erratio | Reading

One very small step for a man, one giant leap for Her Majesty's Government.

Cold War in a Country Garden (Dilke, volume 1) by Lindsay Gutteridge

siderea

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1891517.html

This is part of Understanding Health Insurance

Introduction
A Health Plan is a Contract
The Three-Stage Model ⇐ You are here

The Three-Stage Model

When you have health insurance, you have a contract (health plan) with the insurance company that says that for the duration (the plan year) of the contract, you will pay them the agreed upon monthly fee every month (the premium), in exchange for them paying for your health care... some.

How much is "some"? Well, that depends.

To understand what it depends on, you have to understand the three-stage model that health plans are organized around.

This three-stage model is never described as such. It is implicit in the standard terms (jargon) of the health insurance industry, and it is never made explicit. There is no industry term (jargon) for the model itself. There are no terms (jargon) for the three stages. But health insurance becomes vastly easier to understand if you think about it in terms of the three-stage model that is hiding in just about every health plan's terms (agreements).

( Read more: 12,170 (sic!) riveting words about health insurance in the US] )

This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

cosmolinguist

After the (amazing!) support act Karkasaurus, we went back to the bar and the first thing D said was "I have got to improve my cardiovascular fitness." (I wasn't expecting this at all, so I burst out laughing.)

His ear plug came apart when he tried to take it out, and it's still stuck in his ear. I got to put a teaspoon of olive oil in his ear now that he's in bed, which might help it find its way out. Protecting your hearing is important, but what a nuisance this is!

james_davis_nicoll

I am not aware of any big name authors who got their start with a work published by Baen Books after 2006. If there are recent analogs of Bujold or Weber, I do not know of them.

andrewducker

About a month ago Gideon watched a bunch of videos about Minecraft, asked if he could play it on her tablet, got a few pointers from me to get him going and then dove in and started building stuff. At an impressive rate considering that he can't read any word more than 4 letters long.

Yesterday I mentioned Minecraft to Sophia, and she showed interest, so I set her up on my desktop and she got stuck in. She's asked for more help than Gideon has, but has been happily building herself an underground house. And just now I wanderd into my office to see her on the desktop and Gideon sitting on the floor with his tablet, with the two of them intermittently showing each other cool things that they'd found.

So tonight, after they're asleep, I'm going to set them both up for online play, and rent a realm*, so that they can be in the same world with each other.

*I am totally willing to pay £3.99 per month to not have to maintain my own server.

james_davis_nicoll

So, I asked on Bluesky:

Aside from Larry Correia, are there any big name Baen authors who debuted at Baen, after Jim Baen's death?

(So, Tim Powers wouldn't count because he debuted not at Baen and also long before JB died)

I got three names: Chuck Gannon, Jason Cordova and Mike Kupari. Gannon actually debuted at Baen in 1994 but only two (I think) short pieces, after which there was a long delay until his novels began appearing. I don't know the other two but SF is huge and it's perfectly possible for me to overlook BNAs. Still, granting all three, with LC that makes four... and in 2028, Toni Weisskopf will have been running Baen for as long as Jim Baen did.

This could, of course, be the natural consequence of the Del Monte approach.

[added later]

andrewducker

1. How Screen Time Affects Childhood Brain Development: (tags:brain children funny screens )
2. Four reasons why the UK is already at war with Russia: (tags:Russia UK war )
3. Looking Back at the Work of John Varley, 1947-2025: (tags:scifi obituary )
4. Dating a man who's most likely autistic: (tags:autism relationships )

james_davis_nicoll

I got much better at spelling his name once I realized it contains "lie".

Embattled CPC leader's Christmas card list gets one name shorter.

james_davis_nicoll

Where to start reading — or rereading — Varley's many series and stories.

Looking Back at the Work of John Varley, 1947-2025

james_davis_nicoll

The visitors might be Bird Island's salvation or simply the next step in its doom.

The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson

siderea

So, I, uh, got my RSI/ergonomics debugged!* I then promptly lost two days to bad sleep due to another new mechanical failure of the balky meat mecha and also a medical appointment in re two previous malfunctions. But I seem back in business now. The new keyboard is great.

