pressure every 3 years.
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Oct 2, 2013 12:39
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EnsGDT posted:How do I show my income as a freelance filmmaker on the Covered CA form? Half my jobs are payroll from different companies, and the other half are 1099 invoice jobs. Income tax documents?
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Oct 2, 2013 16:24
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incoherent posted:Do you do a lot of work? What are the barriers preventing you from joining the trade? Union dues? Specific type of work? I do work a lot. Part of the problem is that I work on commercials which shoot for a day or two, then you move on to a new commercial. I must have filled out 50 or 60 sets of start paperwork so far this tax year. Mostly for different companies. I'd love to join the DGA as an assistant director, but that takes time to prove worthiness basically. Leperflesh posted:I have no idea. I'm only answering because I think you might have been asking me, but I should be clear: I'm not an expert on ACA, I just spent some time learning about it so that I can force my chronically poor and underinformed CA relatives to get their butts insured finally, and what I've learned about it has made me generally positive towards the program (although I'd vastly prefer a single-payer system, and even more than that I'd prefer a completely nationalized health care system, but uh, I guess 'baby steps.') It's not entirely directed at you, I just saw you answering questions and figured someone (anyone) in the CA politics thread talking about the ACA might have a sense of how to go about doing this! I'm going to call the hotline and ask the next time I have a day off. Geared Hub posted:It's also good for runaway production fleeing the state while unions twiddle their thumbs. The barriers can be pretty high, but can pay off if you can work consistently in the industry on union jobs for a long time. I am a production assistant that does non-union ADing while I bide my time and build my days for DGA. Which IATSE were you with? Trabisnikof posted:Income tax documents? First year in Los Angeles, don't have any from last year, don't have any for this year yet.
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Oct 2, 2013 17:08
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They have people who you can talk to at the exchange who can probably help you.
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Oct 2, 2013 17:24
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nm posted:They have people who you can talk to at the exchange who can probably help you. Yeah a navigator is a better option than random goon™. But, I know it will be income tax centric, since that's where the subsidies and the individual mandate operate.
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Oct 2, 2013 17:37
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EnsGDT posted:
I'm with local 839 , the animation guild while I was at Dreamworks. Took about 6 months worth of hours to qualify, it was worth it since you'll eventually get to bank your hours and Heath plan to cover you when you are off work. Unfortunately after I left DWA, I went back into live action work I didn't qualify to keep my pension contributions (requires working union jobs for 5 years for one fund and 13 years for another.) I think my initiation was around 2-3 thousand but you could break it up into a payment plan.
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Oct 2, 2013 21:23
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Geared Hub posted:I'm with local 839 , the animation guild while I was at Dreamworks. Took about 6 months worth of hours to qualify, it was worth it since you'll eventually get to bank your hours and Heath plan to cover you when you are off work. Ah awesome. I believe DGA 2nd is 100 days as a PA, a certain number of which have to be on set. I'm getting there, though I really don't want to 2nd AD 
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Oct 3, 2013 01:59
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Brown and CA legislative on both sides are rather firm on the NDAA Ah, if only we could do something about the near (or not so near) indefinite detentions going on in the state prisons. Still, I'll take it as good news.
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Oct 8, 2013 13:52
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ProfessorCirno posted:Brown and CA legislative on both sides are rather firm on the NDAA I've said it in other threads, but the prison guard union buys every member of the CA legislature off and if they can't they just primary them into oblivion with someone they can buy off. It sucks, but nothing is going to be done about our prisons until they loose their power and that isn't happening until voters stop buying all the adds about letting non-violent or minor drug offenders off the hook makes you soft on crime... which is never.
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Oct 8, 2013 18:50
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The prison situation here is as hosed up as it seems, right? I'm not the most educated when it comes to politics, but it seems to me that the prison situation in California is basically a gigantic budgetary sinkhole and we're filling all the prisons with career inmates who basically spend their whole lives in there rather than being helped.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:09
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:The prison situation here is as hosed up as it seems, right? I'm not the most educated when it comes to politics, but it seems to me that the prison situation in California is basically a gigantic budgetary sinkhole and we're filling all the prisons with career inmates who basically spend their whole lives in there rather than being helped. Yes, and worse than it seems. America is focused on retribution, not rehabilitation, which just leads to these gigantic hosed up facilities that basically can't release anyone (or they just end up right back in) because they have permanently wrecked inmate's ability to integrate back into an already economically-depressed society with high-unemployment among non-felons. Smother it with a nice lovely creme-anglaise of arcane drug laws, a ridiculously corrupt union and politicans that appeal to moral panics/'think-of-the-children' to fund the prison-industrial complex, and top it off with an awful three-strikes (somewhat 'reformed' as of 2012) and it's a recipe for a delicious social, moral, and budgetary clusterfuck that won't ever get solved anytime soon  .
