Everything Is More Expensive

[Mom24Princesses]

Wow - I have not finished reading every post....

We got hit hard and lost pay and had a daughter start college in '09 - and another in '11. While our pay was re-instated around '15, it never "caught up" to the previous scale. AND the cost of everything went up during that time - food, gas, health insurance.

I used the Aldi market to help with groceries and still do and Walmart for groceries - We have one supermarket with an old fashioned meat market. From week to week they have different specials AND since they cut it themselves - different surplus - markdowns. 30 years ago we could afford rib-eye.

Not only is the produce expensive - the quality is often poor. There is a Sprout's Farmer's market 15 miles away that has better produce at a good price. Hard to get there every week. Trying to eat clean and healthy is a chore.

I use a Capital One Venture card to bank travel points. I put every expense I can on it and pay it off every month. I use to use the Chase Disney card for the Disney points but I got tired of only 1%. I will use it for the 6 months deferred payment of Disney Vacations. I have a Bank of America Visa just for gas - 3% cash back. All of these are for vacation money.

We learned the hard way to pay our cards off every month. Re-financed the house in '04 to pay off the credit cards. The house has been paid off a year and a half now!

Sadly we lost my FiL last year. The blessing was his frugal-ness allowed us to pay cash for a gently used truck for my husband. He has been driving hand-me-downs for 20+ years. (last was a '99 Chevy pick-up - our DD#3 took his used '03 off to college) My mini van has 110K and at least 2-3 more years before I consider a new "car". I'll be past 59.5 and can pull cash from an IRA to buy it for cash (between 2 calendar years to split the tax cost) OR get a 0% deal.

We still have 2 in college and on our health insurance, and cell phones, and car insurance. College is going up AGAIN and DD#3 needs more classes (for her major and 2 minors than her scholarship covers) DD#4 isn't on a scholarship .

Health care cost are the scariest item in the budget. Last year (2018) our health care out of pocket costs exceeded $15,000. It was more the year before. My DH and DD#4 have a chronic condition that requires more than usual visits to the doctor and often a visit to the ER. In October of '13 a routine diagnostic procedure, that everyone over 50 is recommend to have, put my DH in Emory University Hospital for 7 days! The Bill was $180K. Most of that was for a rare medication that was needed to treat him. We keep a supply in our freg at $4K a dose. There is only one source in the world. We are at the mercy of the insurance companies. We do have a non-profit support organization that helps us with the co-pays.

I see a lot of people in my corner of the world living at a level way above what they earn.
I personally prefer a vacation over a high-end purse, shoes, car, jewelry. DD#3 bought a new purse "on sale" and I poo pooed the cost. She saw my purse and sarcastically asked how much I had paid for it - thinking it looked expensive ---- $12 on sale at Walmart!!!

Our living-room furniture is second hand. We do plan to replace it finally this summer. We last bought a new couch in 1989.

An earlier poster mentioned the younger adults buying too much house too soon. Our house is in rough shape - raised 4 children in it. We plan to start flipping it this summer while we are living in it. #1 replace the original flooring (circa 1987??). My DD#2 and SiL bought a house much nicer and bigger than ours and poured money into it. The idea of starting small and moving up isn't a term they know. DD#1 and SiL are renting a really nice apartment in a really nice area for a really high price.

I don't really worry about money - I have faith in a higher place - but I believe in not being foolish. We are about to retire and take a 33% pay cut - lucky to have a pension but then our salaries are not very high to begin with. I plan to be frugal in daily life to be able to enjoy treats - like Disney. Actually looked at staying off-property for the first time in 24 years this morning - $67 per night right outside property looked interesting. With APs - (yes a splurge for retirement) we get free parking. And if I have to get a part time job to pay for trips - it will be worth it. (While I wait to be a grandmother!)

