Dear President Obama:
I am 50 years old. I was diagnosed with carcinoma in-situ 16 years ago and following my divorce 12 years ago I became self-employed. After my Cobra ran out I was able to find costly, but affordable health insurance. As a responsible individual, I have struggled to maintain my individual coverage and have increased my deductible and out of pocket-limits in an attempt to control my cost and keep my health insurance.
Last year (2009) my insurance premium was increased over 25% even though I increased my deductible and out of pocket to the highest limits available. I paid out over $6075.24 in premiums, $2415.26 for medical care, $225 in co-pays and $1500 for prescriptions. I never reached my deductible of $2500 so the insurance company only paid out a total $935.32 to my providers.
I must repeat, in 2009 my insurance company received $6075.24 in premiums and paid out only $935.32!
I have just been notified that my premium for next year 2010 has been increased over 40% to $8496.24 ($708.02 per month) !!!! This is the same insurance company I have been with for over 11 cancer free years!!!
I need your Health reform bill to help me!!! I simply can no longer afford to pay for my health care costs!!
Thanks to this incredible premium increase demanded by my insurance company, January will be my last month of insurance.
I live in the house my mother & father built in 1958 and I am so afraid of the possibility I might loose this heirloom as a result of my being forced to drop my health care insurance. The health insurance industry has not denied me insurance directly, but indirectly they have by increasing my costs. They perceive me as becoming a higher risk factor to them despite being a loyal customer. I will never be able to obtain new health insurance due to the lack of real competition.
We are talking about Anthem who apparently has no respect for your attempts to reform the health insurance industry.
Please stay focused in your reform attempts as I and many others are in desperate need of your help.
Sincerely
Natoma Canfield
Joel Spolsky wrote the following indicators when, and when not, to take venture capital for your start-up company:
There are a few indicators for the type of company that I believe can benefit from, and should take, VC.
- There’s a land grab going on. The business is in a new field with no competition, but the field has proven itself, and is obviously going to get very crowded very soon, so the faster you can grab territory, the better.
- There is a provable concept that’s repeatable. I always point to the example of the Starbucks IPO, which was brilliant because it was so simple. Every new Starbucks store that opened in Seattle became profitable in a matter of months. They tried a couple of stores in Chicago and Washington just to make sure it wasn’t a Seattle thing, and those worked even better. Thus, the formula of opening as many stores as possible was as close to a sure-thing as possible, so raising money was a no-brainer.
- The business itself could benefit from the publicity of getting an investment from someone who is thought of as being a savvy investor.
- The investor will add substantial value to the business in advice, connections, and introductions.
- The business can potentially have a big exit or become a large, publically traded company.
- The founders are not in it for their own personal aggrandizement and are happy to give up some control to make the business more successful.
There are counter-indicators, of course: signs that you shouldn’t consider VC. Here are just a few off the top of my head:
- If the founders are risk-averse and are willing to trade a much smaller payout for lower risk.
- If the founders are technical without substantial business experience and wish to maintain absolute control forever.
- If the investor is mostly “dumb money,” i.e., someone who doesn’t know about the field. The proverbial dentist, who is happy to give you a half million bucks, but doesn’t know the first thing about CPMs and CPCs and CTOs, so you might as well not bother.
- If you’re going into an established field with a lot of competition, there’s no benefit to speed; you’re better off slowly building a niche business and growing from there, quietly taking one customer at a time away from the competitors.
- If the product is immature and unproven, in which case, expensive marketing efforts will be wasted proving to the world how bad your product is.
- If the founders don’t have enough of the right kinds of industry connections, or the idea is not compelling enough, so that raising VC would take months or years
- If there is any other way to raise the kind of money you need, for example, by selling actual products to customers.
“Tulog Na” (Sleep Now) by Sugarfree. This song keeps playing back in my head.
T-Shirt Wars! The coolest video I’ve seen in a long time!
Kenny Rogers - They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To
While it’s definitely important to tell your children about the negative aspects of drinking liquor, it might also be worth pointing out to them the positive aspects. Because whether you like it or not, they’re going to be real curious and experiment with it.