Patrons, I've got three Siderea Posts out so far this month and it's only the 12th. I have two more Posts I am hoping to get out in the next three days. Also about health insurance. We'll see if it actually happens, but it's not impossible. I have written a lot of words. (I really like my new keyboard.)

Anyways, if you weren't planning on sponsoring five posts (or – who knows? – even more) this month, adjust your pledge limits accordingly.

* It was my bra strap. It was doing something funky to how my shoulder blade moved or something. It is both surprising to me that so little pressure made so much ergonomic difference, and not surprising because previously an even lighter pressure on my kneecap from wearing long underwear made my knee malfunction spectacularly. Apparently this is how my body mechanics just are.

siderea

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1890494.html

0.

Hey Americans (and other people stuck in the American healthcare system)! Shopping for a health plan on your state marketplace? Boy, do I have some information for you that you should have and probably don't. There's been an important legal change affecting your choices that has gotten almost no press.

Effective with plan year 2026 all bronze level and catastrophic plans are statutorily now HDHPs and thus HSA compatible. You may get and self-fund an HSA if you have any bronze or catastrophic plan, as well as any plan of any level designated a HDHP.

2025 Dec 9: IRS.gov: "Treasury, IRS provide guidance on new tax benefits for health savings account participants under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill"

Bronze and Catastrophic Plans Treated as HDHPs: As of Jan. 1, 2026, bronze and catastrophic plans available through an Exchange are considered HSA-compatible, regardless of whether the plans satisfy the general definition of an HDHP. This expands the ability of people enrolled in these plans to contribute to HSAs, which they generally have not been able to do in the past. Notice 2026-05 clarifies that bronze and catastrophic plans do not have to be purchased through an Exchange to qualify for the new relief.

If you are shopping plans right now (or thought you were done), you should probably be aware of this. Especially if you are planning on getting a bronze plan, a catastrophic plan, or any plan with the acronym "HSA" in the name or otherwise designated "HSA compatible".

The Trump administration doing this is tacit admission that all bronze plans have become such bad deals that they're the economic equivalent of what used to be considered a HDHP back when that concept was invented, and so should come with legal permission to protect yourself from them with an HSA.

Effective immediately, you should consider a bronze plan half an insurance plan.

( Read more [3,340 words] )

This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

andrewducker

About two months ago, I had a nasty respiratory infection. And while I was lying awake one night, I could hear my heart beating quite loudly.

Having had multiple friends go to the doctor to check on something and then have the doctor tell them that they urgently needed medication before their high blood pressure did them serious damage/killed them, I thought I should pop in to the doctor for a chat.

They checked me on the spot, said my blood pressure was a little high, but nothing terrible, and told me to join the queue to borrow a blood pressure device.

danieldwilliam gave me his old one, and I spent a couple of weeks taking results. Which mostly showed that my pressure is fine in the morning, but that after I've spent 90 minutes shouting at Gideon to stop bloody well mucking about and go to sleep, it's a fair chunk higher than it should be. They also sent me for an ECG (which showed I have Right Bundle Branch Block, a harmless and untreatable condition that affects 15% of the population), an eye test (which found nothing), and a fasting blood test (which showed I'm still not diabetic, even though I can't have sugar in my diet even slightly any more).

They then had a phone call with me to chat it through, said that I'm a little high (on average), and a little young for it to be a major worry, but if I was up for it they could put me on some pills for hypertension.. I agreed that it sounded sensible, and the doctor sounded positively relieved that she hadn't had to bully me into it.

The weird feeling is that this is the first time I've been put on to a medicine that I will have to take for the rest of my life. There is now "The time I didn't have to take medicine every day" and "The time where I had to take medicine every day". Which definitely feels like an inflection point in my life. (Endless sympathy, of course, for people I know who have to take much worse things than a tiny tasteless pill with very few side-effects.)

So all-in-all, nothing major. Just the next step. I'm just very glad for the existence of modern medicine.