 

[RamblingMad]

Even so. Many people live in an area because their family is there, because moving somewhere else may mean giving up seniority and having to take a few steps back in their career, etc. And besides a few uber-mobile taxpayers at the very top end of the range (who likely would have sought less tax-y pastures regardless), marginal increases in taxes doesn't spawn mass migrations as some would like to think. Census and IRS data shows clearly the of the 1.5%-2% of Americans who move to a different state, the vast majority cite employment and family as reasons for their move (and larger minorities cite housing costs and weather), rather than citing taxes as a reason. The statistics also show that there are almost as many people making the move from lower tax states to higher tax states as there are people making the move from higher tax states to lower tax states. It just isn't really a factor.

I was thinking people who grew up and worked in higher tax states who then move to lower tax states for retirement.

 

[tvguy]

I'm not trying to solve their problem. I'm trying to make clear to you the true nature of the problem that their failure has caused. There is no excuse for society choosing less justice over more justice, even if it means society has to do things that aren't easy.

You make great points if this was a philosophical debate. It isn't. The reality is, the districts other unions and the district have hammer out agreements and the Teachers Union still has that option. That could prevent the district from going bankrupt and having the state take them over. I just don't get why the Teachers Union would rather risk losing everything they worked for if the district goes bankrupt, rather than give a little and avoid bankruptcy.

 

[puck]

Not be be political, but the US health care is the best in the world. It's why the richest of the world, like Mick Jagger, come to be treated in our country, not theirs.

What folks are always discussing is the cost of US Healthcare and who should bear it. Right now, we have a cost system that allows everyone the best in the world care, whether they can afford it and without worrying how much they use it. That means most of the system's costs fall to those who can afford it - the middle class and up, and the least sick bear some of the costs of the most sick.

The drive to make public the costs of procedures and medical tests is a drive to both make them more efficient and to drive the middle class level to the "less cadillac, but still effective" options - to try to drive more affordability through informed use vs "diktat from above" that tends to be about enforced limiting of use (if the government or insurance companies get to decide).

That's as much as I'll say b/c anything else gets political, but when "the grass is always greener", maybe we should actually research what the grass elsewhere gets and what their richest citizens do for their health. B/c for me, I'd rather be in the country able to use Mick Jagger's doctor, than be in the one where I have to watch from afar as he has the 100K to travel and drop on an immediate life-saving procedure at age 75 that I will never have.

Thank you. I know several people who live with universal healthcare. For routine things it is fine. For aggressive cancers, expensive elderly costs or extremely premature babies it is a death sentence because their system can not afford to spend that much for one individual. Besides the fact that the US supports most of the research and development for new technologies and drugs that save and radically improve lives. Even when the research is done in Britain or Israel a large portion of the cost is often paid by US companies or US grants.

 

[vacationer1954]

You make great points if this was a philosophical debate. It isn't.

We'll have to agree to disagree. You want the teachers to accept a long-term agreement one year and then passively accept a unilateral change in terms to that agreement two years later. You're ratifying exploitative behavior by government, and it is wrong, no matter how you try to case it. This is the government's, and therefore the voters', failure. The government, and the voters, should be on the hook to pay the price for the solution, not the teachers, not the students.

 

[tvguy]

We'll have to agree to disagree. You want the teachers to accept a long-term agreement one year and then passively accept a unilateral change in terms to that agreement two years later. You're ratifying exploitative behavior by government, and it is wrong, no matter how you try to case it. This is the government's, and therefore the voters', failure. The government, and the voters, should be on the hook to pay the price for the solution, not the teachers, not the students.

I just want to know how the teachers health insurance costs to the district ended up being over $20,000 per year per teacher more than any other district in the area.

 

[RamblingMad]

I just want to know how the teachers health insurance costs to the district ended up being over $20,000 per year per teacher more than any other district in the area.

Folks are against health care cost controls.

Going back to my title of this thread. Everything is more expensive including drug costs.

 

[MillauFr]

I was thinking people who grew up and worked in higher tax states who then move to lower tax states for retirement.

That is what is happening here. Washington State has one of the lowest tax burdens on high net worth individuals. The tax structure is odd though as low net worth individuals pay some of the highest tax rates in the country. Many high net worth retirees move from other states so they can pay less.

