Coffee heat rising

Early Retirement: The health insurance hurdle

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In a comment on yesterday’s grouse about the GOP’s stubborn resistance to a viable national healthcare program, Bucksome Boomer remarks that the main thing blocking her way to early retirement is the difficulty of obtaining health insurance.

There are a few ways around this.

One is to go back to college.

Yes. Tuition at most state and community colleges is far lower than private health insurance, and many colleges provide group policies for students. Arizona’s Maricopa County Community College District, for example, offers quite a nice policy for anyone who is enrolled in even one credit! Pre-existing conditions are covered if your prior policy covered you for 12 months without a break before you enroll (rules vary somewhat by state). Californians have access to student health insurance through the Community College League of California. In Texas, Houston Community College is among many that offer health insurance for students—here, you have to be signed up for three credits, but it can be an online course. A list of Texas universities that offer student health plans appears here.

If you’re yearning for early retirement and you live in a state where the colleges do not provide decent student health insurance, it might be worth considering a move to a state where such programs are offered. Google community college student health insurance to bring up a list of leads. Be sure the program does not exempt pre-existing conditions or, if it does, whether having been covered for 12 months by your current employer’s plan will trump that rule.

Another option is to join a trade group that offers group health insurance. These are not so easy to find; you pretty much have to figure out what groups you might, by any stretch of the imagination, be eligible to join and then find out if they have health plans. This list from California might be a good jumping-off point. Here’s a list of writer’s groups with various plans. Different writer’s groups have different requirements for membership—some expect a serious publishing track record; others will admit wannabes. As a blogger, you are a writer, especially if you’re earning any money at all from your site. Look at all groups associated in any way with your trade, business, or outside interests. The American Library Association and the Modern Language Association, for example, offer group health insurance for members—and anyone can join these organizations.

A third possibility is a high-deductible HSA. In these schemes, you take out a high-deductible policy and combine it with a medical savings account. The savings account functions like a hybrid between an IRA and a flexible spending account. The money set aside is used to cover your health-care costs during your deductible period and any other expenses. If you’re within a few years of Medicare age and you don’t have an expensive chronic condition, this strategy could carry you over until you can get less risky coverage. Any amount that’s left in the HSA rolls over to you when you reach Medicare age, at which time you can use the money any way you please. Shop around for these. At one point I had an HSA that covered 100 percent of my costs at any doctor and any medical facility, once the $1500 deductible was exhausted.

And finally, you might take a 50% FTE job with a public college or government agency—if you can find one in the current economy. Half-time jobs are usually considered benefits-eligible. This means you can get the health insurance without having to hang around the salt mine all day long. It’s not as good as being fully free from the day job, of course, but it’s a lot better than a 40- or 60-hour work week. Some government employers offer health insurance that is significantly cheaper than Medicare; when I go on Medicare, for example, I will pay about 10 times as much as I was paying for the State of Arizona’s EPO plan, and more than I’m now paying for COBRA.

None of these strategies is perfect. But then, no health insurance plan is perfect, at least not any I’ve ever heard of.

This post is part of a series on achieving financial freedom.
Our story so far:

• An Overview
• Education
• Work
• Debt
• The health insurance hurdle
The roof over your head

Good-bye to all that…

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Here’s another volley in the endless blitz of retrograde comments from Republican congressional representatives, reported by The Wall Street Journal:

“When it comes to some health-care summit that’s nothing more than a photo op designed to pave the way for Obamacare 2.0, the answer is no,” Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.) said Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Still, they plan to attend and highlight public opposition to the bills and to spotlight their own ideas. “If the president is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan fashion, he must take the reconciliation process—which will be used [to] jam through legislation that a majority of Americans do not want—off the table,” House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said Friday.

“Obamacare.” How that term rings of partisan nastiness and intransigence! What on earth is the matter with the Republican party—one I once belonged to and was proud to serve? When did the Grand Old Party come to represent downright backwardness? I’m afraid that’s the word that comes to my mind (well—one of the words) as I watch members of my former party dig their heels in the sand and do every cussed thing they can think of to derail any positive action of any kind that might make life better for Americans…for no other apparent reason than stubborn hatred.

