Another six months

Last night I got an email from Progressive notifying me of my upcoming insurance renewal. Good news: premiums on my BMW M2 Competition did not go up. Bad news: the premiums did not go down either. As my friend commented: it’s truly a glass half full situation. I look at it slightly differently: it’s always better to gain nothing than to lose something. So I’m okay with premiums staying put for another six months.

I guess Bay Area BMW owners haven’t got into more mayhem than usual these days. Unfortunately, our cars must still be massively expensive to repair. If my father’s Toyota Corolla costs nearly $20K to fix for a simple front-end fender bender, a BMW with all its fancy aluminum bits has got to be worse. That’s why I am paying just above $1,000 dollars every six months on a plan with a $2,500 collision deductible.

And Progressive is already cheapest amongst its peers. Premiums would be double with State Farm or Geico. It’s madness.

All for a car that I seldom drive. It’s an expensive hobby, this car enthusiast thing. Being a single male in his mid 30s doesn’t help things either. And I’m suppose to be getting a second car in a few year’s time? (Hello there, Honda Civic Type R.) Though apparently it doesn’t cost that much more to insure additional vehicles. Insurance companies know you the lone person can only ever drive one car at a time. So you would only be be insuring the opportunity risk of driving the second vehicle, which at the same time decreases the risk of the primary vehicle.

Got to spend money to save money, I guess?

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Where do you want to go?

Money back

So my auto insurance came up for renewal recently, and I received a nice chunk of money back for the previous six-month period. Due to the coronavirus situation and how almost everyone is driving far less miles than before, insurance companies have saw fit to refund 15% of our premiums. While I’ll never complain about getting money returned to me, a measly 15% does seem bit small given that I’ve only driven a quarter of the miles I’d usually put on the car compared to last year. I feel like we deserve more than 15%, especially when these days, my 911 sits parked for 28 days out of a month.

Granted, because it is a 911, the amount of premiums I got in return is actually quite substantial - some two hundred dollars. It’s a testament to just how enormously expensive it is to insure a six-figure sports car in San Francisco, a city that’s notorious for car break-ins. That is indeed paying to play, as the saying goes; I would be a far richer person if I didn’t like cars and otherwise fully okay with driving around in a plain Japanese sedan. Alas it is destiny that I would be spending a significant chunk of disposable income to keep an expensive German sports car around.

One that’s barely done 500 miles since the COVID-19 lockdowns began in March.

I have thought about cancelling insurance on the 911 for the duration of the shelter-in-place, though on second thought that would not be wise because the car is not parked safely in a garage, so if someone were to tamper with it, last thing I want is to not have coverage. Things can get pricey very quickly: the front bumper alone - just the skin - is $6,000 dollars for a genuine replacement piece. That’s definitely not something I’d want to or can pay out of pocket for, should it get bashed in by another car while the 911 is stationary.

Besides, it’s rather therapeutic to take the car out on periodic drives; anything to escape being stuck to our homes. I’ll happily continue to pay the exorbitant insurance premiums.

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The coronavirus chronicles.

Buying contact lenses shouldn't be this hard

America: land of the free, home of ardent individualism, and yet why on earth are we unable to buy contact lenses without a valid prescription? Do the rule-makers at the FDA think that I would willingly put an incorrect lens into my eyeballs? I’m really not sure what the prescription requirement is suppose to accomplish (no such laws exist anywhere else in the developed world that I could find), other than make the process of procuring contacts more difficult than necessary.

This wouldn’t be a problem if my insurance carrier covered yearly contact lens exams - mine only pays for one biyearly. Since prescriptions are only valid for one year, it puts me in a sort of limbo situation during the second year. What I usually do is right before the prescription expires, I reorder a large enough amount to cover me until the next exam that my insurance will cover. In years past, I’ve even gone as far as buying a two-year supply, just to avoid going in to see the optometrist.

Because the fact is, my prescription has not change at all for the past half decade, and given the option I much prefer to keep ordering the same contacts in perpetuity until that point when I can physical see a deterioration. As the cliche goes, time is money, and heading to the eye doctor requires a few hours that I would rather allocate towards something more important (like writing on this blog, haha.) It’s unfortunate then the laws in America is so strict; I mean, how and why exactly does an eye prescription expire anyways?

Nevertheless, the problem of not being able to order lenses online without a non-expired prescription became acute for me a few weeks back. During the procedure of switching to a new pair of lenses, I realized my reserve supply of contacts was not going to last me until the next eye exam. Due to health and sanitation reasons, I was adamant in not stretching the biweekly replacement cycle, so that meant I had to find a way to order contact lenses pseudo illegally.

