I can't wait for the new year to come.

 

This year has been one heck of a roller coaster ride for me so far.  My savings are draining quicker than expected, but they are well within the limits I set when I quit my job at the imaging company.  I'll have gone on 3 cruises by year-end, and have explored both Washington, DC and Chicago on multi-day city visits.  And, I have finally had to meet my friends from Texas for the first time in person.  With the exception of losing my backpack and having my wallet stolen, it has been a pretty good year so far.

However, things aren't always what they appear to be from the outside.  I still have billing issues with a health insurance company, and I'll need help getting this resolved once and for all.  My car is 10 years old and in need of replacement.  I'm still monitoring my credit reports to see if any bogus credit applications have been made using information from my stolen ID.  And, there is still one card that can't validate who I am, causing me problems in replacing the card.  Finally, I have a medical issue that will keep me up at nights until it is resolved.

It would be nice to assume things will be OK.  But I can't do so with any of the things I deal with right now.  Hopefully, none of them will cause me too much grief in the time left in this year.

Another short entry

 

There was a presentation on my company's 2022 health care plan today. And I'm not sure if I should sign up for the company plan in next week's open enrollment, or whether I should continue paying my own way for health care.  Going with the company plan may save me $450/month in insurance payments, but might cost me in two ways: (1) Locking me into a job I don't like until Medicare kicks in, and (2) Costing me more in drug prices and medical co-payments. I won't go into details here, but I am leaning towards going with the company plan.  Unfortunately, I don't have much time to make a decision.

My firm was gobbled up by a larger firm at the beginning of the year. The smaller firm did not offer a health care plan I considered worth the money - I decided to continue purchasing my health insurance on the Obamacare exchange in New York.  The larger firm had more negotiating power, and got a better deal for its employees.  So this got me thinking about a simple question:

Why should the quality and amount of healthcare provided to a person be dependent on the employer that s/he works for?

This is something that bothers me, as the system we have here in the USA seems to be designed to have sub-optimal outcomes.  So several more questions come to mind:

Why should an employer be involved in negotiating health insurance coverage?

Why can't an employer subsidize an employee's health care in a way similar to non-taxed reimbursements for employee education at a local college?

Why shouldn't the final consumer of the health insurance product (the employee) be the one exposed to deciding which company's insurance product to buy, when "Apples to Apples"  comparisons can be made on the Obamacare exchanges?

Why can't ALL Obamacare exchange products provide nationwide coverage?

The answer to most of these questions are either political or historical.  We would be better served if corporations would get out of the business of buying healthcare for their employees, and if government would ensure that healthcare firms only sold policies that met minimum requirements.  We were on the way to doing this until Trump screwed things up by allowing "short term" plans to be sold instead of Obamacare exchange policies.  This allowed insurers to provide insurance that wasn't worth much, but gave buyers the illusion of getting value.  Yet, Obamacare has provided a path to a long term solution.

Since it's late at night and I can't do this topic justice, I will elaborate on it in more detail at a later date.

 

Mid January Odds and Ends

 

 

Sometimes, I don't have much to say about any one topic, but I'm trying to keep my readers up to date on things with a post.  This is one of those posts....

- - - - - -

I've been having problems with my health insurance.  My membership number changed, and the paperwork to fix my problem has been taking longer than expected to be processed.  Today, I reached out to the company once more, and someone placed my issue on a high priority queue.  Hopefully, I'll have the bulk of the matter resolved by Monday, and the only thing left to do will be to connect the membership to a new email account AND to get things set up properly for my mail order medications.

- - - - - -

My brother and I are closing out accounts my dad had before he died.  They don't amount to much money, but they will provide us with much needed money for luxuries.  In my case, this money will help pay for a vacation or two.  In my brother's case, it will pay for a delayed trip to see my niece and her (to be) husband in London.  We had a minor problem with one of these accounts, as it got locked when my dad died. But we expect to have the money in our "grubby" little hands soon.

- - - - - -

I finally have my auto registration in hand.  There is only one more thing I need to do with it: replace the old sticker on my windshield with a new one.  Of course, I'll drive down to see my brother to see if he has the scraping tool needed to get the old sticker off the windshield - it's a perfect excuse to see him before driving over to see FH.

- - - - - -

My friend from my Thursday night gaming group has taken the plunge and is setting up her own online game night starting Wednesday evenings.  I think I'll have another something to look forward to while locked down inside, waiting out the pandemic.

- - - - - -

Next week, I'll be getting together with another of my friends who knows me only as Marian. It'll be nice to see her once again. But with the pandemic raging, this might be the last time I meet anyone other than FH, YGD, Vicki #1 , my brother and his wife for a while.  Of the people in my circle, I'm one of the few that is under 65 AND doesn't have a reason to be an early recipient of the coronavirus vaccine.

 

Shopping can be an addiction.

 

There's a part of me that keeps looking for things to add to my wardrobe. But every time I start looking at the usual sites, I find it harder and harder to find something worthwhile to add to my wardrobe.  It's not just because I will need to find room for new garments.  But it is also because I have nothing much to do, and am looking for something to occupy my mind.  I'll bet it was this feeling that tempted my late wife too much, causing her to give in and buy clothes she did not need.

Luckily, I seem to have gotten my fill of actually buying clothes.  It helps that the stores I would go to no longer have a brick and mortar presence.  Otherwise, I'd still be buying new dresses for my closet.  Even so, I will need to replace my wardrobe piece by piece as I lose weight. If I'm lucky, and maintain some sort of discipline, I may get back to wearing a size 18W dress again.

- - - - - -

On other matters....

As has become a habit with me lately, I didn't get much sleep last night.  So I figured I'd check to see if a problem I was having renewing one of my prescriptions could be resolved online.  Unfortunately, what I feared happening happened - my health insurance was not properly renewed.  So I had to spend the better part of an hour, first thing in the morning, to get the problem resolved with the insurance company.  Of course, this problem can not be resolved by snapping one's fingers, or by a single keystroke.  Instead, I'll have to wait another 24-48 hours for the paperwork to make it through the pipeline. So I'll now have to wait for a call before I can make next month's payment. 

While killing time (I had a co-op board meeting to attend in the evening, I scanned some emails from my inboxes. There were several indoor meetups being held by the Fun Time Friends group - and I will be passing on them until after I've been vaccinated for Covid. But there were two outdoor meetups that I am considering attending: (1) at the Poughkeepsie Bridge Across the Hudson, and (2) at Muscoot Farm.  Both involve a little bit of walking, but I can always skip out on that if I want if I'm getting a little tired.  If I had my criticisms about my ex's favorite dinner group and the virus, I have more regarding this group. But I don't have to attend any indoor activities, and these outdoor activities will be in "my" neck of the woods.

Of course, I've been trying to keep up to date with the women I've been chatting with on the dating sites.  There are two that I might get along with, but have special needs adult offspring. I'm not sure if I could deal with those issues, given my personality traits.  However, there are two that things seem to be clicking.  One lives in Manhattan, and the other in New Jersey. It doesn't make that much sense for me to do anything other than talk, with the infection rate spiking around here.  This morning, I read an alarming statistic regarding infection rates on Long Island, and it implies things are worse than we are being led to believe.  No, it's not something one can worry about in itself.  It's because our government has decided that it can't get away with another lock down, and is trying to muddle through until vaccinations start bringing the infection rate down.  (Contact tracing may be of help, but the statistics imply that we may be beyond the point where tracing may be an effective tool to stop the spread.) However, there is also some good news.  From my conversations with one of these women, the NYC subway is virtually empty during many rush ours as of late, and it might make sense to do a museum run before things get worse.