Mercury's personal banking product allows you to reject ACH transactions before they clear. They also allow you to generate virtual account numbers, so you can easily cut off an entity without having to change your main account number. Unfortunately Mercury charges a monthly fee.
I used Mercury when I had an LLC and had a great experience. It feels like they're the only bank that's not 10 years behind in technology. I've never tried their personal banking, but the ACH denial power makes me a lot more curious.
Any thoughts on where your personal exposure came from?
Also, I would love to see a histogram of results among the general population, if that can be found in the literature anywhere. I think it would be helpful context for result interpretation and a useful addition to your FAQ.
My levels of PFOS was the highest, that's "Scotchgard". The house I live in has a very expensive reverse osmosis water filter on the tap so I don't think it's that.
Large employers are often self-insured. But since they lack the expertise and large network of negotiated rates and providers, they typically hire a company in the insurance business to administer their plan. Thus, the employer bears the risk of the claims, and also is the party that benefits when expenditures are reduced.
.... which leads to excellent situations where employers try to get rid of employees who have expensive health problems. Especially if a smaller employer is self-insuring because a decision maker read some blog post about it and thought it sounded neat.
Sorry about the cancer!! please go die somewhere that I cant see it thanks.
If the employer doesn't self insure, then their insurer will raise their rates because their employees have a history of expensive health problems. Which still leads to pressure to get rid of those employees. (Unless the employer based coverage is priced like marketplace plans, where only age, sex, and smoking are available to set prices; but I don't think that's the case for most?)
Even the age factor is bounded by the highest risk age having to be only 3x the lowest risk age (i.e. a subsidy from young to old). The lack of ability to price based on pre existing health conditions is a subsidy from healthy to sick.
And for political reasons, we can afford to discriminate against tobacco use, but not sugar or alcohol or sat fats or lack of exercise.
> Does that page apply to employer based plans? It's not clear that it's not just discussing marketplace plans.
It applies to all non-Medicare, non-Medicaid, non-grandfathered[0] plans for people under the age of 65.
Ironically, once you turn 65, all bets are off: insurers can factor your age into your premiums, and people often get a massive rate hike then (usually prompting them to switch to Medicare).
[0] A small percentage of employer-provided pre-ACA plans are grandfathered in, but they're few in number and decreasing over time. If you have a grandfathered plan, you probably know it, because it's required to be disclosed visibly in the plan documents when you enroll.
>>The only factors allowed to price insurance is age, location, and tobacco use.
Not necessarily.
Self funded plans are underwritten. Fully Insured over 50 fte plans are underwritten. A carrier will underwrite based upon Medical History. Individual Short Term Medical plans are also underwritten.
>>It applies to all non-Medicare, non-Medicaid, non-grandfathered[0] plans for people under the age of 65.
Incorrect, see above.
>>Ironically, once you turn 65, all bets are off: insurers can factor your age into your premiums, and people often get a massive rate hike then (usually prompting them to switch to Medicare).
Again, not necessarily, Nearly all Americans over 65 have Medicare, as part A is required. The States regulate these plans so each state may be different in some way. Medicare supplements are often underwritten, but can be guarantee issue, again depends on the State.
>>A small percentage of employer-provided pre-ACA plans are grandfathered
Correct, these are getting priced out. They are underwritten. If you are on a GF/GM plan, then switching to LFP or similar is likely a smart move.
>>Which still leads to pressure to get rid of those employees.
Can you give a source to this statement or is this an ad hominem?
>>but I don't think that's the case for most?
Great question, generally the larger the company the better the case for self funding. Keep in mind there are different types of self funding, such as graded funding and level funding. Most employees on employer based health insurance are likely to be on a self funded chassis however that is changing. Not all states provide that data, without that, it's hard to pinpoint an exact number of how many is on what chassis.
The entire city of Mountain View is literally one giant EPA Superfund site (look it up) and I wouldn’t go near any of those beautiful creeks they have running around or play in the soil…
It's not just Mountain View. All of Silicon Valley is dotted with superfund sites. Years ago IBM got sued by former employees about exposure to carcinogens at their San Jose factories. IBM won, but, yeah, I'd still be careful.
Yes good point about the military waste. Hunters Point in SF comes to mind. A highly contaminated radioactive site that required extensive soil remediation.
A lot of the radioactive soil was just sent to regular state landfills.
Then after they had started building multi family homes on top of the site, they found out the cleanup company was falsifying soil samples and the site was still highly radioactive.
I hope that situation is not typical of how Superfund sites are handled
What Lennar did in BVHP ought to be criminal. Treasure Island (also an ex-military Superfund site) is a mess of radioactive waste on its way to becoming luxury condos as well. Oh well, it will be a fun cancer cluster in a couple decades.
AMD, Intel, Fairchild, IBM, HP, Nat Semi, Raytheon, Teledyne, Westinghouse, and LLNL all gifted the Bay Area with Superfund sites with most concentrated in Santa Clara county. Even stuff that doesn't rise to the level of a Superfund site can still be far too polluted to develop (e.g. Brisbane).
Note that the map only shows National Priority List sites. They're considered to be the most polluted but that doesn't mean that sites not on the NPL list aren't also a concern (my county only has one NPL site but over a dozen non-NPL contaminated areas)
Tesla committed to publishing delivery numbers within three days of the end of quarter. They are just keeping with their commitment, not trying to bury this news by releasing it on a holiday weekend.
FWIW, it published Q1 numbers on April 4th...which would be 4 days after the end of Q1. April 4th was a Monday. I don't think too many people would critique them for waiting until the 5th of July, the Tuesday after a huge U.S. holiday, to publish news:
