DrewEckhardt

It's bad but I think you'll probably get away with a broken femur or tibia/fibula and not die (spine and pelvis are also possibilities but don't happen as often). Things like this fatality at 1.2 pounds per square foot http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3709212happen but are fairly rare. After that learning experience you should (I only know one guy who made two trips to the hospital without learning his lesson, and no one who died after breaking themselves once) be fine. Hospital time also isn't always bad. Five weeks after I broke my leg I missed the plane crash with no survivors. Live life, embrace the experience, and it will be what it is.

The sight needs to be over the bore so it shoots to the same point horizontally even if you guessed wrong on the range. Putting your head in physical contact with the rifle also allows for a consistent sight picture and provides another point of contact stabilizing things. In all cases you put your cheek against the stock; and with the AR15 chambered in .223 you put the tip of your nose on the charging handle.

Only if he's making more than 400% of the federal poverty level which is $62,920 for a family of 2 and somewhat higher than the $51K median household income. At the $51K median income he'd only have been required to spend $4845 out of pocket for himself and his spouse, which is $201 each monthly. As a single person his cut-off would be $46,680 dictating a $4434 annual bill which is $369 a month.

He could have taken advantage of a state or Federal Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan.

Right. Loosing access to an employer plan may also be a qualifying event for getting subsidized insurance through the ACA exchanges.

Thanks for the update. I'll be sure to shop at Kroger or Walmart which aren't kowtowing to religious extremists.

Always get ice when you procure a slab of hon maguro otoro so it doesn't melt before you finish eating it, and bring a sharp knife to make nice slices in case you must eat it immediately. Today I went to Mitsuwa Marketplace for the first time and walked through the fish department where I spied the most lovely marbled piece of sashimi grade bluefin belly I'd ever seen. Obviously I bought it for less than I spent on three pieces the night before. My family didn't want to go home any time soon so I had no choice but to sit down at the food court and eat it immediately, although the fat was melting before I finished. Otoro is not like M&Ms which melt in your mouth but not in your hand.

How about your entire hand through the toggle with your bottom two fingers wrapped around the toggle and just using your index and middle fingers in the dive loops? Works great and makes it much harder to drop a toggle.

No surprise at all. We care about people, not parasites which merely have the potential to be people.

Not really. Broad lower tax brackets, big deductions, and significant exemptions mean effective tax rates aren't that high for most people. Make $100K as a couple, put a prudent $15K in 401K/SEP/SIMPLE accounts, take the standard deduction, and you pay 8.9% in Federal Income Tax. Make $120K as a single person, put the legal limit into your 401k, live someplace where state taxes approximate the standard deduction, pay $18K a year in mortgage interest and property tax, pay 12.1%. Make $200K as a dual income couple, put the legal limit into two 401k plans, live someplace where state taxes match the standard deduction, knock off $30K in mortgage interest + property taxes, pay 10.3%. I'll pay 14.4% next year in spite of having a luxury car-loan sized mortgage and would be paying less if I didn't have phantom income from exercising non-statutory stock options. Some people pay too much which isn't fair; although the right fix is charging them less not other people more. There's also Social Security and Medicare which are separate things. Social Security is a separate program consisting of disability insurance, life insurance for married people/minor children, and a retirement plan with a bad rate of return with proceeds dependent on what you pay in. Warren Buffet pays the same as other working professionals and gets the same benefit. Everybody pays Medicare now, and with big investment returns the wealthy and one-time winners pay 3.8% not the 1.45% charged to employees.

Sure, I'm sure somebody will just let you use their aircraft. Nice first post. It happens. One of our jump pilots owned a Cessna 172 which he rented me for $60/hour wet (obviously that was a while ago). I also got a discount on his services as a flight instructor.

Nope. It looks like this

We've just been empowered! Before the ruling our political landscape was controlled by non-natural people. For instance, to get laws and appointed officials helping them sell more bigger houses RPAC outspent all the other PACs for every election cycle since at least 1998 (that's where the opensecrets.org data stops) totaling $3,603,184 federal election candidate donations for the 2012 elections. Now natural people like us stand a chance at having our voices heard in Washington!

The problem is that everyone does not have access to one. Everyone buying an ACA Bronze or Silver plan can setup an HSA by visiting the nearest credit union or bank. The $6350 out-of-pocket maximum is there to make the plans HSA compatible. Most people getting insurance through the exchanges will do best financially by purchasing one of those plans and funding an HSA with pre-tax dollars than buying a more expensive gold or platinum plan with post-tax dollars. When deciding how much I liked or disliked ACA I looked into what the numbers would be for my wife and I. The least expensive bronze plan I could get for us was $700/month with a $5000 deductible ($10K family) and 40% co-insurance with a $6350 ($12.7K family) out-of-pocket maximum. Silver was $933/month with a $2000 deductible and 30% co-insurance with $6350 out of pocket maximum for one unhealthy person. That plan made no sense - assuming a 28% Federal tax rate and 9.3% state tax rate I'd be better off with the bronze plan and setting up a HSA which would accumulate $4452 a year with the difference in price disregarding investment gains. IOW with this plan there's a small window of health situations in which I'd come out ahead in the first year. A subsidy could change whether a bronze or silver plan made more sense (the subsidy is based on the difference between the appropriate share of your income and the second cheapest silver plan in your area). Gold would run $1100 a month with "no deductible" and 20% co-insurance up to $6350. That made less sense than the silver plan because it's no longer a HDHP which is a 59.4% penalty on things like glasses and dental care for people in 28% / 9.3% state tax brackets. It cost $7655 more than the bronze plan in pre-tax dollars. With only one person developing health problems you'd be guaranteed to spend more because the bronze plan has a $6350 per-person out of pocket maximum. Platinum would be $1263/month with no-deductible and 10% co-insurance up to $4000. $10,775 in pre-tax dollars more than the bronze plan. D-U-M-B. The chances of requiring health spending where you'd come out ahead versus the bronze plan are miniscule - either you're going to be way under or way over.

