There! There! You see? Just as I suspected: in the Twilight poll, the Twilight enthusiasts in fact BEAT the Twilight dislikers! And yet on the post where I mentioned Twilight, the comments section had about four apologetic Twilight-liking comments and all the rest were celebrating its awfulness! I FELT those of you who didn’t want to comment in that environment! I FELT you out there!
And now I would like to know how many of us are cat people and how many are dog people. New poll over on the right. I’m a cat person, obv, and what’s odd is it seems like most of my good friends are dog people. Or cat AND dog people, which I think is probably the most awesome category. I’ve gradually developed the hypothesis that cat people and dog people are drawn to each other, despite their differences, and I’m interested to know how this hypothesis tests.
And may I vent for a moment on a very boring topic? The monthly health insurance cost for our family is now 25% more than our mortgage payment. MORE. than. our mortgage payment. And perhaps you are thinking, “Well, YEAH, you have FIVE kids!,” but NO, that’s the “family” price, for employee + spouse + child(ren), so it’s the same as we’d pay if we had one child. AND, in all our years of employment, it is the worst policy we’ve ever had, with a $1000 deductible per person per year. AND, we hardly EVER go to the doctor: the kids get physicals once a year, and there are probably 3-5 more visits TOTAL for our family per year. None of us have any medical conditions, none of us have expensive prescriptions. Which, you know, is desirable: when we buy health insurance we’re making a bet and hoping we’ll lose, and we sure will be glad to have this policy when something expensive happens, and also of course it’s necessary for everyone to pay lots in order to cover the expensive things that do happen within the group. But STILL! /vent
Poll results:
I hear you on the insurance.
My husband’s plan? $3500 deductible…per person. Unbelievable, no? I dropped down to part time and am no longer eligible for insurance through my employer. Therefore, he has the “family” coverage. It’s not as expensive as yours, but something catastrophic happens, it’s pretty much useless.
Can I be a mouse person?
Gah – the cost and ridiculousness of health insurance makes me sick. Not one-upping but empathizing…here’s the fantastic catch-22 that we’re in: Partner stays home with child. She’s not covered on my employer-based plan (no DP coverage) and also can’t get individual insurance because she has epilepsy. LOVE this system we have.
The “family” price at my workplace (which, you are correct, includes any number of children) is $1200. (!!!!) And take my word for it that it is NOT a generous policy (they don’t cover BIRTH CONTROL FTLOG)
As a healthy person, it really DOES make having no insurance sound attractive, even if there is a government penalty. Anyway. Healthcare is so STRESSFUL, and you would think it would be some kind of Hot Button Issue, but really people just want to BAND TOGETHER IN WOE over the whole sitch.
PS-I disliked the Twilight books but don’t mind the movies
oh god the insurance! Ours is just over the amount of our mortgage payment. It has a $2000 family deductible but some things don’t apply to it and others do so I never know how much I have to pay whenever we go to the docs or pick up a prescription. It also has this 80/20 payment split, except when it is a 60/40 or 30/70 split & possibly there is a flat rate you pay up front or maybe not. I have to let months go by while the docs office & the insurance settle their differences and agree on how much I actually have to pay, while I send in $25 a month so show I am willing to pay once they work it out.
I bet they would save millions if they simplified how much they pay on what
Dog person, for sure.
I live in Canada, and I’m always shocked by the cost of health insurance in the US. Yes, I know we pay more taxes, have wait times, blah blah blah. Still. I’m shocked at the costs. What do people do who can’t afford health insurance?
Yikes on the health insurance. What a crazy world we live in when doctors are making little money and we’re all still paying through the nose for health insurance. Somethings got to give.
On the Twilight front: hahaha!
I was drowning in… life… when your Twilight post was up and so didn’t comment or vote in the poll but I have to say that when I finally caught up I was laughing and, well, embarrassed. Because I LOVED the first book. Loved it in spite of its glaringly obvious flaws. The movies are campy and fine and the other books got progressively worse, IMO. But I will step up and say that I was swept up in the TEENAGE TRUE LOVE vampire tale. I don’t quite get the OBSESSION I see in some others but I was transported for that one week that I read all the books.
Oh and I am a CRAZY dog person and ALL of my best friends are CRAZY cat people. Or cat and dog people (but cat comes first).
Our health care policy sounds like yours- only we have to buy our own coverage since my husband is self-employed. AND he’s diabetic, so he doesn’t qualify for “regular” insurance, so he is on a “high risk” plan. We do pay per person, and me and the 3 girls’ plan is LESS/month than David’s alone. Our total cost per month is also more than our mortgage. AND we also have $1000/person deductible. GAH. Fun fact, in one year, we racked up 30k in health care costs, WITH insurance. And NONE of it was major medical. Little surgeries (ear tubes, gall bladder removal) etc. 30K! WITH INSURANCE.
