Fuzzy math

I've only been a homeowner for about a year and four months. I figured that there would be a learning curve when it came to taking on this responsibility, but that I could eventually figure out all that I needed to know... except my property tax bill. The first year that we paid our bill (actually my mortgage company escrows the payment for us), the total came in two installments of about $1050 each, for a grand yearly total of about $2100. This was the amount that was expected based upon what the previous owner was paying. No surprises. The first half of this year yielded a payment of about $1050. Once again, no surprises. The second half of the year I received the other payment request and this time it was for about $2600. Surprise.

That brought our 2008 total to about $3750, about an 79% increase. Wait, it gets better. Instead of the payment being 1050 + 2600 = $3750 next year, it may be 2600 + 2600 = $5200. That would be a 148% increase of our original $2100. I called Susie, who represents the company who runs our condo association, and asked if this was correct. I was told that the association hired a lawyer and he was successful in getting the amount reduced and that the amount that we would have paid would have been even higher.

I did some searching around the Cook county assessor's webpage and think I found a few answers. Assessments are done every three years. One-third of the county is done during one year, the next third is assessed the second year, the last third assessed the third year. The cycle then repeats. The assessment that I am now paying is actually based upon an assessment done in 2007, which was probably when the real estate market peaked. The increase is therefore the difference between the assessed value in 2004 compared to the newly assessed 2007 value. I suppose it makes some sense, but it still doesn't make me feel any better. I'm probably going to give our condo association one more call. A 79-148% increase just doesn't sound right.

I'll leave you with a picture I found amusing. You can pay your property taxes through Chase Bank so they put out this little advertisement. Notice the woman handing over her check with a big smile on her face. She seams thrilled that she gets to hand over her money.

"Yay! I just got gouged on my tax bill!"

Obama wins

At about 10pm central time, NBC called the contest for Obama. It looked like it was steadily heading that way during the course of the night and this was the final confirmation. One of the themes surrounding the election was that it would be historic regardless of who won. We would either have an African-American president or a female vice-president. Being from the Chicago suburbs, I'm pleased with the result, but the reaction from the masses was much more than I expected.

Let's put this in perspective... We won 6 NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls. One of those teams was possibly the best basketball team ever, finishing with a regular season record of 72-10. The Bears won Superbowl XX with possibly the greatest football team ever assembled, finishing 15-1 and trouncing the Patriots in the Superbowl 46-10. The White Sox won the World Series a few seasons ago, sweeping through the playoffs and losing only one of those games. The University of Illinois Fighting Illini almost had an undefeated basketball season a few years back. Needless to say, we've had our moments of celebration and joy. What I saw last night was more dramatic than any of those.

Whenever a presidential candidate won, there would be scenes of celebration for the victor as well as the moment of defeat for the loser. By the next morning, it was back to work as usual because most felt that we had just picked the lesser of two evils and that not much would be different, regardless of the outcome. Last night people were crying tears of joy, speechless in disbelief. People across the world were celebrating. Even the news media and journalists had a subtle partiality towards Obama. A crowd of several hundred thousand people stood for several hours in Grant Park to hear a victory speech. The sentiment of the U.S. and the world was one of renewed optimism and hope, not just passive acceptance. With the rest of the world's economies and well-being so strongly tied to U.S. policy, it's understandable that the world would be watching as intensely as they were. As a German diplomat once said, "When the United States coughs, the rest of the world gets a cold."

When Bush won both of his terms, I was pretty bummed for a few weeks because I felt that the "system" didn't work. I felt that the country would truly be worse off because of our elected choice. If McCain won last night, I wouldn't have really felt that badly. I think he would've done a good job as president and I wouldn't have had the the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had in 2000 and 2004. Considering the general ill will towards the Republican party, I think McCain was up against a lot right from the start. Indeed, many senators and congressmen lost their seats for no reason other than the fact that they had a capital R next to their name instead of a capital D.

We may not have all voted for him but it in everyone's best interest to make sure that he succeeds. Let's have a good four to eight years.

Get out the vote

A coworker or mine is fairly active in the political scene and we will frequently exchange ideas on political topics. She has been actively volunteering for some time and I felt that it was time for me to step up to the plate and do something instead of just saying something. I signed up to be a volunteer for the democratic party and finally got a call from them a few days ago. They wanted me to do some canvasing in Indianapolis but I had to turn them down since it was short notice. Instead I volunteered to assist at the local phone bank.

I got there at 9am this morning and I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to do. The woman in charge explained that they have lists of registered voters in Indiana (a state that's pretty much up for grabs) and that they want to encourage those people to get out and vote. The interesting part was that they didn't want us to try to ram some sort of democratic agenda down their throats.