Not for one moment do I believe the GOP is even faintly interested in “the reconciliation process.” Actions speak ever so much louder than words. The actions we have seen have revealed extreme right-wing dogma and loyalty not to America but to well-heeled corporate supporters and their accomplished, amoral lobbyists.

The issue has little to do with universal health care coverage. As Megan McArdle writes for The Atlantic, we don’t even know for sure whether access to health insurance really does save lives—whether it has any long-term effect on mortality at all. No one has seriously asked that question during the fruitless “debate” (one might call it “impasse”) that we have watched over the past year or so. No. The issue is that the American political system is grinding to a halt, hung up by a kudzu-like bloom of stubbornness, dogmatic hostility, flowering greed, and grotesque thinking that the Founding Fathers could never have anticipated would take hold in America.

Politicians used to be self-serving now and again, but at least most could manage to get past their short-sightedness to function in their country’s interest. As we have seen, that is no longer true, particularly of the GOP. When Congress ceases to function—which is exactly what is happening—then America ceases to function as a free republic.

What a sorry spectacle!

Property tax statement arrives

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The county has dropped its estimate of my house’s 2011 value by $19,500. That’s down $62,300 from the 2009 valuation.

In theory, this should provide some tax relief. In reality, though, it won’t: Maricopa County is going broke, like all the other municipalities in the state, and so the county supervisors intend to raise property taxes by a walloping 10 percent. They also intend to take away the 50 percent tax break on historic homes that has led to the vibrant restoration of the cultural district and urban neighborhoods flanking Central Avenue as it passes through the once-decrepit downtown area.

Out of work, Mr. Taxpayer? Broke? Living out of a cardboard box? Lie still there on the ground so we can aim another sharp kick to your kidneys.

The county offers a tax freeze for people who are over 65 and have a gross income of around $32,000 or less. I realized I could qualify for that…until I saw the form you have to fill out. What the county deems to be your 2010 income bears no relation with how much you have in 2010. It’s based on your 2009, 2008, and 2007 gross income figures. Thus after you lose your job on December 31, 2009, as one of us has, your penurious 2010 income is irrelevant.

Let us give you another swift kick, Ms. Taxpayer!

So, chances are my time in the present abode is limited. Last year’s taxes were a stretch, and that was when I was employed and self-escrowing $325 a month to cover the various annual homeowning charges. If taxes rise now that I have no credible income, I won’t be able to stay in my home without drawing a lot more down out of my retirement savings. And that may be contraindicated.

A letter to the Phoenix City Council

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Dear Councilman Claude Mattox:

Okay, so this article appears in today’s Arizona Republic: the City of Phoenix is about to spend $6  million to buy a vacant motel so the property can be handed over to Arizona State University to expand ASU President Michael Crow’s overweening plans to expand his empire.

Let’s see if a beleaguered taxpayer can get this straight:

The city of Phoenix is broke. It’s going to close our neighborhood library, which is mobbed every moment it’s open, and lay off cops and firefighters. It has abandoned the lightrail project up the conduit of blight that is 19th Avenue after having ripped out an entire row of homes in our neighborhood and covered the scars with hideous gray gravel. Then to add insult to injury it’s going to sock us with a regressive tax on food.

But it still has $6 million to stroke Michael Crow’s ego?????

Mr. Mattox, really. What on earth is the city thinking? ASU is out of cash, too. Case in point: the university closed my office, one of the most innovative academic publishing projects anywhere in the country, and canned all five of my staff. It’s shucking off staff as fast as it can dump them, its facilities are going to pot (our office was in an asbestos-ridden condemned building, one of whose floors was closed to public access for fear it would collapse, with no clean source of drinking water and bathrooms so decrepit we would walk to neighboring buildings to use the toilets). ASU is not going to build anything on that downtown site; not during your lifetime or mine. And I can assure you, once Crow is gone, the insanely ambitious schemes that are steering the university toward bankruptcy will come to an end.

I am now unemployed, thanks to the fallout from those insanely ambitious schemes, and at my age I’m not bloody well about to get another job. I’m only one of many thousands of unemployed Phoenicians who probably will never obtain work with anything like the pay we have lost. Of course, I would like to see my city’s downtown thrive as a vibrant urban core. But not on the backs of the new poor, people like me who are struggling to buy groceries as it is.