Also, I can’t remember if I said this on the Twilight post, but I like the books ok and couldn’t make it through the first movie b/c I thought it was so silly and painful to watch. Additionally, if I had to choose between a vampire and a warewolf, I’d choose warewolf ALL THE WAY. Edward’s ice cold, marble hard, blood thirsty qualities thoroughly CREEP me the creep out. Besides, Jacob was hotter. ;)
Have you seen these nest necklaces? They reminded me of you: http://ohsweetsadie2.blogspot.com/. I am a dog person, a Canadian immigrant and I did not care for Twilight.
MELISSAC- ACK!
Stimey – Yes. I wonder if mice need their own category? Because it seems like there is a certain amount of EMOTION that is involved when people declare their like or dislike of mice.
Jen – ACK!
Tess – YES. YES. Banding together in woe. YES.
ComfyMom-Stacey – OURS TOO! And some things we pay for DON’T COUNT TOWARD THE DEDUCTIBLE!! And some things DO! And some lab tests are covered, and some are partially covered at various levels of partial, and some aren’t covered at all. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I feel like they just spin the Wheel of Insurance to determine how much they’ll pay.
on your dog/cat poll, I put I am a cat person but right now I’m not all that happy with my cat. He is shedding like crazy and it is making me crazy! but when he’s in a good mood and cuddles up next to me, it makes me like him just a little bit. HATE dogs.
health insurance! bah humbug! too expensive to get through work (my contribution through a work plan is outrageous due to the composition of our work group). insurance on my own + daughter (family plan)+ $5000 deductible per person for BASIC coverage, which does not cover much AT ALL. husbands plan at work requires family members to pay the full premium ($1000+ for me and daughter, per month). i elected to buy the private insurance, had a MINOR medical thing this year. had to pay $4000+ of the deductible (MINOR!, i swear) plus the police increased by 50% for next year. SUCK!
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Stupid insurance.
D is a cat person. I am a cat AND dog person, but before kids I leaned toward more of a dog person. I have gradually shifted because cats are easier.
I am a cat person. I do not like dogs at all, yet my husband loooooves dogs, and so we’re getting one soon.
Oh health insurance. Le Sigh. I cover our whole family through my job, and the price is the same if I have 1 kid or 7 kids. We pay around $700/month. We also have a $1200 deductable for the family that does not include co-pays. And if we should happen to meet this deductable, then all of our procedures etc are covered at 80%. SO we still have to pay 20% out of pocket. PLUS co-pays. This is the worst insurance I have ever had.
The real kicker though, is maternity care in the hospital. When I had my kids, the baby was covered under me in the hospital—basically, AS me. With this plan, if I were to have a baby, I would have a co-pay and so would the baby. I (assuming we had met our deductable) would have to pay 20% for my care and would have to pay 20% of the baby’s care as well. This just seems absurd to me!! If that isn’t birth control, I don’t know what is!
Ha ha, Saly, that maternity care thing is what my insurance did to me. We thought we had calculated my baby-birthing costs and were doing fine but as soon as that kid came out–BAM–she had her own deductible. Same thing with the second one but at least we were prepared that time.
I frequently fantasize about just giving up insurance and putting the cash in a savings account. I’m betting I’d come out ahead. But then they present all the scary secnarios and I chicken out.
Who wants to do it for me and let me know how that works out?
I’m a cat and dog person but I only have a cat now since I have no energy/space for a dog and the only dog I will feel satisfied owning is one that is free to roam through meadows and sadly there are no such meadows in my apartment. Anyhow, what I don’t get is people who DON’T LIKE ANY ANIMALS. Like my sister. What’s up with that?
I was just reading all the comments on the cost of care… it sounds like it would be a better deal to find some sort of emergency care insurance and stick the rest of the deductibles in a health care savings account. For a lot of you, that is potentially 12,000 to 20,000 a year that would be left in your own hands to use. Makes a 100 dollar strep visit sound a lot not so bad if you have a pool of money to work from.
What qualifies as being a “cat and/or dog” person? I like cats and dogs but am allergic and will never own one. So I don’t consider myself a pet person but I’m not like, antagonistic toward pets.
I feel lucky that I went without any sort of insurance for 2 years and didn’t have any medical issues in that time. And I recently got a government job that has great cheap coverage.
I am just a pet person. I spent all that time I was without insurance working for an animal shelter and it made me even more of an all kinds of animals person. Though I am most partial to cats and guinea pigs. I would certainly be open to getting a dog, but I would probably choose a cat over a dog if it were completely up to me.
You need another Twilight category. I would call it “I read Twilight and enjoyed it but have not become a fanatic.”
