+1. Bingo.

I may be totally out to lunch here BUT I have used the Gold HRA ($183/month for married, no kids at home) and Tricare Standard (no cost) and have had almost all my out of pockets AND Prescription co-pays covered. I live in a small town no where near a mil base and haven't taken the time to find out if I could save with Tricare Prime. For those of you with Prime what have your out of pockets looked like (especially copays for prescription drugs - my wife requires quite a few to manage her conditions). Any help would be appreciated.

We pay $12 copays for doctor visits and anywhere from $3 to $9 for prescriptions under Tricare Prime.

Ditto in CA.

Prime is $460 a year for the family (currently).

Scripts went up 1 OCT to 5 and 12 for a 30 day supply.

I think we went up on the per year premium also but best to let that dog lie!

If you sign up for the mail order program (90 day supply) the generics ($5 copays) are free.

Yep, we're in the process of doing that. Great deal. It takes them awhile to process the change. Make sure you have a couple months worth of what you and your family need before embarking.

A couple of years ago I crunched some numbers and came up with a LGB pay scheme. Basically it would go up at 4% for the 1st 10 years then level at 3.5 for another 10 and then 3% after that. Some call it a "flattened scale". The advantage would be that it would give the FOs a quicker rise early in their careers hence more money to put away for retirement. I did not however crunch those numbers in consideration of the entire payroll because that is beyond my capabilities. My comparison at the time was strictly based on the equipment we have.. had on the property at the time, and a basic premise that one would spend 35% of his time on the 757/767.. based on fleet make up. To me it just doesn't make sense anymore to have to wait until you are 63 years old in order to see the big money, because TVM is way lost by then. We need to take advantage of that in some better way. But hey, as long as we have 34 whole airframes that pay vastly more than the rest of the entire fleet we are successful. :rolleyes: At least Carl Spackler will make $130,000+ more at the end of this agreement than he did before, so I gotta feel good about that. :rolleyes: HE has TVM.. you and I do not. 88Driver does not. Satchip, does not.. well, you get the picture.

Sorry for the rambling response. I can talk this much better than I can write about it.

One other thought. We currently give zero thought to QOL. One has to either decide to go for the money OR QOL.. LGB would make QOL a bigger priority.

Funny you bring this up today, since yesterday I got a textbook superfluous bill from an ER. Long story shortened.. Last month my two year old was out in the back yard playing on the playset and got torqued off about something (most likely big brother induced...). Being a two year old, he reverted to the best method he knew to express his displeasure which was to take and 8 foot header off the top of the playset.

Of course I was on a layover in Grand Rapids...

Of course, my wife scooped him up and took him to the ER where, after she presented her insurance card, he was given a thorough once-over, an X-ray, and a clean bill of health (Thank God...)

Worth every penny, and my wife and son (and his older brother) were treated very well throughout the whole ordeal at Kennestone Hospital.

All told, the ER visit cost me about $200, which I consider reasonable.

But... yesterday... a bill for $160ish showed up from the hospital for some kind of ear thing. Ask the wife about it, and she tells me the nurse, while examining my son, said something like, "Wow! He has a lot of ear wax in there. I'll go ahead and take care of that."

Of course, after insurance adjustments and the 80/20 split, the ear cleaning only cost us about $30, but how many uninsured ER patients do you think get cursory ear cleanings? I'm thinking somewhere between none and, well... none.

I actually have been relatively pleased with the HRA we are enrolled in, and I think Delta provides much better medical coverage than most companies. Health care costs are skyrocketing, and the healthcare industry is going to recoup their costs anywhere they can. You and I, as the gainfully employed middle-class are going to suffer the brunt of it.