February 11, 2011, 11:01 am
Quick bleg here -- if you have any contacts with organizations of homeschoolers in AZ, could you drop me an email? Our small high school is, due to some random factors, short of baseball players. We have a well-coached program on a nice field and play in the Arizona (AIA) 2A league against public and private schools. Homeschoolers are eligible to play for us and we would love to find some dedicated players looking for this kind of experience. Many of our kids make the starting lineup as Freshmen, so there is a lot better chance of getting good playing time here vs. other larger high school programs. All positions are welcome but from a personal standpoint, since my son is first in the rotation, we could really use some pitchers so he doesn't need Tommy John surgery by the end of the year ;=)
February 16, 2010, 8:03 pm
There just seems to be a tremendous mental block people have about paying cash for health care. Megan McArdle is surprised at how strong this bias is in some of her readers. I'm not, as I see it in my wife and friends all the time.
Several years ago we switched to a high-deductible catastrophic health care policy. We save a TON of money with this policy, such that year in and year out, even with fairly high out of pocket expenditures, our total health care expenses have been lowered.
Generally, I go ahead and wash all of the charges through the policy so I get credit for them against the cumulative deductible. But since we have never hit the number, I am increasingly less attached to this approach. Particularly since a number of doctors and other providers are offering cash discounts now for bypassing insurance and paying cash.
Here is an example -- my son has had some elbow pain pitching lately, so seeing all the kids who are having to get Tommy John surgery before they are out of high school, we decided to make sure everything was OK. We took him to a GP who specialized in sports medicine and works with a number of MLB pitchers as a team physician to the Brewers. For cash, he charged me $50 and spent nearly 30 minutes with my son. Then he sent us downstairs for some x-rays of his elbow, and the radiology group there, again for cash, charged us $35 total for three x-rays. There are people who pay more for a pedicure.
Nothing is ever going to improve in health care costs until individuals take more responsibility for the cost-benefit tradeoffs of the services they receive.