Thanks to wonders of international commerce, it turns out shops in countries that don’t have the draconian restriction can and are willing to ship lenses to the United States. For sure there’s a comparative premium over the prices at online shops here in the States, but that’s a delta I must pay this time because otherwise I will run out of contact lenses. I placed an order with a Vancouver based company called Fresh Lens, and the product arrived yesterday correctly and as advertised.

A small crisis averted, I would say.

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To be able to handhold a 3-second exposure on a smartphone is simply amazing.

You really get what you pay for

Recently, my mom took an awkward fall off her bed, causing a hair-line fracture on her left clavicle. Before knowing this diagnosis, she went to her family doctor to check on the massive bruising and pain that resulted. The clinic took a CT scan, and recommended she go to an emergency room to have the x-ray images checked out, and if needed, receive treatment. The clinic itself is not equipped for such procedures, and heading to the emergency room would be far quicker than waiting for a referral to see a specialist.

Being disabled, mom has Medicare coverage, so she can quite literally go to any emergency room at any hospital. We chose a local private hospital because we figured there’d be less people there waiting than SF General, the city’s public hospital. My presumption was correct as there weren’t a line at all (this is 7 PM on a Friday, for what it’s worth); we quickly checked-in and my mother received care almost immediately. The facilities are modern and nice, and the staff is super attentive - no less than four personnel tended to my mother for what amounted to only a confirmation of small fracture and a demonstration on how to use a sling to secure the arm.

The quality of care between private and public hospitals is immense.

I’ve seen this myself. I’m lucky that my work provides great health insurance through Kaiser, and as someone who grew up poor and relied on clinics and hospitals catered towards low-income, the superiority of the care at Kaiser was eye-opening. I remember vividly getting blood-work done at a Kaiser campus, and was surprised the results came back the same day within a few hours. I was still accustomed to waiting a few weeks for reports and test results that was the norm of my childhood healthcare experience.

For the richest country this planet has ever seen, this gulf of care between the haves and have-nots (healthcare-wise) shouldn’t exist - it’s morally wrong. Until the day America provides universal care for its citizens, it’s a continued stain and shame on this country. The benefits of a healthy populace with no fear of medical debt burden are incalculably positive, and we can certainly afford it (looking at you, military budget.)

For me personally, the question of healthcare certainly gives me some pause in regards to switching jobs or moving to another State. Having proper insurance takes such a load off in terms of stress that it’s downright scary the thought of being without it for any period of time. Imagine a United States with Medicare for everyone: people would be more apt to move freely within the country for jobs and opportunities, and I think it’ll be great for innovation.

We can get there. We have to. One of the saddest things in America are the GoFundMe campaigns for a person’s gross healthcare bills. A failure of society that we mustn’t continue to accept.

I don’t always drink regular Coke, but when I do, it’s got to be the bottled version with real cane sugar. Stay thirsty my friends.

Quality healthcare is something to behold

As any healthy person in his twenties are wont to do, I've been neglecting to perform my yearly health checkups, even though my work covers all three major facets of health, vision, and dental. Why waste precious time to visit the clinic only for them to tell me exactly what I already know: I'm completely healthy. 

Well, one of the numerous side-effects of turning 30 is that it has you reevaluate many things, one of which is I probably should go see the doctors to get everything checked out - you know, just to be sure. One likes to think that this side of 30 as another fresh starting point, and I wanted to know my baseline - and to fix any problems - before I embark on the next great life journey (corny isn't it). 

So the past couple of weeks I've been to the eye doctor and my primary care physician - both for the very first time in my adult life (in two weeks time it's the dreaded dentist!). One of the big discoveries in doing so wasn't related to my health at all, but rather I realized how incredible my health coverage is. Not only does my work cover all three major items, but the quality of the coverage is in a word, superb. 

I've now seen with my very eyes the quality hierarchy in healthcare.  

During my impoverish childhood I was relegated to free/low-income clinics, and to contrast that experience with the level of care I got these past weeks, they are quite literally opposite ends of the spectrum. For example I thought blood test results would take a few weeks - because when I was young they did - but just two days ago Kaiser turned it around the same day, with a message from my doctor discussing the results from the very next. I was pleasantly stunned.

How lucky am I to have health benefits that cover me so completely?

People say all the time "The rich always get richer" and I think it doesn't only apply to money: proper healthcare also have compounding benefits to a person's life. Those who don't have or can't afford quality health insurance to deal with long lines, less attentive doctors, and subpar facilities. I know, because I've lived through it. Whether the system is "fair" or not is not for me to debate, but I think it's definitely an additional disadvantage to have to overcome. 

I guess I'm glad and grateful to have done so.