 

[barkley]

I just want to know how the teachers health insurance costs to the district ended up being over $20,000 per year per teacher more than any other district in the area.

the district has admitted they could get a better deal on health insurance and save many millions but they have to actually DO IT. some also depends on how their plans are structured. for decades my california public employer charged the identical employee premium no matter how many dependents you had on your policy so a co-worker w/10 kids was paying the same as me w/2 and the taxpayer was picking up the difference. it's only been within the past few years that they started making people pay per dependent to lower the employer cost. to this day i shudder when i get the yearly open enrollment paperwork that shows what the full dollar cost for the different plans are-there is NO WAY a large public agency with massive 'buying power' should be agreeing to plans that run as high as $7021 PER MONTH for 3 people, it's bad math for the employees who would prefer to see those funds come to them via cost of living increases and it's bad math for the taxpayers who see their taxes go up, up, up.

 

[Dakota731]

Where are you getting the idea that everyone gets health care here regardless of their ability to pay for it? If you can't afford a prescription, the pharmacy won't give it to you. If you can't afford to pay my doctor's office, they won't schedule you for future appointments.

You seem to think that the health care in America is open-access for all, and that is untrue. Anyone will get emergency room services, but emergency room services are not the bulk of real health care

If you have little or no income Medicaid pays almost 100% of all your healthcare, and I mean everything. A friend of mine has it and there are no co-pays and no deductibles and no premium costs. Kind of encourages people not to work to get employer healthcare!

 

[RamblingMad]

If you have little or no income Medicaid pays almost 100% of all your healthcare, and I mean everything. A friend of mine has it and there are no co-pays and no deductibles and no premium costs. Kind of encourages people not to work to get employer healthcare!

You need ridiculously low income.

• When the health care law was passed, it required states to provide Medicaid coverage for all adults 18 to 65 with incomes up to 133% (effectively 138%) of the federal poverty level, regardless of their age, family status, or health.

https://www.healthcare.gov/medicaid-chip/medicaid-expansion-and-you/#lowincomes

 

[barkley]

If you have little or no income Medicaid pays almost 100% of all your healthcare, and I mean everything. A friend of mine has it and there are no co-pays and no deductibles and no premium costs. Kind of encourages people not to work to get employer healthcare!

i supervised the administration of medicaid benefits for several years and although the program has in some cases improved it is NOTHING i would consider to be sufficient health care coverage. not everything is covered that we take for granted at least getting some form of payment on through traditional insurance. it also varies in coverage state to state and not all states provide even preventative screenings, routine or annual check ups. finding a doctor that will accept the pittance medicaid pays is also a tremendous challenge-specialists? i had clients who had to wait for months and months on wait lists to even then get a many months out appointment b/c providers had 'hit the cap' (the minimum number of patients they had to keep on their rolls to qualify to participate in the program-more and more providers were trying to get out of the program and younger providers weren't going near it). i

 

[barkley]

You need ridiculously low income.

• When the health care law was passed, it required states to provide Medicaid coverage for all adults 18 to 65 with incomes up to 133% (effectively 138%) of the federal poverty level, regardless of their age, family status, or health.

https://www.healthcare.gov/medicaid-chip/medicaid-expansion-and-you/#lowincomes

and that's with the EXPANSION of the program. when i administered it there was no way a single adult who wasn't either permanently and totally disabled, had a child (or in the second trimester or beyond of pregnancy) or was a senior qualified-no matter how destitute (and that was in a state with GENEROUS benefits). it only takes one little change to the health care laws for eager states to drop millions of covered individuals (and the extra staff they hired to take on the administration of those cases alone).

 

[vacationer1954]

Yes, there is no doubt that hiding behind Medicaid is no defense. No amount of excuses can justify the reality low-income families face: "Economic inequality is increasingly linked to disparities in life expectancy across the income distribution, and these disparities seem to be growing over time. In the 1970s, a sixty-year-old man in the top half of the income distribution could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man in the bottom half. By the turn of the century, he could expect to live 5.8 years longer." [“Health, Income, & Poverty: Where We Are & What Could Help, " Health Affairs Health Policy Brief, October 4, 2018. DOI: 10.1377/hpb20180817.901935]

 

[TwoMisfits]

