Saturday, January 10, 2009

Ra Ra Ra

In more cheerleading from the national press, Pittsburgh ranks as one of the top 5 strongest housing markets this year. Now, don't all go try to sell your house at once to mess that up.

That does mean that when you get laid off you may still be able to borrow against your house if you can't afford COBRA payments. "The average monthly cost to that [laid off] worker to continue family health benefits under COBRA was $1,069, or 83.6 percent of the unemployment check." I paid for COBRA for 2 months last year before rolling over into a private health insurance policy. It's damned expensive. Now is the time to do something about health care in this country.

3 comments:

Sean said...

How does your private insurance measure up to the continuation of your insurance with COBRA, quality-wise?

illyrias said...

The coverage appears fine - except that it doesn't include maternity care. Quality-wise, I've thankfully never had to really test either option.

The main problem with private health insurance that I've found is the escalating costs if you get sick, have an accident, or just as you get older. Being a 20-something (with no plans to have a kid), it's perfectly fine to be under private health insurance.

I'm just scared that the first time something serious does happen to me, or just as I get older, I'm going to have to scrap this whole self-employed-living-my-life-how-I-want fun for a 9-5 jail.

That's why I'm hoping Obama and his ilk will pull through for me before then. Don't worry. I'm not holding my breath.

Jermaine said...

I hope they make some HUGE changes as well. I mean, don't we deserve it? Why do people in Europe have better health-care than us? I don't get it. Maybe it's time we learn from them instead of simply pounding our chests and proclaiming to be number 1 at everything. It may just be possible that somebody else does something better than us, I'm OK with that and would prefer to study how they do it so we can make it work for us.