National Association for the Self-Employed -

has anyone heard of them? theweb address is http://www.nase.org/ please good - bad - the ugly, I am still trying to find out about health insurance

or this one http://www.nationalbusiness.org/ they are both in TX

Stay away from both...no better than similar insurance available elsewhere...limited coverage, high deductibles & co-pays...not saying they are a scam but they are not far from me & we get stuff from them (and have for years) all the time...just has that "shady" look & sound to it, the one time we really dug into it, it wasn't a good deal. I know your pain, but there IS NO affordable health insurance, as someone posted elsewhere get your spouse to get a job with company insurance and add you to her policy, if you do that you may get by with as little as $400-$500 per month extra for adding you to her policy, if it's a government job or they have real good benefits, maybe a bit less. I have watched the spouse premium on my wife's (on me) go up $150 a month in 2 years and her employer has changed coverage-companies every year because what THEY pay for her & other employees has gone up so much.... she's in healthcare so I know her employer knows how to find the best insurance at the lowest price but every year the coverage is less & the premiums are higher for me & the kids. PS: I checked on health insurance for the employees-me several times but the cost was so high and even then the deductibles & co-pays were so big my employees couldn't have afforded it. Most people don't realize you can't pick a % to pay for your employees. It's either you pay 90-100% of their premium (can't remember) or 0%... you can't "split" it with them. So though I looked hard for 3 years because employees really wanted health ins. there was nothing they could afford if I might have been able to...and nothing I could afford that had low enough co-pays & deductibles for them to use it (or the ones with 1 doctor, not taking new patients, 100 miles away, on their HMO "list")

that's news to me, Don. I offer to pay 50% of my employees health ins. premiums. I pay the full premium & deduct a weekly amount from paychecks... am I breaking any law?

Gosh, I've been searching for half an hour+, the laws have all changed, and there are tens of thousands of documents out there so who knows? This much seems to be true, you may be required to pay 50%+ or nothing depending on the type insurance & classifications and you do seem to be required to have at least 75% of employees participating unless your state has a small business provision in which case if you just have 2 or 3 (it seems) they all must participate. There are variations by state. Texas has recently changed it's laws so some insurance companies may require only the 50-50 contribution from small (less than 50 employees) employers but they can require more if the particular insurance company wants to and the 75% or 100% participation rule applies. The feds have some on-line guides for what to ask your insurance company to make sure you comply with everything (and there are tons of these required notices, HIPPA, COBRA, etc. things that have come along in the last few years) but the basic "rub" I could find seems to be that say you pay 50-50 and have 10 employees...the premium is $350 a month and 3 of them are young & stupid and don't want $175 a month out of their check (you can't force them to take the insurance) then you are below the 75% participation level and you may have to pay 100% or nothing...it has become a total nightmare even to the point that depending on how you handle the money you deduct to pay the premium you may be required to name a fiduciary trustee who technically handles that money from their checks (it can be you, but whoever it is has to file a bunch of reports every so often to prove all the money is going where it is supposed to) I have never seen such a maze. All these notices for things you can't even begin to imagine, special provisions if employees require respiratory protection (does that mean silica sand?) more notices about non-discrimination, COBRA portability, it goes on & on & on. I guarantee if I was doing it today (offering health insurance) I would make sure my insurance company assumed in writing responsibility for all compliance with everything and really I'd probably just use an employee leasing company and let them worry about it all...it was bad back when I looked into it but it is much worse now and states can pass their own rules as long as they are of more benefit to the employee than the federal laws...so God only knows how many requirements and pages of stuff you would be in there. PS: The typical "government funny thing" is half the most confusing stuff I looked at were things that were supposed to simplify everything And don't even begin to think about the requirements for retirement plans...sheesh...

Any body going to NPE ? Dave

And the new laws were supposed to benefit employees and help more folks get covered, but it looks to be having the opposite effect.

Everything changed is to benefit the insurance companies always, they even get to tell the doctors what they feel their services are worth. Auto body shops are told how much they are getting paid to do a job. Insurance companies run the country.

I have a relative that works for them. She says by no means use NASE/Megalife health insurance. If this tells you anything, Megalife employees are on Blue Cross/Blue Shield. We're in the same boat here. My wife taught school for years. Even with the school district paying her portion, it was still around $600 a month for me and two kids. When she decided to stay home, we went on COBRA at $850 a month, for 18 months. The only advantage is we can take that as a tax deduction, since the district is no longer paying a portion. Problem is our 18 months is up on April 1. We could have saved about $300 a month with an individual policy, but we wanted to have one more kid. Thus, stayed on the CoBRA to keep maternity coverage. I've been talking with an insurance broker who sells all different plans(BCBS/Aetna/Pacificare). It's nice to have someone to sit down with, who can explain the differences in each plan. Personally, if I didn't have kids, I'd do a high-deductable/HSA(health savings account),which allows you to put aside tax-free dollars(which you keep) to use toward medical expenses. That is fine for young healthy men, who only go to the doctor when we sever a body part. But being I have a wife and two kids, there is well checkups, immunizations, lab work, x-rays and so-on. Therefore, we've gotta have that $25.00 copay and low deductables. So goes the world of health insurance. Ain't it grand?