No, your numbers are wrong. There are 7 million signups and were 48 million uninsured which is about 15%; although the overwhelming majority of people who signed up early already had insurance. McKinsey & Co. found that only 11% of people signing up between November and January had no insurance. HealthMarkets found that 35% of their enrolees lacked prior coverage. Priority Health found just 25% of their surveyed enrollees were previously uninsured. The relevant numbers are even worse because "previously uninsured" lumps those who could not get affordable insurance (with pre-existing conditions, because they actually made too little money to buy insurance but too much for Medicare, or because they were too old to be affordable but not old enough for Medicare) in with those who could but chose not to.

I was paying half that for my adult son in Colorado before ACA. Health insurance isn't about getting $20 co-pays to see a doctor; it's about not going bankrupt or incurring other serious financial damage (retire 10 years later, sell your home and down-size to a studio apartment) when something bad happens. Unless you live in a (often Gerrymandered) district split evenly enough the race may go either way your vote does not matter. Votes in excess of what it takes to get a plurality don't add to get more politicians representing your side and votes for the looser don't add to other loosing votes to get some representation. This ignores whether the other side would actually do things differently. ACA is extremely similar to the Republican's 1994 health care reform bill and Massachusetts' law named after Republican Mitt Romney. They were the party (presidency and both houses of congress) who brought us the similarly expensive Medicare Part D.

He was a Democrat facing a Republican opponent in a Gerrymandered district which included San Francisco.

He should have stuck to shoplifting. While not good at that either (he was arrested) the potential punishment for getting caught is lower.

Excellent! It's nice to see medical waste serve a useful purpose instead of taking up space in a land fill. I hope they're treating the exhaust gasses to limit environmental impact - we could do without the severe weather which has been accompanying global warming.

On the drop zone from first to last load with no lunch break? Not doing tandems while "supervising?" To my knowledge the FAA has never challenged one of my DZs' definitions of "supervision," although I expect a lawyer could with decent chances of success.

And sometimes doing something is worse than doing nothing at all.

America already has not-for-profit Socialized insurance. As of 2012 Medicare covered 49 million people. As of 2010 Medicaid covered 66 million million people. One of those should have been expanded instead of funneling a trillion dollars a decade through for-profit companies allowed to markup all the care they provide by 25%.

According to the American Hospital Association who don't have motivation to under-state in 2012 uncompensated care accounted for just 6.1% of hospital operating costs. [QUOTE] Until we let the un-insured drop dead in the ER, the only option is to mandate that people have a minimum level of insurance, it's not perfect, but I have yet to hear of an alternative. The status quo before ACA, except for the few people not covered by employer plans who were too sick to get private insurance but not sick enough for Medicare, too poor to buy insurance but not poor enough for Medicaid, or too old to get affordable coverage but not old enough for Medicare. I'd also give an above-the-line deduction for private health insurance and refundable credit matching the payroll taxes on what it costs. The special tax treatment of employee benefits that lets companies spend up to twice as much as an individual for the same take-home pay delta is what gets us increasingly expensive insurance. People should have enough medical insurance coverage to avoid bankruptcy and non-payment, and legally requiring that would make sense except the cure is worse than the disease because organizations like Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America needed the law to increase profits before they'd let it pass (after it was tweaked to their liking PhRMA loved it so much they spent $100 million on advertising to pass it). Before ACA I paid $85 a month to cover my adult son, including less than $5 of uncollected debt (there's room in that total for insurance company profit) hospitals were passing on to insured people like him. They discontinued that policy because it was not ACA compliant so now I pay $155 a month.

Lots of people prefer luxury items like smart phones with $100/month data plans over $100/month health insurance so when bad things happened they get stuck with five or six figure bills not low to mid four figure deductible and co-insurance payments. Most Americans (the average family savings account balance was $3,800 as of 2013 and only 38% had an "emergency fund") buy bigger houses and newer cars instead of saving to get them through problems including 1. The time off work (perhaps with disability insurance paying just 60% of their salary) which goes with medical problems. 2. Health issues where insurance doesn't cover everything like the $2,907 average deductible ($6,078 for families) and $5,730 out-of-pocket ($11,495 for families) limit which come with ACA Silver plans. Those are the root causes of medical bankruptcies, not insurance which "is not good enough" and wouldn't cover the other financial impacts (like lost work) which accompany medical problems.

1. Capital gains in a Roth IRA are tax-free which makes such accounts a nice place for high-risk high-return investments like venture capital by way of self-directed accounts. While contributions are limited to about $5,500/year (+$1000 for the over 50 crowd), you can roll SEP IRA ($52K/year) and 401k accounts ($17,500 + $5,500 catchup past age 50) over into Roth IRAs by paying the taxes. 2. Only 50% of Qualified Small Business Stocks gains are taxable which makes the effective rates 14% for Capital gains and 1.9% for the ACA surtax on the first $10M. 3. Government bonds are tax-free.