Business (as usual!)

[merimask]

Well, yesterday certainly was exciting in a geeky cyber artist kind of way.  Final count after my day of being featured on DeviantArt:  over 2,700 hits on my gallery, and over 4,800 hits on the Fire Dragon that was the featured Daily Deviation.   Just to put that into perspective; since I opened the site (November 20th I think) I'd only recieved 291 hits on my gallery in total, until yesterday.  Wow!  My Etsy shop experienced a boost in hits exactly like the kind I get when I buy a showcase...so not bad at all!

I ran out of black dye over the weekend...what to do?  I know; make BLUE things.


This one was a special request, so it was going to be blue anyway...

Both up in Etsy, naturally.

I am doing an awful lot of dragon masks lately.  I just keep getting requests for them...it's not my fault!  It seems very few mask artists make dragon masks, too, so I have cornered the market there.

Not complaining...I really like making dragons anyway.  I just figured I'd better explain myself, since you guys are probably sick of seeing dragons!

In other news; not much going on.  I'm very very worried about our health insurance.  Greg's employer is raising the rates by over $200 a month for our health coverage.  That means over $400 a month out of Greg's paycheck, just for insurance.  Greg is making noises about dropping it, but getting health insurance on your own is an extremely expensive proposition.   I'm afraid we might not have a policy in a month.  Scary...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Health Insurance is scary, and expensive. We were uninsured for the better part of 4 years because of issues with his employers insurance--too complicated to go into here. We tried to get insurance on our own, but even going in with "group" insurance programs (such as offered to members of some professional organizations we belong to) insurance would cost us easily $1000 a month for the two of us--for insurance as individuals, the monthly rates were considerably higher. When Obama said in the debates that basic, adequate insurance coverage for the average American was about $1200, he wasn't exaggerating. It's very, very expensive to be privately insured. And we haven't any major health problems to raise our premiums.

The good news is that if Obama manages to pass his proposed plan, these rates may go down in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, though it's very expensive.

We are insured again, as of this fall. We're paying a lot of money for it--$300 a month for the two of us--and it's gouged a huge hole in our monthly budget, and I don't think the coverage is the best, but it's a HUGE relief to have that coverage again. Because it's really stressful to be constantly worried that something would happen, needing hospitalization or even surgery, without any way to pay for it. And I'm no longer terrified that something would show up that would then be a "pre-existing condition" when we did finally get insurance again, which would either disqualify us from coverage or make it so expensive we couldn't afford it.

um, that was me

[zannachan.livejournal.com]

Oops. I must have somehow got logged off. The above post was mine.

Re: um, that was me

[merimask.livejournal.com]

LOL...I do that all the time too. LJ just logs you out sometimes.

The insurance thing is VERY scary. It's become SO expensive. It's more than either the car payment OR the house payment...seriously! Just wow.

I keep telling Greg that even with the rate increase it's STILL a far better deal than what we could do on our own. We have dental & vision coverage too.

Turns out that NY state has a law; if your employer offers ANY package at all, you're stuck with it. So, unless he cancels the coverage altogether we will just have to pay the increase.

Re: um, that was me

[zannachan.livejournal.com]

We pay $300 a month for 2 people, basic medical, no dental, no vision, and really lousy medical coverage ($60 copay for name brand drugs, even approved ones when there is no generic available--serious ouch) and it's still less than a third of what we would pay for coverage anywhere else, and realistically closer to 1/8th of what we would pay for decent coverage as individuals.

If you cancel the coverage completely, you should also consider that if anything happens to either of you--say one of your develops high blood pressure, or falls and ends up damaging themselves in a way that eventually requires surgery or something, future insurance companies can turn you down or refuse to cover related problems because they are pre-existing conditions. So long as you are continually insured, you are protected from that.