Affordable Care Act Lies

Thank You President Obama and the millions that voted for you. I have just received a letter from Humana on 9/4/2013 notifying me of the improvements to my insurance thanks to the "Affordable" Care Act.

According to Healthcare.gov, the benefits I should be receiving from the "Affordable" Care Act include;

• Lower Cost On Coverage
• Essential Health Benefits
• Pre-Existing Condition Coverage

I would also like to point out that on Whitehouse.gov states that The Affordable Care Act will bring down the cost of health care;

The Affordable Care Act will help bring down the cost of health care.
Fact

The health policy experts and economists who have looked at this legislation have said we are pursuing every possible mechanism to reduce health care costs. The Congressional Budget Office found that health insurance reform will reduce the deficit by $210 billion in this decade and by more than $1 trillion over the following 10 years. And a family of four would save as much as $2,300 on their premiums in 2014 compared to what they would have paid without reform.

Whitehouse.gov also promises that Businesses will not suffer under Health Reform;

Health insurance reform lowers costs for American businesses - especially small businesses - who are struggling to remain profitable and competitive under the status quo. The independent Congressional Budget Office confirmed that the bill would lower health insurance premiums for the same insurance plan by up to 4 percent for small businesses and 3 percent for large businesses, and estimates indicate that reform could save businesses $2,000 per person in health costs.

You see, I am a small business owner. My wife and I have run our own businesses since 2002 and during that time we have given jobs to roughly 20 people off and on. Back in 2005, we employed 8 people and paid for medical and dental insurance for the employee and spouse. We actually paid 100% for the employee and offered a reduced price for spouses and children. My wife and I maintain/pay for our own policy through Humana and have even considered offering benefits to our employees with our newest businesses.  Now that we have received this eye opening example of how the "Affordable" Care Act is going to help us, I doubt I will be able to afford insurance for our employees.

Here is what Humana is telling me about my policy becoming ACA compliant in 2014 and my choices;

Here's the reality of what the "Affordable" Care Act is doing for small business owners who pay for their own insurance. Below, is an actual snippet from a letter I received 9/4/2013 explaining to me what my new policy is going to look like in 2014;

My Policy Increases by Roughly 38%

As you can see from the above, my new "Affordable" policy changes a great deal between now and 2014.

1. My In Network Deductible for an individual increases by almost triple my current amount (roughly 280%)
2. My Prescription Deductible increases by 300%
3. My In Network Co-Insurance increases by 250%
4. My Overall Policy Monthly Premium increases by roughly 38%

Oddly enough, Humana has given me an option to either maintain my existing policy as is until December 30, 2014 or jump right on board with my new "Affordable" policy first thing January 1 2014. I don't get it. Why wait? Bend me over and stick it to me now! That must be what America wants, why else would we have elected you to a second term!

Thanks Obama and all of you who voted to implement this new "Affordable" Care Act. I am seriously tempted to quit paying for insurance and self insure, but wait, I understand I could be fined for that?

Kentucky Lab Rescue

Me on the front porch of Ky Lab Rescue
with Remington and Boomer

We recently adopted 2 Labrador retrievers from Kentucky Lab Rescue in Winchester Kentucky. We had been talking about getting a puppy for quite some time but then we came across Kentucky Lab Rescue online and saw the dogs that they had that needed a new home.

It was a 3.5 hour drive for us to get to Winchester Kentucky, but it was worth the drive. We got to meet several Labradors who needed a second home and needed to be loved. After interacting with several great dogs, we settled on 2 of them. The first one is a black Labrador named Boomer and he is 3 years old. He now lives with our daughter who is in college at the University of Kentucky. She has her own pet friendly apartment. The second one is a fox red Labrador named Remington (Remi for short) and he is 3.5 years old. He now lives with us in Madisonville Kentucky.

Both dogs are crate trained, house broken, up to date on vaccinations, and the adoption cost included neutering. Remington is neutered and Boomer is scheduled to be neutered. Remington was also micro-chipped. They put a lot of money and care into these great dogs.

Michelle May is the director of Ky Lab Rescue and was a pleasure to work with. Ky Lab Rescue is an all volunteer, non profit organization devoted to finding suitable and loving homes for abandoned and rescued Labrador Retrievers. There is an application process and the average cost of adopting one of these great dogs is around $300.

