Healthy lifestyles - according to my insurance company

Well, it's finally happened.  Just like the movie Sleeper, everything that was bad for you is apparently healthy and everything that was healthy is now bad.  At least, according to my insurance company.

Ok, so how does that work?  A long time ago, cigarettes were shown to cause cancer and fried food caused heart attacks.  Fortunately, most of the smoke I inhaled in college was from second hand smoke and I developed an aversion to fried food in college.  Then, I entered the working world.  I soon get sleep problems due to, well, showing up to work.  In order to stay alert, I start to drink coffee and caffeine loaded soda.  Also, with a horrible commute, there is no time for proper meals. So, my diet became horrendous. This makes my weight go up.  As my weight goes up, it causes night time breathing problems among other things.  Less sleep, more soda, coffee and salty snacks to keep me awake. Eventually, I have trouble breathing at night due to Apnea that I start falling asleep during the day.  You get the picture. 

So, I go to the doctor.  He prescribes a sleep machine and some medication.  I'm finally able to stay awake during the day and get sleep at night!  I feel better and stay in the working world. After 5 years of this routine, I move from one employer to another as the new career norm now demands.  During this time, I try to do my part. I lose some weight which allows me to only use the sleep machine as needed rather than as a full time dependency and taper down my medication. After several employers and several insurance company changes later, I find myself back with the original insurer who approved my original medication. My physical health didn't decline - but thanks to changing employers, my financial health did change.  What used to be a $15 prescription became $30,$75,$15,$0,$350 then $3000 - what? After going back to Blue Cross, they decide they now won't cover what they covered before.

I naturally ask why.  It turns out the medication and my sleep machine are now rather expensive items due to pharma inflation. So, the insurance company wants to look for an excuse to now deny me my continued use of both.  So, they had me report my sleep logs.   They finally say, "nope, sorry, you don't have enough usage hours on your sleep machine. So, we're not going to pay for a repair or replacement."  They were also very careful to say they weren't denying treatment.  Just payment.  No matter, the effect is the same.  Without replacements, I start gaining weight again which makes the condition worse.  Looking back, I could probably have fought it based on denying me based on a pre-existing condition.  However, now I've unfortunately demonstrated I'm not dead without these items.

Anyway, after years of not smoking, I'm considering doing it again to lose the weight (or at least arrest the gain).  It's a risk assessment.  An occasional cigarette saved my life during a critical period (say, driving in winter in the middle of nowhere when I HAD TO stay awake to find shelter).  In the same way, smoking in leu of excessive weight gain may have the same effect on me.  That is, weight loss (or at least slower weight gain) to get rid of the Apnea might be a greater benefit than the health lost to smoking. So, I'm well on my way to living the Woody Allen future as seen in the Sleeper movie. He noticed that not one person he knew eating a high fiber diet lived past 200. So, bring on the menthol butts and Mountain Dew! Thanks private insurance!

In all seriousness, what this shows to me is that in spite of Obamacare insurance reform, the a-la-carte way insurance companies can deny some medications and treatments to some people is a loophole the insurance/provider/pharma industries can fly a medivac helicopter through. Pharma can still sell it's overpriced medications to end users (some who will still pay those high prices, at least for a limited time). Hospitals can then offer treatment not approved by insurance at substantial markup (patients will either pay those extra charges or go bankrupt and generate writeoffs for the hospital). Doctors still get kickbacks from pharma companies by prescribing expensive non-covered medications that patients will still buy - at least for a limited time till they run out of money.  It's all very corrupt.  The very rich own medical stock, which is doing quite well.  The very poor (or those working in the growing underground economy) now benefit since they get basic medical treatment but have no income that qualifies for debt retirement garnishment.  Who pays for it?  A shrinking middle class (gradually turning into the working poor) that pay through inflated pre-tax insurance premiums and artificially inflated medical supply prices.

One wonders how long this can go on. Probably longer than I can.  Welcome to the future...

Pay off a mortgage or "invest" in the stock market

So, maybe you are living a little above the average "paycheck to paycheck" slobs.  You have a little extra money saved up, doing nothing In a savings account.  What should you invest in?  Should you pay off your home mortgage early or use that money to pad your retirement nest egg?  After reviewing several articles pro and con, I was not sure which way to go either. 

