Even when you’re Unemployed, Health Insurance doesn’t have to be outr of your Reach

Posted by on April 12, 2012 No comments

Unemployment in this country keeps floating around the 10% mark. To all these jobless people, their health insurance needs can be quite a frightening thing to contemplate. If you’re unemployed, health insurance does exist for you. If you are recently unemployed, you can always choose to take advantage of the COBRA legislation – where you choose to continue to make use of your former employer’s insurance plan.

Former government employees who are now unemployed for instance, will find that the government will pay 65% of their COBRA costs for a year and three months. The other 35%, they’ll have to find a way to pay themselves. Now everyone knows that when you find yourself newly unemployed, health insurance through the COBRA plan helps you cover yourself for some time. The main concern of course, is this – what do you do once you 15 months are up?

Pres. Obama’s healthcare reform of course, will kick in over the next few years and help a great deal with a situation like this. Until then, you have a number of options. If your husband or wife has a country job, you can always sign on as a party to that insurance coverage. Get on your spouse’s plan and you’ll have the perfect way out. But there’s a little problem there – you can only join your spouse’s plan during a short window every year. What do you do if that window doesn’t open for a few months?

Actually, The Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act says that after your employer stops covering your health insurance needs through the COBRA plan after the 15 months are up, they have to offer you individual medical insurance of the same kind. Of course, you have to buy this for money. But it’ll be much cheaper than if you just approached an insurance company on your own. Typically, you’ll receive a letter from your employer that explains to you how it works.

Getting your own individual health insurance from an insurance company can often be prohibitively expensive. They will even give you hell over pre-existing medical conditions. Your employer’s plan will be cheaper, and it will never run out. There are no pre-existing clauses that you have to bother with, either. You can keep the coverage for as long as you’re able to pay those premiums.

Even if you are unemployed, health insurance can be in your reach if you happen to belong to a trade group or association. If you’re an actor for instance, the Screen Actors Guild or another industry body will cover you as long as they work a little bit every year. There are all kinds of other groups that will give you coverage. College alumni associations, the local chambers of commerce and many other bodies do this. You just need to check.

Do Your Hybrid Car Mileage Figures Make No Sense?

Posted by on April 12, 2012 No comments

Certainly, the kind of hybrid car mileage you get is far better than anything you would get with a regular straight-out gasoline car. But hybrid car owners aren’t happy. Because as usual, the find that what they get is nowhere near what is advertised.

But you shouldn’t really blame the car manufacturers for making tall claims. Surprisingly, it’s the government that is to blame. The EPA’s fuel efficiency test has this flaw – that it will hype hybrid performance.

For instance, the Honda Cont Civic Hybrid is rated by the EPA to give you about 47 mpg in the city and slightly more than that on the highway. At no time though, are you likely to get more than 33 mpg or thereabouts. No, there’s nothing wrong with your car if it does this. You can have it checked out everywhere, and you would never find anything wrong with it. It’s just the way your car is.

You’ll find frustrated accounts from Prius owners all over the Internet, too. Usually, whatever the manufacturer claims the EPA-approved mileage is, you’ll get about 85% of that on the Highway. Anything lower than that though, your car could be defective.

Things get even worse when you’re using your hybrid car in the city. About 60% of the EPA claim should be about right. Would you believe that the Civic Hybrid merely returns 29 mpg in the city? The Prius happens to be slightly more fuel-efficient – it does about 35 mpg in the city.

The thing is, the EPA’s tests can be quite unreliable. They don’t actually take the car out on the streets to find out how it does. Instead, they measure how much in emissions your vehicle puts out, and they use that to estimate by method of the formula what your fuel efficiency is likely to be. They use the emissions from your tailpipe to try to measure how much fuel is being burned. While this works more or less for regular cars, it doesn’t do nearly as good a job when it comes to gauging hybrid car mileage. Here’s the problem.

The thing is, driving in the city, you are likely to come up against a traffic light or something else every now and then. This kind of stop-and-go is great for a hybrid car. It doesn’t use any gas when it’s going very slowly. When the EPA test tries to measure the amount of gasoline smoke coming out of the tailpipe in these situations, it’s just going to think that “Hey, this car is great – it’s moving and it’s not even producing any smoke”.

It’s not even possible to change the test because then, it would render all other EPA results from the past quite unusable. How would you compare today’s data to data from the past if everything was different?

And so, it isn’t anyone’s fault that your hybrid car mileage figures don’t make any sense. No one’s trying to put one over you. It’s just that they never thought that there would ever be such a thing as a hybrid car that could move without producing emissions.

Free Building plans for Your New Home

Posted by on April 12, 2012 No comments

Have you been toiling for many years, living in rented houses and apartments and now you feel that it is time that you owned your very own home? You are not alone in this as there are many people who hold a similar desire but have had to shelve their plans as they cannot afford to get the building plans they need for their home due to lack of money. If you are one of them then you should get your researching skills in full gear because you will need them to look for free building plans.

You can get access to building plans at absolutely no cost as long you have a computer with internet connection and some time on your hands. There are people who may be wondering why it is necessary to have much time if the plans are only a click away. Well, a single click may give you good building plans for your home but taking time on the internet may allow you to get a much better building plan that will impresses anyone that comes to visit you.

There are many kinds of free building plans available and they range from the old Victorian kinds, conventional and modern styles, cottage comp building plans and so on. While some building plans only offer the layout, there are some that offer a step by step plan of how the building can be done as well. These are the best for those people who have building skills and may want to do their own building with the help of friends or of hired workers.

When looking at the free building plans it is also important to look for those that also come with blueprints. Just because they are free does not mean that you should settle for a building plan that does not have any details. This is because everyone knows that for a good building to come up, the constructor needs to pay attention to the details. Apart from the details, the building plan you choose should also have materials that you can afford. While some building plans are quite a sight to behold, the cost of the materials that are used to make them can make a huge dent in your pocket.

The location of the building will also play a great part in determining the kind of building that you will settle for. If you have a small piece of land it will only make sense if you choose a small or medium-sized building plan. So choose wisely and get building your dream home.