Use that $6 million to keep our police, firefighters, and libraries operating!

Another backyard project under way

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“Under weigh” is actually the correct phrase, a nautical term. But let’s go with the flow. The tidal flow, of course.

Old-timers here will recall that a year ago I had the bright idea of digging the sand and weeds out from between the flagstones in my front courtyard and filling in the spaces with river rock. It’s worked pretty well: minimal weed intrusion, and the overall effect is reasonably pleasant.

Outside the back door is another flagstone patio, installed by the late lamented Satan and Proserpine. For yea, many a year, I’ve tried to get dichondra, thyme, and other “steppable” plantlets to grow there. For yea, many a year, what’s grown there has been weeds.

Until last spring, the favored weed has been burr clover. This particular weed has not been unwelcome between the flags, because it makes a pretty little yellow flower and it does not, despite its name, make burrs.

Sweet little plant, isn’t it? In the past I’ve let it grow. It makes a nice mat similar to dichondra, and it costs nothing: it seems to materialize out of the air.

Last spring, though, a hideous invader took root between the back patio’s flagstones. Whereas it is true that I know almost everything, one of the very few things I don’t know is what the hell this little monster is. I don’t recognize it as a native desert plant (and I know most native desert plants). I don’t remember it among the many weeds that have grown in the several lawns I have been stupid enough to dump water on (but anything’s possible). I can’t find it among my favorite lists of invasive and annoying newcomers to the Sonoran Desert. The only thing I can think is that this thing blew in on the winds of globalization.

When it first appeared last spring, I thought, “Well, OK… It looks like something that will make flowers, so let’s leave it there.”

Wrong. It does not make flowers. And while it’s inoffensive enough when it’s young, as it ages it grows rangy, wiry, and uglier than pussley.

And it ain’t easy to pull out.

It crowds out the expensively installed dichondra I planted late last spring. Amazingly, it crowds out burr clover, an aggressive and resilient weed. When the heat comes up, what you have is an ugly tangle of wiry, tough gunk.

I pulled it out last summer and this spring found twice as much of it growing than I saw last year.

So I decided (once again!!) to dig out the weeds and dirt between the flags, only this time instead of trying to get something I want to grow there, to replace the stuff with stones, much like the front courtyard’s stoneware.

Consequently I’ve been scrounging free stones from the alleys again. Here’s the result, so far:

Daffodils
Red Salvia & Easter Lily Cacti
Shamrocks & other things

It’s working out. Only a few more crevices left to fill—maybe two or three runs up alleys with the pooch covering for me (oh, dear Manny, Nosiest of All Possible Neighbors: just wringing out the dog behind your house :-D). Unexpected benefit: no more ankle-turning trips on the flags. The dirt has settled so much since Satan installed the patio that if I’m not careful to set my feet firmly on a flagstone, half my foot will slip into a crack and I’ll wrench my already strained ankle once again. With the stones carefully set so they’re level with the surfaces of the flags, I can walk across the surface without risk of additional pain.

Very nice.

I hope this landscaping scheme is not altogether hideous. Frankly, I think it’s better than the weeds. But for sure, one man’s weeds are another’s Eden.

Burr clover image: Shamelessly ripped off from UC Berkeley, but probably in the public domain, UC being a state institution

Rant: Costco’s consumer-proof packaging

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So I did end up springing for $25 (plus 8.3 percent tax, for a total of $27.06) to buy the yearned-after mineral make-up from Costco. Pretty nice stuff. I like it. However…

Take a look at this:

That large flat chunk of annealed plastic and cardboard is what Costco deemed necessary to deliver five small plastic vials, a tube of lip gloss, and four small makeup brushes to the unwashed and thieving masses. By way of perspective, each of those floor tiles is 13 inches square.

Up at the top, you see the tools required to get into the thing: a box-cutter, a wrench, and a no-longer-sharp knife.

Yes. To get at a few ounces of colored face powder, I had to spend a good fifteen minutes hacking away at thick, almost impenetrable plastic. You’ll notice that no amount of struggling removed the entire plastic bubble from the hard cardboard backing to which it was sealed. No. I had to carve out every. single. separate. piece in this kit. To do so, I risked injury and infection: all the edges where the box-cutter sliced through the plastic are sharp as a razor. And so is the box-cutter itself.