After reading articles, mostly pro-stock market investing, I opened a letter that absolutely decided the issue for me.  It was the check that I got which allowed me to “cash out” of one of my former employers 401K plans to my new employer’s 401K plan.  I compared the check amount I had to the statements I got in the months before.  Then compared it to the final “F##k Y#u" statement - that is the statement that says how much my fund would have been worth had I not cashed out.  During this long market rally, my fund value started at the year at 12k.  Then climbed to a little over 13K during March.  Then it would have apparently ended at just under 15K - that is, if I hadn’t cashed out a week earlier.  Yet, somehow between the statement printings that said 13K and 15K, the value at cash-out dropped to 10K? Coincidence?  Did a one-day massive stock drop then an even greater rally happen that week that nobody bothered to report on?  Of course not. The 10K what the mutual fund company deemed my paper was worth at that time. Since they were essentially the only buyer, well, they can really can set most any price they want.  In my case,  a technicality that allowed them to keep 1/3 of the stated value was a little condition buried in the fine print called "Forfeiture".

So, beware. There may be little mines in the fine print that allow these companies to legally not pay you anywhere near what you think you might get.  Also, keep in mind that mutual funds are subject to the same supply-demand that other investments are subject to.  That is, that gains or losses are only real the day of the sale.  The rest of the time, it’s statement bullshit to keep people in the market (see the blue dots that represent apparent values as per the quarterly statements).  I've named this phenomena “the sell-out curve”.  It’s not a real curve.  Rather, it’s the feeling one gets which seems like how the market must have performed the day of sell out when you get quite a bit less in a settlement check than the statements suggest you would get.  

Oh, and when it comes to retirement, there's another future whammy too.  Keep in mind 401K investments are pre-tax dollars.  So, when I finally decide to turn this next investment back into currency to spend, I still need to pay income tax on it too! 

So, what's a smarter investment? Getting rid of debt.  That includes home mortgage debt. I'll even go out on a limb and say "especially home debt". Do the compound interest calculation. A small interest rate over a long time is still a LOT of money. In fact, for many people, they pay twice the amount of dollars they pay for their home.  Yes, yes, inflation trends can create cheaper dollars. However, the trend for doubling one's wages is not encouraging.   Also, unlike an investment firm, most individuals cannot just decide to payback a bank less than the full stated amount owed.

Got food? Modern day droughts.

Lots of attention has been directed to California's food producing problems - with good reason since the entire state is under a drought.  However, modern day water problems are not just in California.  Google "Kansas Dust Storm" and you'll see shocking footage of a modern day dust-bowl type storm that happened this spring 4-28-2014.  These weather events combined with the pending loss in reserve currency status (that would make food imports very expensive) may soon not only affect U.S. food prices but overall food availability.

Those that forget their history are doomed to repeat it.

Most people would think this photo came from somewhere in Kansas during the Dustbowl period in  the 1930's.  They would be wrong.  A combination of drought and misuse of marginal farmland led to Dust Bowl-like conditions in New York beginning in the 1920s.

Before the middle of the 19th century, forests had been primarily viewed as inexhaustible and an obstacle to civilization; they were something to be cleared out of the way for agriculture, or to be cut and exploited for profit. By the 1880s, less than 25% of New York State was forested, and the remaining uncut forests in the Catskills and Adirondacks were being logged fast. In 1885, New York created the Forest Preserve Act to protect state owned lands in the Catskills and Adirondacks from further exploitation. This act was strengthened in 1894 by an amendment to the New York State Constitution:

"The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed."

Given that cultivated farmland will be reduced either through sensible legislation (such as in New York) or through natural forces (such as in Kansas) what is one to do?  One answer could be to encourage households to start kitchen gardens. A small plot of land, properly managed, has the potential to grow quite a bit of food.  Amateur gardeners can start with commercial seeds, soil and fertilizer for minimal investment.  Once the basics are mastered, permaculture techniques can then be gradually adopted.

Since back yards aren't available for everyone, other sources of food might be produced from basement or closet based hydroponic type systems.  One body of technology that may offer some promising solutions is the illegal pot growing industry.  Many "kits" needed to grow marijuana plans indoors can be easily adopted to growing other crops such as tomatoes.  Ironically, the patent laws might soon make growing any plant from seed be something that is just as much a criminal offense as growing pot from seed now is.  Given the potential for profitable shakedowns for those who dare save seeds, the ability to grow plants covertly may eventually be of some benefit.