Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past

The Parlous State of American Health Insurance

Yesterday, I received the bill for my heart intervention, hospital stay, and the imaging (echocardiograms and the like) that was done before the heart work.

The raw "retail" amount was $100,000. But all my providers are in the preferred network. They agree to accept about $35,000 from my insurer. My current insurance plan has a roughly $2,000 deductible each year, and then pays 75% for anything above that. I pay the remaining 25% up to an additional amount of $6,000 per year. The most I should be out of pocket in any given year is $2,000 (deductible) plus $6,000 (co-insurance payment) or $8,000 total. (That excludes the physician's fees. I was in the catheter lab for 90 minutes for the angiogram and stenting. I was in a standard, private hospital room for less than two days, and needed no special gear or care.

Money

She got big house, drop top, jet ski Versace, Prada, and Veni

I had a lot of response from One Million Dollars! yesterday, much of it about my investment approach — folks, always consult with a trained, certified financial adviser who only has your best interests at heart and isn't paid by commissions, and such beasts exist — but some about how they'd spend the money.

My dream is a second floor on our house. We've added a bedroom and bathroom in the basement, and cleaned it up enough that I put my office into a freed-upon side. I'd rather not add much more space, but it would be nice to have a "rumpus room" and another spare room. Thus is the extent of my ambition. No cars, no second houses, no ski chalets. Just a little freedom to pursue the work I love, and the same for my family, and the ability to be charitable at higher levels of giving (and the time

Buddies

One Million Dollars!

My friend/colleague/employer/foil Marco Arment was employee #1 at Tumblr, and it thus is no surprise that people have been curious as to the number and total value of the bags of cash that will be thrown out of helicopters onto his palatial Hastings-on-Hudson estate soon. His boss, David Karp, reportedly received from Yahoo's $1.1 billion offer about $220 million or $250 million, depending on the source.

Marco wrote a blog post about his time working for David from 2006 to 2010, which began as a collaborator on consulting work and morphed into Tumblr. It's a lovely bit of writing about how two people (even in an unequal power relationship) can produce sums greater than their parts through productive agreement and disagreement.

But on the Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP), Marco and his two co-hosts, John Siracusa and Casey Liss, go into the issue of money much further