There's a preaching urban legend that goes something like this...one reason many old-time preachers only stayed one place for a short length of time is that they only had a years' worth of sermons. When they would get through their year of sermons, they would move on to somewhere else, repeat those sermons, and move on again.
The truth is, most of us only have a handful of sermons. No matter where we begin, we end up in the same places. In Churches of Christ my experience is that the standard-issue list of traditionalist sermons goes something like this.
-1)The importance of sound preaching.
-2)The necessity of baptism by immersion.
-3)The evils of instrumental music.
-4)The evils of denominationalism.
-5)The evils of creeds, since we preach the Bible alone.
-6)Divorce and remarriage.
-7)The pattern of the church organization (a. a plurality of elders; b. the qualification of elders and deacons; c. the evils of parachurch organizations)
-8)The pattern of acceptable worship (singing, communion, giving, praying, preaching)
-9)The Adamic, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations (for expert Jule Miller-filmstrip-approved preachers only)
-10)The sins of worldliness we must avoid (pre-1970s); the proper role of women (post-1970s).
Again, it's not really important where one started from, but these themes seemed to appear in almost every kind of sermon I grew up hearing. Nadab and Abihu? That's a warning about instrumental music! Acts (oh, we loved Acts)? Numerous examples of proper conversion! The Pastoral epistles? Church organization AND words on Sound Preaching! For all of our talk about creeds, these seem to be the Ten Most Important Things.
I used to laugh at the small-mindedness of this list...but as I have now finished 15 years of full-time preaching and almost 20 years of full-time ministry, I'm starting to realize that most of my sermons keep coming back to the same subjects. I might well have close to fifteen hundred sermons in my files (and probably another 800 classes), but put them back to back and there's not that much variety. I would, however, like to think that the things I have focused on are a more Biblical list, things that are genuinely important to matters of Christian faith. So, what's my list, if I am being honest?
-1)Jesus is the only way to salvation.
-2)Grace, not perfect obedience, grants one salvation.
-3)The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
-4)The love, grace and mercy we must show to one another.
-5)The abject sinfulness of humanity, repeated again and again in human history.
-6)The calling out to God (as exemplified in Psalms).
-7)The power of the Holy Spirit for a transformed life.
-8)The call of God to return from sin (as exemplified in the Prophets).
-9)The teachings of Jesus for a full life.
-10)Why the power of the gospel enables Christians to live a holy life.
I'm sure that there are a few other things that I preach, but really most of my sermons end back up in these subjects. I like my list a lot better than the first list, and I think it's more at the core of Scripture...but after all these years I'm finding that I'm not so different than my preaching ancestors.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Monday, December 29, 2014
Stopping a sermon before it crashes...
Monday mornings for some preachers is a time in which they feel bad about the previous Sunday. For me, though, Monday morning is when I start outlining my sermon for the coming Sunday. If all has gone well in previous weeks, when I've been doing proper Bible study and prayer and reflection about what needs to be said (or, better said, what God is trying to say through me), outlining the sermon that will be formally written on Wednesday is easy. The sermon writes itself.
Today, though, I knew that there was going to be a problem. Even as I had done my preliminary on this sermon, it never really felt right. In doing this for almost 20 years, when I have to go hunting for scriptures to back up my premise, the sermon becomes something that is probably not worth preaching. This was one of those sermons. While I think that the premise was probably good and needs to be said, I had a hard time justifying the sermon. I came to realize while looking over my previous notes that it was more like a rant than a sermon.
Rant sermons are all too common by preachers. We get fired up about something that is happened to us, or something makes us mad, and we want the congregation to know what's on our mind. Or we get really invested in some particular doctrinal point and we think that the congregation isn't right until they agree with us. So we rant and rave, and in the end we haven't preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, it's frustrating to have wasted all that time on a sermon that won't (and should not) be preached...but it's better to have destroyed a sermon before it can do any harm.