Yes, there is no doubt that hiding behind Medicaid is no defense. No amount of excuses can justify the reality low-income families face: "Economic inequality is increasingly linked to disparities in life expectancy across the income distribution, and these disparities seem to be growing over time. In the 1970s, a sixty-year-old man in the top half of the income distribution could expect to live 1.2 years longer than a man in the bottom half. By the turn of the century, he could expect to live 5.8 years longer." [“Health, Income, & Poverty: Where We Are & What Could Help, " Health Affairs Health Policy Brief, October 4, 2018. DOI: 10.1377/hpb20180817.901935]

Which is a heckuva lot better than some countries with nationalized healthcare systems do (like the UK)...again, nothing is perfect...but some things are much better than others...
"The life expectancy gap between the most affluent and most deprived girls and women in the UK rose from a difference of 6.1 years in 2001 to 7.9 in 2016, according to a study published in the journal Lancet Public Health on Thursday.
The life expectancy gap between the most affluent and most deprived boys and men in the UK climbed from a difference of nine years to 9.7 years, according to the study."

"Overall, access to health care and use of health care is worse by the poor, even in a country that has a national health system, although probably not nearly as bad as the situation in the US," he said. "So there's some combination of social, economic behaviors and health care." (And that's the skew by a CNN article)...

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/22/health/life-expectancy-gap-uk-study/index.html

 

[RamblingMad]

Which is a heckuva lot better than some countries with nationalized healthcare systems do (like the UK)...again, nothing is perfect...but some things are much better than others...
"The life expectancy gap between the most affluent and most deprived girls and women in the UK rose from a difference of 6.1 years in 2001 to 7.9 in 2016, according to a study published in the journal Lancet Public Health on Thursday.
The life expectancy gap between the most affluent and most deprived boys and men in the UK climbed from a difference of nine years to 9.7 years, according to the study."

"Overall, access to health care and use of health care is worse by the poor, even in a country that has a national health system, although probably not nearly as bad as the situation in the US," he said. "So there's some combination of social, economic behaviors and health care." (And that's the skew by a CNN article)...

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/22/health/life-expectancy-gap-uk-study/index.html

For the UK, you also have to take into account that the Brexit Referendum had a big impact on their cost of living. Their currency has been on a downward trend since the Great Recession. My last vacation there was remarkably cheap. Of course, back in 2004, the pound to dollar was 1.75. Now, it's 1.3. That's significant.

 

[TwoMisfits]

For the UK, you also have to take into account that the Brexit Referendum had a big impact on their cost of living. Their currency has been on a downward trend since the Great Recession. My last vacation there was remarkably cheap. Of course, back in 2004, the pound to dollar was 1.75. Now, it's 1.3. That's significant.

The UK had worse stats for rich vs poor healthcare outcomes vs the US in 2001...they didn't vote for Brexit til 3 years ago...(see the CNN article)

All that has happened since 2001 is their own country has also continued to worsen in that rich vs poor regard...

 

[RamblingMad]

This blows my mind.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/health/medicare-for-all-hospitals.html

"For a patient’s knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance.

Or take another example: One hospital would get about $4,200 from Medicare for removing someone’s gallbladder. The same hospital would get $7,400 from commercial insurers."

 

[tvguy]

This blows my mind.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/health/medicare-for-all-hospitals.html

"For a patient’s knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance.

Or take another example: One hospital would get about $4,200 from Medicare for removing someone’s gallbladder. The same hospital would get $7,400 from commercial insurers."

Not really shocking at all. Almost everything in our country is gearing to giving discounts to volume users. 15% of all Americans are covered by Medicare, I suspect that is by far the biggest customer of any hospital.

 

[RamblingMad]

Not really shocking at all. Almost everything in our country is gearing to giving discounts to volume users. 15% of all Americans are covered by Medicare, I suspect that is by far the biggest customer of any hospital.

This isn't volume discounts. That is what medicare will pay. To subsidize the lower payment from medicare, hospitals are billing private insurance much more. I'm actually thinking about starting a position in United Healthcare given its big drop. I can see lobbyist killing off medicare for all given how much money is at stake.