I guess I shouldn’t cringe at what I pay – nearly $400 for dental and medical for me and my son; but I do take issue with the fact that I have a $25 copay for office visits, but a $50 copay to specialists – including the lady doctor.
I am a cat person, but mostly because that’s what I currently have. I like dogs when they are in other people’s homes. I grew up with both, but cats are so much easier to take care of and if they are raised with lots of love, are very friendly little critters. In fact, my experience is that dogs tend to hold grudges and cats don’t, contrary to popular belief.
Ok, I know I’m going to get flamed, but on the insurance can I just say that it’s really not just the insurers’ fault? Whoever said doctors don’t make a lot of $$ is kidding themselves. Doctors (especially specialists of any kind) make way more $$ here than almost anywhere else, which is a LARGE part of why your premiums are so high. Also, more people than realize it do not actually have traditional insurance – they are self insured through their employer with a third party administrator administering a plan on which THEIR EMPLOYER has the ultimate decision making authority. It may LOOK like you have traditional insurance, because your card says the Aetna network or whatever, but that is just a network that your employer is paying a rental fee for, that allows you to get access to that “network” of docs. Aetna the insurance company, in that example, is not actually paying the bill. Your employer is, through the fund it set aside. And because the new law imposes a Cadillac tax on so-called rich insurance plans, but not self insurance, look for the % of employers to become self insured to go way up. If you work for a big company (measured by number of employees) you can bet that you are actually self insured – meaning that the decisions you don’t like are actually being made by your employer or its agent.
IMO, we need to do more to incentivize med students to become primary care doctors (internists, family practitioners, etc.) and ultimately lower the cost of medical care, for these reforms (which I largely supported btw) to really work over the long term.
I’m just going to think positively and hope that means you have a REALLY LOW mortgage payment :)
Have you considered, instead of paying for the health insurance, putting the money you would pay on the premium into a dedicated medical savings account?
That way if something DID happen, you would have money to pay for it, especially with premium savings account money accruing over the years, but if something DIDN’T happen, you would have money.
Kate – AAAAAAAAAA, so beautiful!
SaLy and Alias Mother – MY INSURANCE TOO!! The worst was with my first baby, where it was a $1000 deductible per person (me + baby = $2000) PLUS a percentage. Aaaaaagggggghhhhhh.
Barb – Hm, good question! I’d say if you like both cats and dogs, and if you’d have one or more of each if you didn’t have allergies, then you’re a dog and cat person.
Miss Grace – OH YES. But then I start thinking, “WHAT IF I GET CANCER OMG I COULD GET CANCER AND IT COULD COST MILLIONS AND MILLIONS!!”
Insurance makes my head want to explode. We have a five thousand family deductible, fifteen hundred per person deductible, no dental, no vision, no copay, no prescription. What does insurance even HELP with? It covers about half of my ultrasounds. That’s it. Jim’s employer does put some money each year into a flexible spending health savings account for each employee, but we also have to put in a ton of OUR OWN PAYCHECK each year on that card or we’d have emptied the account in about two months.
Don’t get me started on insurance. We pay for monthly COBRA coverage right now, which thanks to Obama, is only 35% of what we would normally be paying; still, it’s a lot….AND, thanks to my husband’s former employer, we have a SIX THOUSAND dollar family deductible, meaning that we pay 100%-not a copay-cold hard cash 100%-up until $6,000…which we hit last year in NOVEMBER, and then started over in January with another $6,000, which we reached today when I had an MRI. AND hopefully my husband will be starting a new job soon, which means that we will be starting over AGAIN on the deductible (not sure what it will be) or else just keep paying COBRA the rest of the year just so we can have everything covered. Did I mention the $6,000? Twice? Yeah. It sucks being sick. Grrrrr, the madness.
PS If you’re spending a certain percentage of your income, you can deduct your health care costs off of your taxes…tiny silver lining?
My insurance at my former job was pretty awesome–biggest reason why I stayed there as long as I did. Hubby’s job doesn’t do such a great job–but it’s not as bad as others. We have a Health Savings Account, and the first year we were on pins and needles (ALL non-preventative doctor’s visits are paid in full by us until we reach our $2500 deductible). But now we’ve got the HSA built up, so it’s not so scary–I feel as if we can actually “afford” to have a major emergency now. And that maybe we can actually afford for me to go get my moles checked out like I’m supposed to do every year!
So…I SORTA liked the Twilight books–it was just the character of Bella that caused me to have that permanent eye-roll thing going on while I was reading the books! Especially New Moon. Gah! So…I didn’t answer the poll since I can’t say I liked/disliked the books necessarily. Only SORTA.
I prefer cats, but we now have an allergy-free dog so that I no longer wheeze in the spring/fall. He’s a doll, but I still prefer cats.