If there is one blessing about having preached for almost 20 years, it's that there are plenty of sermons stuck away in the file cabinets. Not all of them are good, of course, or are worthy of repeating. But at least I have one that can be preached so that the church will be blessed rather than cursed.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Sunday Best
I have a long-running and (mostly) friendly debate going on with one of our members about the necessity of wearing one's 'Sunday Best'. Likely it comes from the fact that many of our members wear jeans, shorts, and other apparel to church that a generation ago would have been verboten. As my family is one of the culprits, I think he's trying to send a message to me, but I think he's even annoyed because I don't wear a suit to church, I am down to wearing a tie on Sundays 80% of the time, and on Wednesdays I wear blue jeans.
I can understand his argument, as it's one that I was brought up with. If you were going to visit the President, wouldn't you want to look your best? Indeed, the idea of dressing nicely for God, for giving him your best, that on the surface seems to make a lot of sense. And I agree that there are a lot of people who simply use changing fashions as an excuse to look sloppy.
But over the years I'm started thinking that his reasoning is all wrong. First, there is no Biblical command about wearing one's Sunday best. The only words about clothing in the NT are about what a woman should NOT wear: 1 Timothy 2:9 talks about wearing 'respectable' apparel, modest, and not 'braided hair, gold, pearls, or costly attire'. 'Modest' today has taken on the meaning of 'not indecent' and that's probably good considering many fashions today...but Paul's intent is explicitly that we NOT wear fancy or eye-catching clothing. Indeed, the city of Babylon in Revelation 18:16 that is clothed in fancy attire is a city that is doomed! 1 Peter 3:3-4 is even more explicit: "Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear--but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." Church is never to be a fashion center; I can remember when I was much younger how women were especially excited about spring in order to wear their 'Easter fashions'. That's simply not right...and if we apply this to men, shouldn't we think the same thing? Shouldn't we wear our common, everyday clothing? If a man normally wears jeans to work at the plant, shouldn't he wear jeans to church?
Second, why do we think we are honoring somebody by wearing fancy clothes? When did that come into play? For much of humanity's existence a person who had two sets of clothing was considered rich. The fact that the church has bought so much into the idea that there is even something called fashion means we have failed somewhat in our discipleship. If we believe that 'clothes makes the man', then haven't we bought into worldliness? The only kind of clothing we should be really looking for are clothes that are washed white in the blood of the lamb (cf. Rev. 7:14). We are to be defined not by what it is that wear, but by how we have been 'clothed with Christ'.
It's fascinating how such an unimportant and unBiblical topic makes its presence felt so strongly in the mind of so many Christians. May we be a people who focus on things that are important, rather on things that matter not one bit.
I can understand his argument, as it's one that I was brought up with. If you were going to visit the President, wouldn't you want to look your best? Indeed, the idea of dressing nicely for God, for giving him your best, that on the surface seems to make a lot of sense. And I agree that there are a lot of people who simply use changing fashions as an excuse to look sloppy.
But over the years I'm started thinking that his reasoning is all wrong. First, there is no Biblical command about wearing one's Sunday best. The only words about clothing in the NT are about what a woman should NOT wear: 1 Timothy 2:9 talks about wearing 'respectable' apparel, modest, and not 'braided hair, gold, pearls, or costly attire'. 'Modest' today has taken on the meaning of 'not indecent' and that's probably good considering many fashions today...but Paul's intent is explicitly that we NOT wear fancy or eye-catching clothing. Indeed, the city of Babylon in Revelation 18:16 that is clothed in fancy attire is a city that is doomed! 1 Peter 3:3-4 is even more explicit: "Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear--but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." Church is never to be a fashion center; I can remember when I was much younger how women were especially excited about spring in order to wear their 'Easter fashions'. That's simply not right...and if we apply this to men, shouldn't we think the same thing? Shouldn't we wear our common, everyday clothing? If a man normally wears jeans to work at the plant, shouldn't he wear jeans to church?