If you are considering adding a new family member to your home, consider adopting a rescued dog. They are very appreciative and so far, our dogs have brought a great deal of joy to our home :)

The Biggest Douche Bag I Have Ever Met

Lucinda and I own rental properties in Panama City Beach Florida. We have had the unfortunate bad luck of renting to two classless, pretentious, overbearing, wannabe, poser a-holes from Atlanta. They rented our condo at Aqua saying everything in the condo was perfect except for one thing, they didn't think the dishes were good enough.

The husband, let's call him Fred (name changed to protect his identity and keep him from suing me), called me wanting us to buy new dishes for them because the dishes weren't good enough for his precious wife to make an interesting enough presentation of the food when she served meals and that those were the kind of dishes they only served sandwiches on. What kind of douche bag says something like that?

The dishes are the standard set of dishes that came stocked when the high end condo originally sold. These were the standard set of dishes that came stocked in all of the new condos that sold brand new in 2007.

I found this to be insulting and told them in no uncertain terms that I would not replace anything in my condo just to meet their particular needs based on color, pattern, or brand. If they didn't like it, they could leave, I would terminate the contract, and refund them the unused portion of their rent.

We went into the condo on Monday to install a router for them and Lucinda noticed they had taken a piece of furniture that was given to us as a gift and set it out on the balcony because they didn't like it. It would have been ruined if it had set out all winter on the balcony. They have no regard for our personal belongings and are pushy, spoiled assholes. Did I mention I didn't like them?

Actually, I take that back Ted. I believe the problem exists with your overbearing, spoiled, wife and you are living in Hell on earth. I actually feel sorry for you man.

My Fitness Pal

My wife Lucinda has recently been diagnosed with high cholesterol and that sucks because I want her to live long enough for me to torture her in her old age :) She has been given a prescription for a cholesterol med and she refuses to become dependent on cholesterol meds.

Lucinda is beautiful, active, relatively healthy, and has a smokin ass :) We jog regularly, do some weight training, yoga occasionally, and enjoy a fairly active life. She (and by she I mean we) just need to get our diets in order.

I weigh 172 and Lucinda weighs 154. Neither of us is obese or what I would call heavily over weight. I could stand to loose about 15 pounds and Lucinda has her goals as well. We were once members of weight watchers but found that we didn't like the tools or the interface, or the recurring charges.

When we received the news about her high cholesterol, we decided to pay more attention to our diets, and to try to find a free tool to help us track our intake. Lucinda asked me to try to find an iphone app that would help her track her daily cholesterol intake. She wants to keep her daily intake to under 300mg of cholesterol daily. I was up to the challenge and began searching online and on my iphone. I found a few cholesterol trackers, but they were tools to actually track the ldl and hdl numbers and didn't really monitor the intake.

I finally stumbled upon http://www.myfitnesspal.com. Myfitnesspal is a free tool that has a very impressive array of tools for anyone looking to track their daily intake for the purpose of losing weight, lowering cholesterol, or any other thing they need to track. The screen shot below is my food diary;

There is a very comprehensive food database, exercise tracking tool, support forums, blogs, it is just a fantastic tool. The website automatically syncs with your iphone (assuming you have one) and you can track stuff on the fly with the phone. It also connects with your facebook page, your twitter account, and gives you neat little badges you can post on other websites to show your progress (I probably won't ever use any of those). Did I mention it was free?

We have a few months to get her cholesterol down and try to get her off her meds. We are also trying to get into our bathing suit bodies because we own some panama city beach condo rentals and spend a lot of time on the beach.

Check out myfitnesspal if you are looking for an alternative to weight watchers paid services. This one is definitely worth the look.

Update: They have an app for Droid and have an application for Blackberry in development.

Don't Ask - Don't Tell. Probably A Good Idea

I have mixed feelings on this one. For starters, I am not homophobic, so someone serving openly gay in the military doesn't bother me. I used to be in the Army. What does bother me is the liberal folks pushing this thing through thinking everything is going to be flowers and rainbows when someone comes out while they are serving.

Did I mention that I was in the Army? There are people in the military that will take great (see deadly) exception to serving with openly gay service personnel. How many young gay men will have to die at the hands of some small minded prejudiced homophobes before we realize that the Don't Ask, Don't Tell was probably a good idea?

Just sayin....