Originally Posted by horseface

I am on vacation until the day before Thanksgiving, start res on Thanksgiving.

I believe I have no req'd sched check the day before, right?

Is noon the earliest I could be assigned to report on day 1 of res after vacation?

Originally Posted by hockeypilot44

I used it one year. It is a very straight forward insurance plan. The big thing I learned when I had it was that you didn't have to worry about being in-network. They treated in-network and out-of-network exactly the same. The high premiums make it over-priced though unless you actually have to use it for a big medical procedure, but then it's worth it. To anyone having a kid next year or getting surgery, get the DPMP. This is a no-brainer. I don't care what the planning tool says. I am speaking from experience. If the chances of having a major medical event are slim, then the DPMP premiums are high enough that it is probably not worth it. This is my opinion. I stress every year about picking the wrong health plan.

Originally Posted by flyallnite

To add on to what you said, I've found that the paperwork and planning associated with managing an ever changing HSA account is not worth the time or effort. And I've had a few years where unplanned medical expenses made me wish I'd had the DPMP. It seems with the other plans, I'm always paying more than I expected, for everything, including dental. Yes the premiums are a bite out of your paycheck, but I don't have to give my biometric information to anyone, and I don't have to keep records, receipts, account ledgers or submit expenses to anyone. I just go and they pay. Done. And I sleep better knowing that if anything happens, I can go see whomever I choose, and it's covered.

Originally Posted by Timbo

Call screw scheduling and beg for a trip. If you can find one in open time with a nice long layover near a place you'd like to be, put in a 'yellow slip' (trip request) for that one. My first month on the line, November 1985, based in MIA, the head of crew scheduling gave me a trip with a 24 hour layover in BOS on Thanksgiving, just so I could go to my parents house in NH for T-day! I didn't even ask him for this trip, he saw it come open, he knew I was from NH, and personally called me up to offer it to me! It was a wonderful thing having small bases with crew schedulers you interacted with every day.

The terms; yellow slip, white slip, green slip all came about 30+ years ago, when Delta did everything with a pencil and a piece of paper. If you wanted to pick up a trip, if you were a line holder you used the white piece of paper to request the trip, reserves used the yellow piece of paper, and if you wanted to work 'overtime' you used the green piece of paper. These papers were only 1/3 sheets of a normal page, thus the 'slip' term came to be.

You had to be present, to physically write it out and submit it into a drop box at the crew scheduling desk, or if you were tight with a crew scheduler, you might be able to call him and have him submit it for you...and you'd buy him a bottle of something expensive come Christmas, of course!

BUT...back then, there were very few commuters, because Delta had a lot of small bases, and every base had it's own crew scheduling desk, where you physically signed in, on a piece of paper, for your trip (pre DL Technology and it's computer days, i.e. pre-2008 ) so you were always in a place where you could submit your slips, or you called your "Friend" in crew scheduling.

I was 727 engineer on a trip one time when the copilot was complaining about a trip he'd been assigned. The Captain looked at him and said, "Who's your buddy in Crew Scheds?"

The F/O says, "I don't have buddy in crew scheds..."

The Captain said, "There's your problem."

Originally Posted by flyallnite

To add on to what you said, I've found that the paperwork and planning associated with managing an ever changing HSA account is not worth the time or effort. And I've had a few years where unplanned medical expenses made me wish I'd had the DPMP. It seems with the other plans, I'm always paying more than I expected, for everything, including dental. Yes the premiums are a bite out of your paycheck, but I don't have to give my biometric information to anyone, and I don't have to keep records, receipts, account ledgers or submit expenses to anyone. I just go and they pay. Done. And I sleep better knowing that if anything happens, I can go see whomever I choose, and it's covered.

Originally Posted by Mesabah

Originally Posted by hockeypilot44

I'll second that. It also seems that the planning tool is not an accurate representation of your medical expenses for the year. I know you can change it, but you would think you wouldn't need to. Everything almost always costs more than I'm expecting. There are a lot of loopholes in our plans.

Originally Posted by badflaps

There is the old story about the guy who always bought the cheapest. Lawyers, insurance, and automobiles.. His son got 10 to life for drugs, his wife died of cancer, and not to worry, he got offed in a recalled car.

Originally Posted by RockyBoy

And It's just a story. If my son gets busted for selling drugs, he should go to prison. Me having and expensive lawyer shouldn't matter. If my wife gets cancer, me having an expensive plan won't cure her cancer.

All of our plans offer us the same "level" of care. We just pay for the care in different ways. You want to pay upfront in premiums and maybe not use it, fine. You want to pay for what you actually use, go with a higher deductible. Last I checked the doctors were the same doctors for every plan.