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Oct 8, 2013 19:22
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:The prison situation here is as hosed up as it seems, right? I'm not the most educated when it comes to politics, but it seems to me that the prison situation in California is basically a gigantic budgetary sinkhole and we're filling all the prisons with career inmates who basically spend their whole lives in there rather than being helped. Not only that, but it also turns minor criminals like those convicted of non-violent crime or minor drug offences into hardened criminals because they are incarcerated for ridiculous amounts of time because of the three strikes law or mandatory minimums... which feeds the prison industrial complex even further.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:26
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A Winner is Jew posted:I've said it in other threads, but the prison guard union buys every member of the CA legislature off and if they can't they just primary them into oblivion with someone they can buy off. It sucks, but nothing is going to be done about our prisons until they loose their power and that isn't happening until voters stop buying all the adds about letting non-violent or minor drug offenders off the hook makes you soft on crime... which is never. On the other hand, didn't the state come pretty close to abolishing the death penalty last year? I seem to recall it losing by a narrow margin in LA at least. "Soft on crime" doesn't pull the kind of support it used to in metro areas.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:45
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:The prison situation here is as hosed up as it seems, right? I'm not the most educated when it comes to politics, but it seems to me that the prison situation in California is basically a gigantic budgetary sinkhole and we're filling all the prisons with career inmates who basically spend their whole lives in there rather than being helped. Here is a snapshot of CA prisons: quote:One shows a Corcoran State Prison inmate being sprayed repeatedly in his cell in a mental health crisis unit last year because he refused to take his psychiatric medication, according to court documents. This is from an ongoing trial on the treatment of mentally ill patients in CA prisons. They showed a bunch of videos of guards in gas masks just pumping pepper spray into inmate's cells. If you've ever even been in the vicinity of pepper spray (and even if you haven't, really), this should horrify you.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:46
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Papercut posted:
I don't even know what to say to that. That is surreal.
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Oct 8, 2013 23:14
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Seoinin posted:On the other hand, didn't the state come pretty close to abolishing the death penalty last year? I seem to recall it losing by a narrow margin in LA at least. "Soft on crime" doesn't pull the kind of support it used to in metro areas. apparently 13 people have been executed since it was reinstated in 1978. That's low enough that the prison unions shouldn't care (and indeed you'd think they would support "lock them up for eternity").
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Oct 8, 2013 23:42
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computer parts posted:apparently 13 people have been executed since it was reinstated in 1978. That's low enough that the prison unions shouldn't care (and indeed you'd think they would support "lock them up for eternity"). Yeah, it's not a big deal for the prison union because they make money no matter what. Hell, with the death penalty repealed they can probably get away with even more poo poo because anti-death penalty groups will stop paying attention to them.
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Oct 8, 2013 23:44
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Things that have happened: 1) BART strike! 2) Facebook swamped with awful opinions.
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Oct 11, 2013 05:08
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ProfessorCirno posted:Things that have happened: Not yet technically! quote:2) Facebook swamped with awful opinions. 3) Water is wet.
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Oct 11, 2013 05:19
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Papercut posted:Here is a snapshot of CA prisons: Can I get a link to that? I'm doing an assignment on the school-to-prison pipeline and that would be something great to discuss in it.
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Oct 13, 2013 23:16
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Riven posted:Can I get a link to that? I'm doing an assignment on the school-to-prison pipeline and that would be something great to discuss in it. This is the source I was pulling from: http://solitarywatch.com/2013/10/04/lawsuit-alleges-guard-brutality-prisoners-mental-illness-california-state-prisons/ It's probably too partisan to use in a class discussion, but it has links to the LA Times, AP, and Sac Bee stories on the topic.
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Oct 14, 2013 00:34
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So, BART is on strike again. http://www.mercurynews.com/bart/ci_24337048/bart-strike-leaves-friday-commuters-scrambling-options Apparently there's been musing about legislation that will require transit labor disputes to be submitted for mandatory arbitration.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:30
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sincx posted:Apparently there's been musing about legislation that will require transit labor disputes to be submitted for mandatory arbitration. I suppose that sounds nicer when told to some empty-headed reporter than 'outlawing transit unions' does.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:44
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sincx posted:So, BART is on strike again. Once again I amazed by the blatant media bias on this. The only pro-strike quote in the whole piece is "so I kind of favor them." There are at least 10 anti-union quotes. Management gets 4x as many words as union leaders do, including explaining the management's bargaining position without any explanation of the union side. And of course they load the front of the article with opinions from random people and wait till the end to actually mention any facts. I mean I know San Jose is conservative compared to San Francisco or Oakland, but this is still unenlightening coverage.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:49
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It's crab-bucket time again.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:58
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http://enjalot.github.io/bart/#content This article was posted in some other thread, it's pretty informative and these visualizations are fantastic in terms of presentation, but if you drill down into the Cost of Living data they are using (as well as everyone else), it shows a Housing cost per month of $1794 for SF, and $1450 for NYC....which is applicable for around 1995. It also doesn't help that one of the lead researchers has an article titled: BART is Bending Us Over Backwards http://slantedwindows.com/bart-is-bending-us-over-backwards/ 
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Oct 18, 2013 17:04
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Trabisnikof posted:Once again I amazed by the blatant media bias on this. The only pro-strike quote in the whole piece is "so I kind of favor them." There are at least 10 anti-union quotes. Management gets 4x as many words as union leaders do, including explaining the management's bargaining position without any explanation of the union side. And of course they load the front of the article with opinions from random people and wait till the end to actually mention any facts. Man, I can just imagine people saying "WELL AT LEAST THE MEDIA IS TRYING TO BE FAIR BY INCLUDING THE UNION'S SIDE OF THE STORY, IF YOU JUST ASK ANYONE ON THE STREET THEY'LL SAY JUST FIRE ALL OF THE UNION PEOPLE  ".
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Oct 18, 2013 17:47
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withak posted:It's crab-bucket time again. Well, I think BART management was probably emboldened by defeat in polls the Republicans took in Congress. Americans (understandably) don't take well to people who inconvenience the public for perceived selfish gains. Now there is a valid argument that improving conditions for one group of workers can eventually result in better conditions for all, but that isn't nearly enough consolation for the affected commuters who are suffering now. I bet management figures the unions will back down before people get pissed off enough to put an anti-strike proposition on the next ballot. Management is probably right. I think still the BART unions should have organized a work-to-rule action instead. Less destructive and much better in terms of public relations, while still putting a decent amount of pressure on management to negotiate.
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Oct 18, 2013 17:47
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