We were given a basic script to follow and a list of people. The list had a person's name, their phone number, and the location that they should go to if they wanted to vote. Additionally, we would inform them that the polls would close at 6pm and that if they needed transportation to the polling place that all they had to do is call 1-876-MY-IN-OBAMA (I think that's what the number was, maybe it was 877 area code). After the call, we would mark a comment indicating the result of the call. Sometimes it was a disconnected or wrong number. Sometimes the person already voted or had no interest in talking to us. We were never told to encourage anyone to vote Obama, just to vote.

Most of the calls were fairly routine but one call stuck with me. I was an elderly woman and her husband that I called. I asked them if they voted early or planned to vote on Tuesday. She told me that they were both disabled/handicapped and that they didn't get out much. I gave her the phone number that she could call if she needed a ride to the polls. She got a pen so she could copy the number down and I repeated the number once again for her. I called a total of 58 people but it felt good to know that it made a difference for at least two of them.

It's the simple things

I've often found that it's the simple things in life that provide us with the greatest amount of pleasure. Likewise, I believe that it's the simple things in life that can cause us a lot of frustration. I'd like to introduce you to my car, a 2002 Toyota Corolla. It's run for 125,000 miles and hasn't had any catastrophic failures that would require me to dump it and buy a new car. I've kept up with the regularly recommended maintenance and have been pretty fortunate.

I wasn't so lucky this past Friday. The air conditioning stopped working a few weeks ago and I finally got the chance to take the car to the dealer to get it checked out. I explained that air will blow through the vents but it isn't cold. They checked it out and told me that there was a small hole in the condenser. The total cost to replace the condenser and all of the peripheral parts would be about $1100. Not cool. I asked the mechanic if it was really necessary to replace the entire setup or if he could just patch the hole up. Apparently the entire thing has to be replaced.

Whenever the mechanic at the dealer recommended that I get some kind of repair or maintenance that I was initially skeptical about, I would take the car to a different shop to verify the finding. The second opinion always agreed with the dealer mechanics original prognosis. So, it probably safe to say that the condenser is shot. This is not the frustrating part though. What IS frustrating is that this is probably a very simple repair that I could learn in about 5 minutes if someone explained it to me. Of course, the mechanic isn't about to do this; it's in his best interests to make this problem sound a lot more complicated and expensive that it should be.

I encountered this trend of induced complication so many times that I eventually asked one of my friends his opinion on it. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illnois at Urbana-Champaign (also where I earned my B.S. in chemistry) so I thought that perhaps his advanced degree could shine some light on my supposed ignorance. His response was simple, "If someone can't explain something to you in 5 minutes or less, then they don't know what they're talking about." I've used this test numerous times and it almost always weeds out the people that are knowledgeable and open about a subject from those that are unknowing or evasive.

The moral of the story is that life is inherantly simple. It's people that end up complicating it. Try not to be one of them that does.

$5000 won't do as much as you think

With the latest election season upon us, candidates from both sides are using a lot of numbers and statistics to influence our votes. I ignore them for the most part (the numbers, not the candidates). This is not to say that I feel that their numbers about the economy, budget proposals, or expenditures aren't important. Rather, I think both sides will manipulate and "massage" the numbers to present the story they want the public to hear. I know I'm not the first person to say it, but statistics can be used to prove just about anything depending upon how the data is collected and presented. Do you really think the inflation rate is 3% a year?

As a measure of fairness and full disclosure, I must admit that I am an Obama supporter. While watching the debates, there is one number that John McCain has put in the public spotlight that I feel is worth noticing. His plan calls for everyone to get a $5000 pay bonus to pay for their own healthcare instead of employers having to pay. There are several issue that I have with this plan.

1. The $5000 will now be taxed instead being tax deductible.

The money will be taxed as if you had received a $5000 bonus on your pay check. It isn't really $5000. It will end up being some amount less than that depending upon your tax bracket. I'm still not entirely certain how people would get their $5000 if they're unemployed or homeless.

2. What happens to the money that is saved by the companies that don't have to pay for healthcare anymore (and is more better)?

If that saved money is applied to making the business more profitable or giving employees raises, then it could be a good thing for the American population as a whole. If this saved money just goes into the CEO's back pocket, I can't see how that's a good thing. How will this benefit Americans? The republican ticket would have us believe that now we can get healthcare from anywhere we want, thus providing free choice. More choices do not necessarily mean higher quality choices. It could mean just having more choices of similar merit.

