do you have any thoughts on company benefits
i do but uh they're pretty slanted i want you to know
i'm prepared
uh my company was bought by another company
um-hum
and the majority of us were laid off
oh okay i see where this is going
uh-huh so you know uh what i would like to see
well uh the really sad part of this is that i'm fifty five years old
that's not that bad
and
beg your pardon
that's not so sad
oh my chances of getting another job are just really slim
hm
i was a systems analyst for an oil company
right
and you know they just i mean Sprint had uh two thousand jobs open i mean i'm sorry two hundred jobs open they had two thousand applications
for this type of work you know it's just uh and i guess that's that's pretty far-fetched as benefits go
uh-huh
but gosh you know i saw it i was fixed for life so uh
i think more and more people are finding that out even people with state and and uh federal jobs it it's a shock
it really is it really is
but uh i i think uh i guess my feelings on this are that the one of the most important benefits we currently have is our health insurance
that's true
and that if there were some way to get that to follow you from job to job
or so that you would not lose it if you have to leave a company
isn't there some sort of deal where you can continue your benefits for eighteen months
there is uh-huh and and that's fine but you know i'm still unemployed after about fourteen months okay
oh yeah that's worrisome
and when you switch yeah when you switch over the the premiums are really quite high
and additionally i've had a heart attack
um
so it's going to be really tough for me to do this so you know uh in in my very personal way i feel that insurance is just one of the most important benefits we have now
now with the political political situation the way it is i think that's going to change
you talking about national health
because
i think we're going to have to have something of that sort
um
so that will cease to be as important a benefit
i think that well i think the whole thing with this health insurance being so high is because people are
what are your feelings what what do you feel
suing left and right and just driving these costs up
well i agree with you but do you know that's that's what makes this such a tremendous benefit if you can possible get group rates
well i i have my own beef about health insurance i uh
i'm not a spring chicken myself quite frankly um i raised a family and
now i'd like to get back into my field which is teaching and it's at a time where school budgets are so far down that they're firing experienced people
and also you know i'm i'm a art teacher which is a very small field out of a whole school there's two or three
oh yes
uh-huh
and you know there are two hundred apliplations for one one job uh you send in a resume and they they don't even write a letter to you to say no thanks which
yep
they they don't have time
yeah i suppose and um i do substitute teach and my biggest complaint is schools get a discount insurance school districts because they have so many people
why can't they allow their substitutes to buy into it to pay ourselves just to get the lower rate that a group would have and they won't let us
well you've you've approached it
yeah they don't let you do it
what is their thinking on it
uh um i don't know i don't know
have they said
i just i just know it's not allowed
okay have they said we cannot do this because
yeah uh no not they they didn't get that far
no because
no because we we do we don't do this
we don't do this and everybody thinks it's sort of a crying shame i have been divorced and i knew that uh when i was divorced i was allowed that eighteen months of insurance on my ex-husband's plan and i was allowed to pay for myself
okay
uh-huh
at their lower rate and i don't see what the school district would have to lose by letting us pay for ourselves but
is uh let's see
are they paying a part of the premium
well i they're paying all the premium for their full-time teachers
oh they are
yeah yeah that's part of their salary
and have you offered to come in and have you offered to come in and pay the whole premium
yeah
and they still won't let you
no no it's just not policy
that's crazy
yeah that just doesn't seem to make any sense
so what do you do about insurance
well i am remarried now and my husband um quit his job to try some consulting he's an engineer
and what he did was he joined you know if you join a group sometimes it's a little less he joined the Engineer's Society or some group like that and what he did which was actually very clever most people want to have
ah yeah
the lowest deductible and then get eighty percent of their money back and all of this my husband said why don't we take a five hundred dollar deductible
if we have a little you know annual checkup here or there we can pay that that's not the problem