I wonder how Costco would like the lawsuit that would have descended upon its management had I cut my hand and then gotten one of those flesh-eating bacterial infections in the wound?

Once I’d removed the plastic vials of make-up, I still couldn’t open the goddamned things!

No. Each one was sealed shut with a strip of plastic that could not be lifted with the fingernails and peeled off. Now I had to go and get a kitchen knife and slice each of the five vials along the seam where the lid meets the jar. Besides taking forever (by now I was running late to choir), this of course wrecked the edge on  my knife.

Why is it necessary to seal every flicking piece of merchandise individually in consumer-proof packaging? Industry estimates suggest that 43 percent of “shrinkage” comes from employee theft, as opposed to 36 percent for shoplifting. “Whatever method employees use to steal,” the New York Times reports, “their take is more substantial than that of the average shoplifter. [Researcher Joshua] Bamfield’s global study of retail theft found that larcenous employees averaged $1,890 in theft, compared with $438 for shoplifters.” So is there really a good reason to put customers at risk of injury and to pack the landfills with vast piles of excess plastic packaging that will litter the planet for the eons?

Speaking of littering the planet for the eons, now get an eyeballful of this!

ConsumerProofPackaging2

The last time I bought toilet paper at Costco, I absent-mindedly picked up the Kirkland brand instead of my usual Charmin’.

I hate Kirkland’s toilet paper. Not because the TP itself isn’t perfectly fine—it’s quite good, comparable to Charmin’, which IMHO is the best toilet paper on the market. But when you peel off the plastic sealed around a lifetime supply of Kirkland TP, what comes out is a big bundle of individual rolls…every. single. one. of. them. wrapped. individually. in. plastic. Because I like to keep several rolls in a straw basket in the bathroom, every time I pad out to the garage to refill the basket, I have to unwrap a half-dozen rolls of over-packaged toilet paper. I just hate that!

WHY? WHY, WHY, WHY?????????

Why on earth is it necessary to double-wrap every single roll of flicking toilet paper, adding a bushel of plastic to the landfill for every package of Kirkland TP you buy at Costco?

Answer: it’s not.

Charmin’ wraps its entire lifetime-supply package in one sheet of plastic. Even that is undesirable, but at least it’s better than Kirkland’s strategy.

According to Discover Magazine, 63 pounds of plastic packaging per person ends up in America’s landfills each year. Ninety-three percent of people six years of age and older excrete bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in the manufacture of plastic, in their urine.

What do you bet about 62 of those pounds comes from overpackaging like this? It abuses the customer on both ends of the retail cycle: in delivery and merchandising, and in clean-up after the mess produced.

If you complain to Costco about its absurd overpackaging (as I’ve been known to do in person), you’ll be told that it’s not their fault! It’s the suppliers who just insist on packaging products in consumer-proof plastic.

And that is about as specious as it gets. Costco has every bit as much clout as Walmart, an outfit infamous for its bullying of suppliers. All Costco has to do is tell Borghese it can’t sell its pricey products to the vast market that is the Costco membership unless it packages said products sanely. Borghese’s marketing people know that they’re reaching a large group of people who would not otherwise buy that company’s products. Most Costco consumers are savvy enough to know that the expensive stuff you buy in department stores (where Borghese is normally marketed) is really just the same darn stuff you can get in a drugstore at much lower cost. Threatened with a Costco boycott, Borghese will package the product in more responsible wrapping.

This make-up I bought: Costco sells a lot of it. In addition to the starter kit you see above (along with the tool kit required to get into it), Costco also sells individual packages of mineral powder foundation and eyeshadow. I like it. The effect is much nicer than the L’Oréal I’ve been using. But I probably will not buy it from Costco again.

That’s how much this annoys me. I won’t buy it at Dillard’s or Saks, either, for reasons of common sense: department-store cosmetics are obscenely overpriced. Probably I’ll look at Whole Foods, which carries eco-faddish products like “mineral make-up”; failing that, I’ll check the beauty supply store next door to the WF where I shop. I’d rather pay a few bucks more and not risk slicing my hands, and I deeply resent being forced against my will to add 63 pounds of plastic to the landfill.

When is Costco going to get with the program?