3. I hate junk mail.

About 70% of the mail that I get is junk. It gets torn up immediately. I don't even need to open most of it to know it's junk. Here's a typical list of items I find in my mailbox:

• Credit card offers
• Life insurance
• Car insurance
  
• More credit card offers
• "Free" vacations or plasma televisions
• Coupons for home improvement services
• Another credit card offer
• Home refinancing
• Some car dealer trying to buy my car or sell me another one I don't need
• Another credit card offer
• A note from a local realtor telling me that NOW is the time to buy a house
• A note from a different realtor telling me that NOW is the time to sell my current house
• Another credit card offer (I'm getting annoyed now)
• Some charity I've never heard of asking for money
• A flier from Comcast telling me that I should switch my service to Comcast even though I already have Comcast
• Ahh, good... here's my American Express bill. Wait a minute, this is just another credit card offer that's disguised as my bill so that I'm tricked into opening it. Nice try.
• A flier from some guy telling me that I should vote for him
• A massive catalog from some company that I bought a small item from on one occasion several years ago.
• A mysterious envelope with no return address or marking that would indicate its origin. It has the words "Urgent! Time sensitive materials! Open immediately," written across the front. I doubt it authenticity and assume that's it's a credit card offer and tear it up anyway.

One of my cats actually enjoys this process. As I tear up the mail, he rolls around in it and tries to burrow underneath the pile and hide. It's not too hard considering how much there is when I'm done trashing all of it. Despite this small amusement, the last thing that I need added to this list is offers to sell me health insurance. I'd be willing to bet that I'd get more health insurance offers than credit card offers.

4. I don't entirely trust insurance companies

This is based entirely on first-hand experience or someone in my immediate circle of friends/family. To explain, about a year ago my fiance (now my wife) called me in the middle of the night because her head was in extreme pain and blood was pouring out of her ear. She said her roommate was going to take her to the emergency room. I did not debate the chosen course of action and agreed that an emergency room visit was the best and most immediate thing to do. I think anyone in their right mind would do the same thing. Whenever generous amounts of blood exit the body in any way, it's a good idea to see a doctor immediately.

As it turned out, she had a severe strep throat infection that had spread to hear auditory canal. The severe pain that she felt was her ear drum ready to explode. The doctor gave here a concentrated shot of amoxycillin and a few other drugs. The problem cleared up in about a week. Wow, good thing she had health insurance. I would hate to see the bill for that otherwise. Luckily, this is a covered event... or so we thought.

Several weeks later she gets a bill stating how much she owes. Let's just say that it's a whole lot more than we were expecting. We check her insurance package and it clearly says that emergency room visits are covered 100% except for a $100 copay. We should owe $100. We call the insurance company to debate the issue. The customer service rep. tells us that technically it was not a emergency room visit and was classified as an out-patient procedure instead. How is this an out-patient procedure? She walked into the emergency room. Thus, isn't this an emergency room visit? The rep. explains that because she would not have died from the infection, that she didn't need to visit the emergency room. As a result it is considered an out-patient procedure and is billed according to the out-patient billing schedule.

According to this argument, emergency room visits are only for people nearing death. This could potentially result in a game of Russian roulette in a very literal sense. Do you go to the emergency room with a condition that you think is severe enough to be fatal and risk having to pay a whole lot more if you're wrong or wait until you can see your regular doctor and hope you don't die in the meantime?

Keep in mind that she had an employer funded health insurance program while she was working at J.P. Morgan Chase. This wasn't some hack and slash insurance program. Now imagine having a $5000 plan. How much health care do you really think you're going to get for that much money? Do you really think that insurance companies are going to cover serious hospital visits that can cost in the hundreds of thousands when you only gave them $5000? They wouldn't even cover a bloody ear.

5. The average American will be either unable or negligent when charged with the responsibility to care for themselves.

I can't take credit for this entirely. A coworker of mine said that if people got an extra $5000 in their paycheck, they would "blow it" instead of spending it on the health care. There's nothing attached to that $5000 that prevents someone from spending as they please, healthcare or not. What do you do when someone in this situation gets sick? Any ethical physician or hospital will have to treat the person. As a result, the $5000 will have been wasted as if it were never given/received in the first place. This is not to say that negligence will be the only reason that the $5000 will be used for unintended purposes. Some people will use it for food, housing, education, energy, and other resources that are necessary for survival. In either case, these people will not be covered under any plan and another can of worms has been opened.

6. Giving people $5000 does not solve any of the core issues regarding health care.

Ask the average American what they feel are some of the issues with our health care system and you'll be able to compile a sizable list. Now ask how many of those problems will be solved by throwing money at it. The issues with the system are ethical, cultural, political, organizational, and social. Giving people $5000 is a cosmetic change at best. It won't fix the fact that health insurance companies contribute heavily to political campaigns or that some less than reputable hospitals will dump patients (still in their hospital gown) on skid row if it doesn't look like they'll be able to pay.

Does Obama have a solution? Nope. Every candidate tells us that they're going to fix health care, break our dependence on foreign oil, and fix the ills of society. It never happens though. As long as health care is a for-profit business, money will fuel the juggernaut that it is. Try to stay out of the way.