I have UC and no one will touch me for health ins urnace, I want to stay home but after the 18 months of Cobra I was trying to figure out what to do

Yep, to what Robert was saying. All this stuff (HIPPA, COBRA, etc.) was supposed to simplify everything and makeover easier for people to get health insurance...like most things government it seems to be just the opposite. Like was said the HSA's are turning out to have problems and there was all this stuff for this marvelous new program for "small business in Texas" but it was worse than what they had before, at least more complex. I read until I was cross-eyed and still never figured it out. I don't know if this was changed or not after all the stuff I read but my wife said unless they changed it the law was what I thought, the employer must contribute 75% or more or nothing at all. But like I said in the other post, one government site that is supposed to "help employers" has over 120,000 documents on it! So who knows what the rules are now? PS: If you didn't know HIPPA was a total scam, you have LESS privacy than you did before. What it did was create a centralized database so EVERY insurance company, the government, or whoever (Medicare, SSA. whoever) can see everything you do with medical, every doctors visit, every prescription, etc. It all needed to be "centralized" so the government could protect your privacy. ..now THAT makes sense! It's really so they can collect all the data on everybody not just to keep up with you personally but to see what they will do with insurance rates, drug coverage (like this new Medicare mess...if you know a senior you know what I mean) etc.

When is the temp. too cool for striping? Any special considerations re paint & procedures?

When you've got so many clothes on that you can't move...Your gloves are to fat to get your finger in the gun handle....It takes more thinner than paint to get a decent line. Personally, I've never striped below 25 degrees. That's with Chlorinated Rubber, of course. I really don't like to work below the 38-40 degrees. Just not worth it....unless the job just has to be done.

Some guys on here have tales of sweeping the snow out of the way and then striping. You'll have to re-do it come springtime. I have striped in the 30's using oilbased paint. I told the customer that it was outside the mfg's specs, and probably wouldn't last, but It still looked ok 6 mo later when I re-striped. When it's cool and humid, water based paint just won't dry. Read the label on the paint bucket to find out what the mfg specifies, then don't go below that unless the customer has to have the work done, and understands that it will have to be re-done.

On the northeast it has been kinda mild so far... getting colder... Like Robert stated, I have striped when it was in the 20/30's, once or twice when snowing. Heck, once it was spitting rain but when striping in those conditions it was on the base coat of asphalt and for the C of O. The general contractor took full responsibility. The time it was raining, I started to pack up, the owner of the building said to "stripe till you hit a puddle" Mike In-Line

I've had to clear snow and ice off the lot several times. Painted one when temp was about 5 degrees. like Robert said warn your customer that it wont last and use oil base paint.

Striped once just after an ice storm. Had to torch the lines to melt the ice and then dry the concrete with a torch and Billy Goat blower..

Usually by this time of year we have had all of our machines cleaned and stored for 2 months. This year, we have shoveled snow to stripe and have had to put down paint with temps in the teens. We still have paint in our machines and are still painting. We use alkyd only in colder temps like this - not chlorinated Rubber because it thickens too much and won't spray as well when cold. As Robert mentioned, we have put down paint in freezing temps where we had to shovel snow and chip ice and 6 months later the markings were holding up reasonably well. Of course it was on leveling course so the customer could get a C.O.

Looks like some paint company would make a paint that could be applied just about in any temperature range

RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN. They are nothing but a scam. I luckily switched my own policy and my employees over to Blue Cross / Blue Shield. If I ever kept them when my wife was pregnant I would have just cut the hospitol a check for about $12K, instead I cut one for about $2K because I switched over to Blue Cross / Blue Shield. The policy doesnt cover "(expletive)", if your workers elect to get it, and will most likely use it more frequantly they are going to be really pissed when they find out it it worthless and may retaliate against you. I have a good friend now who has it who wount listen to me to switch to BC / BS and is trying to get his wife pregnant. He will probably have to take out a home equity loan when she leaves the hospitol. When I was in my office full time in FL these clowns would come to my door everyday going through the industrial park trying to selel health, disability etc, they flash open a book with a name or address of a competing paving comanay and say "Hey you know these guys? They are siginin up TODAY!" I would call the guy on the phone and find out he just threw this "loser" out of the office the day before. When they come to the door with the "Sign / Save Today Deal" Tell them to come back in a half hour after you Google the name and wait to see how many class action lawsuits they have pending. GUARANTEED, you will never see the sales shmuck again! These test tube babies prey on the uneducated and first timers in business and probably bilk them out of millions a year collectively. I DETEST SCAM ARTISITS AND WILL DO ANYTHING to expose them! All these "Chop-Shops" are all C & Below rated firms with terrible ratings and bare minimum assets.