Cat person! Have two crazy ones…
And not to make you feel worse about the insurance, but here in the Netherlands I pay 109 euros a month, of which I get 63 back from the government (salary is considered too low to have to pay all of it by myself), so I end up paying 46 euros with a 250 euros deductible per year. And yet I complain because 3 or 4 years ago I only paid 35 per month and if I didn’t have any medical issues other than regular dentist & doctor’s visits (not specialists) I would actually get 150 euros back at the end of the year…
The health insurance thing is madness, utter madness. I don’t even know what to say to that except GRAH!
On the pet question, I used to think I was solely a cat person, and then I warmed to dogs somewhere along the line, so we have both as pets. But now that the baby here, I think I would be more of a dog and cat person if we had NO pets. My current thinking on the animals is that they make me very tired. I still love them and care for them, but oh, how exhausting they are.
Finally, because I failed to weigh in on the Twilight thing before: I found the books to be abjectly awful in the writing and dialogue, and Bella and Edward were painfully annoying, for the most part. Yet for some reason, I ended up devouring the whole series in the span of a couple of weeks and reluctantly enjoying it. I cannot explain why. I find the movies infuriating/compelling in the same way, although if possible the dialogue is even WORSE in the film versions.
Have you shopped around for catastrophic insurance? It might be a lot more affordable than the work insurance, and if you already have $1000 deductible per member than your already paying for the routine stuff.
Just out of curiosity, I got some quotes for catastrophic health insurance for our family (we also have five children)and there are some very reasonable ones out there.
Well one of the main reasons I stay at the job I have is because the health insurance is decent – it’s an HMO, but at least my family premiums don’t exceed my mortgage (yet??).
I was solely a cat person. Then I met my husband who is a cat and dog person. So we combined our cats and got a dog. Now I’m a cat and dog person. With two kids. Basically I live in the hairest, messiest house around despite my efforts at keeping things under control. Sigh.
Every time I hear someone from the US talking about insurance, I must admit to feeling a little smug, living in Canada. And a little sick, realizing (in a gross over-simplification) that the US health care system is about one thing only – money. Not peoples lives or the quality thereof. And then I think of how my dad had to wait 9 months for a CAT scan on his lungs to determine he has lymphoma or how my non-verbal 2 year old will wait at least another 14 months for his referral to speech therapy to happen – it kinda punches the ‘smug’ right in the face, no?
Definitely dog people around here, although hubs grew up with both and I had a cat for a while. We can’t have dogs where we live and now is just not a good time for a cat (see above re: non-verbal two year old.) But soon.
I have 2 cats and a dog, and grew up with both. However, ever since getting my puppy a year ago, whom I love dearly, I have realized that I am VERY MUCH a cat person. Even tho they can be aloof and moody, I still love ’em. I will always have cats in my life but I’m not sure about dogs.
Insurance…GAH. It’s why I work nearly full time. By working .7 I get full medical benefits for my family at no cost (with a $500/ded). I hate working this much but the pros outweight the cons, for sure.
I grew up a cat person. We always had cats. I thought dogs were stupid drooling animals. As an adult (nearly 30) I got my first dog and totally fell in love. Nothing is better than having a completely shitty day and when you walk in the door (even if you just went out 30 seconds ago), there is a dog, completely and utterly thrilled to see you. Every single time. Now we have 2 dogs and 2 cats and I love them all.
What about birds? Bird people all the way!
2010 has been a rough year – we’ve had at least 20+ doctor appts, my son was in the ICU for 3 days, had a CT scan, we’ve had at least 8 ER visits, my husband just found out he has (inactive)TB–but only after he spent the night in the hospital and my son is scheduled for surgery in July. We never see any sort of bill or the costs attributed to our healthcare but Im guessing all that would be in the…..bajillions of dollars? The military is not an easy life and it definitely comes with its own hardships but sweet lord I am so so so very thankful that our healthcare is 100% free. I think we would have had to file for bankruptcy this year if we had to pay for all that!
I’m a cat person who can’t own a cat. I know it sounds weird, but a simple cat scratch is extremely hazardous to my health. If I get scratched, it sets off a massive lymphatic reaction that could land me in the hospital, and boughts of leg infections and massive doses of antibiotics suddenly end up in my future….
i’m like kristen…. i said to my husband, maybe swistle pays her mortgage weekly so 125% of that isn’t so bad…. I wish. health insurance is the pits.
I was not ever *really* a pet person until recently, but if I’d had to have made a choice I’d say I was a dog person. But most definitely I HATED cats. So obviously my husband is a cat person and before we were married and we moved in together he had a kitten and then we got another one now I suddenly have found myself with TWO CATS whom I love and adore and squish squish squish etcetera. (Though they do have some dog-like tendencies so that helped me transition.). I also love dogs and though cannot have one right now, would like to get one.
So now I’d say I am both cat and dog person.
And so, basically, yes to your theory.