OT. Gasoline Price

It's not really the general fund. They divert road taxes to public transit and railroads nobody with a car will ever ride.

That is a problem with the fiscal perpetual motion machine represented by doctors, lawyers and insurance companies. None of them have any interest in lower costs and they kick back enough money to politicians to insure that will never change. Health Care and Lawyers alone is over $100M, most going to Democrats. Finance and insurance are so closely links they get lumped together but it is another $200M, again Democrats get most of it.

Why would anything change when the people who talk the most about lowering health care cost are cashing in from the people who make their money on higher costs?

You only have to look at Obamacare to see that in action. The democrats pushed people into that evil triumvirate's waiting arms at the point of a government gun. Costs went up and the quality of care went down.

Something was fishey about Obamacare. I was between 62 and 65 with privite insurance. It was about $ 250 per month. Obamacare took over for the last year and it went to $ 600 but the kickback to the insurance companies brought it back down to about the same or maybe a little less due to my poverty rating.

We were in that notch. Too rich to get the subsidy and not rich enough to afford a decent policy. We spent over $1000/mo for a bronze level policy and we still spent a lot of out of pocket costs, even after the so called $6500 deductible. They always found a way to say they weren't paying and it was an ineligible expense toward the deductible. .

Prior to Obama my company's Blue Cross plan and Medicare were a wash. I went with Medicare to avoid the late registration gotchas. After Obama's signature plan the company plan cost more for less with higher deductibles

He also screwed them with another little maneuver. Except for new employees during the probationary period nobody punched a clock. I don't know what the break point is but now a lot of people are punching the clock metaphorically. It's an online app now, not a physical clock. No more pay, just more inconvenience and a loss of flexibility.

I'll give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt but most of their plans to help working people backfire.

We're $3.45 but the state has a relatively high tax on gas. Lot of roads, not too many people, somebody has to pay for it.

Obama's original plan was watered-down and bastardized 2 or 3 times - at least - ... so as not to resemble the real thing - and as such destined to be a big nothing .. The Dems celebrated like it was a something .. - to save face - but no ... it was a dismal failure.

If a heart attack or stroke or hip replacement or preemy baby or cancer diagnosis .. makes you worry about losing your life savings and your home - you need a better health care system. John T.

Senator Max Baucus D-MT and his aid were the principle architects, assisted by the health care industry. Single payer wasn't an option out of the gate. Baucus got an ambassadorship to China and the aide got a plum job in the health care industry.

The bright side was we got rid of Max. I'm fairly confident we'll get rid of our other Democratic senator next year. Jon Tester hasn't been doing too badly but he is in the wrong party at the wrong time. Virginia was the start.

Lose your house is not going to happen in most states, even if you seek bankruptcy protection. It is a protected asset. You can spend a lot of money tho. The reason we have such bad bankruptcy numbers is that is how a lot of people fund end of life nursing home costs. Medicaid pays it if you are broke so people forfeit their assets (including their home) to go to die in a nursing home. There is a five year rule about divesting your assets before you do that. You can't just give all your money to your kids and declare you are bankrupt. There are lawyers on TV all the time saying they have a way around that. I suspect it is some kind of life trust or something. I would just pull the plug before I went to a nursing home so I am not really looking into it. I would rather go to Vegas and piss my money away on hookers and blow than to give it to the government tho. What we did find out is if you just say you don't have insurance and pay the whole nut out of pocket it is cheaper than trying to squeeze money out of Obamacare. They charge you less than the insurance company price for "self pay" if you negotiate the price ahead of time. That says something right there.

I've punched a clock my entire working life, even as an "exempt" employee. For the last 30 years, two of them: one for payroll and one for cost accounting.

I wish my crappy company would use a single time-clock application. Ah, well. It'll be moot in 90 days, when I retire.

Cindy Hamilton

We use Timetrex, which isn't too bad. I generally punch in and out within a couple of minutes. Last week I forgot the out punch until 6PM and it decided I'd missed a lunch punch although I never do those.

IT used to be a paper system which was a joke. You filled the sheet out and every quarter would turn them in. I'd xerox a pile with 8 hours / CAD everyday and fill in the dates. The hard part was figuring out the holidays that weren't 40 hour weeks.

The bad part is we have no idea how long an enhancement, interface, or new product took. I've been there over 20 years and my checks keep cashing so I guess we're not a non-profit.

The only time I ever punched a clock was as a new hire in basic school (3 months). After that we filled out a time card with hours and expenses and mailed them in. In 85 when we went to the Portable Terminals we did it all online.

Bowman and I were discussing "punching the clock metaphorically". I've only had one (short-term) job where I actually had to punch in and out. Everything else has been as you describe. Time cards (or sheets) manually filled out, and then electronic timekeeping.

Cindy Hamilton

In that regard, it applies to any non-exempt employee. We were tracked all day in 6 minute increments but it was self reporting so our "Incident Reports" were called "Lie R's"

When it comes to health care, many people somehow haven't figured out that paying a little more in taxes to support health care is a better deal than paying a lot more out of pocket. It's also much less expensive to _keep_ people healthy, compared to treating sick people in ERs.

Bernie Sanders tried to explain it to the American public when he was running for Prez, but people heard "higher taxes" and tuned out, missing the part about saving a ton of money in the long run.

As a nation, our short attention span is one of the reasons why we can't have nice things.

If you check out tax rates without checking out total expenditures, you're going to come to the wrong conclusion.

That's shortsighted.

Another option is to use the Gas Buddy app or website to check gas prices anywhere in the US.

For example, at the Ann Arbor Costco near State & Ellsworth that was referenced by Cindy above, gas is currently $3.09 a gallon.

The problem with that is the government has no incentive to lower medical costs so our taxes would be what we pay now plus the cost of the government administering the insurance companies that actually broker the care. You just need to look at ACA or Medicare to see that.

By taking the government out of the administrative loop my Advantage plan gives me drugs, the gap coverage and a wellness plan for what I pay in Part B plus the allocation from Medicare for Part A.