Second, why do we think we are honoring somebody by wearing fancy clothes? When did that come into play? For much of humanity's existence a person who had two sets of clothing was considered rich. The fact that the church has bought so much into the idea that there is even something called fashion means we have failed somewhat in our discipleship. If we believe that 'clothes makes the man', then haven't we bought into worldliness? The only kind of clothing we should be really looking for are clothes that are washed white in the blood of the lamb (cf. Rev. 7:14). We are to be defined not by what it is that wear, but by how we have been 'clothed with Christ'.
It's fascinating how such an unimportant and unBiblical topic makes its presence felt so strongly in the mind of so many Christians. May we be a people who focus on things that are important, rather on things that matter not one bit.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
States I've Visited, Hung Out In, Merely Passed Through, Totally Avoided, and Even Lived In
On Facebook I've been seeing maps of the United States showing states that people have visited. For me the map would be almost entirely filled in...only Nevada and Alaska have not had me yet grace their presence.
But not all visits are the same. I got to thinking about all the states I've been to and what I remember about each. Some I spent just a few hours in...some I have spent almost half my life. Shouldn't that factor into the equation, quality over simply quantity? So, here's a ranking of my 50 states visits ranked by the total hours spent in that state. It's not exact, but it's probably close.
1. Oklahoma. I grew up there from the time of nine months through the time I left for college. Also my parents still live there. Probably 37% of my life has been spent in Oklahoma.
2. Kansas. I was born here and have spent most of my adult life here. 32%.
3. Arkansas. I went to 3 1/2 years of college here.
4. Oregon. I spent three years here. I miss being 20 minutes from the ocean and 45 minutes from up in the mountains.
5. Tennessee. I went to grad school here for two years. Memphis, not one of my favorite places.
6. Montana. In college I spent two months on a mission effort in Great Falls. What a beautiful state.
7. Texas. My sister lives in Texas and has so for a long time, plus we have taken several family vacations here.
8. Colorado. So many great memories as a kid of skiing and church mission trips. This should be higher.
9. Missouri. I lived within a stones' throw of Missouri for 3 1/2 years. All the Royals games I have attended should push Missouri up the rankings.
10. South Carolina. My wife and I got married here and spent a week in this state.
11. Virginia. My brother lives here. I've been there a few times.
12. Mississippi. When I was grad school I preached in tiny backwater churches here sometimes. And one night my friend Derek and I went to Tunica to see the casinos. Probably the #1 reason why I don't gamble...casinos are depressing places.
13. California. I've taken several family trips here, and when I lived in Oregon would sometimes cross the border to look at the Redwoods.
14. Washington. Also related to Oregon. Mt. St. Helens is awesome.
15. Hawaii. Spent six beautiful days in Hawaii a few months ago with my wife. Laid on the beach. Listened to humpback whales sing underwater. This too needs to get higher.
16. Michigan. Saw a Tigers game once. Flew there for a wedding once. It's starting to get thin.
17. Iowa. Field of Dreams, yeah.
18. Minnesota. Took two family vacations here. Neither is all that memorable.
19. Nebraska. Nebraska probably is near the top of the ranking of percentage spent in that state that I was driving to go somewhere else.
20. South Dakota. In high school we took a mission trip to the Black Hills. Mt. Rushmore!
21. Idaho. My casino friend Derek and I drove to Idaho once so he could do a wedding. Also, my u-Haul broke down here while moving to Oregon.
22. Florida. I went a work conference in Tallahassee once. It rained the whole time.
23. New Mexico. My wife's G-Pa was buried here, so I spoke at his funeral.
24. Utah. My sister once lived here. Mormons and skiing.
25. West Virginia. I had a job interview here one weekend for a church. They never bothered calling back.
26. Kentucky. Ditto.
27. Georgia. I vaguely recall taking a family vacation when I was a small child here. I don't remember much about this.
28. New York. The week after my brother got married I remember going to a Mets game with my friend Rob, and thinking wow, those planes from LaGuardia get really close to buildings. This was two weeks before 9/11. Also upstate is beautiful. Baseball hall of fame.
29. Maryland. Orioles games while near DC.
30. Delaware. Rehoboth beach. I think that's how you spell it?
31. Pennsylvania. A beautiful state I remember from the year after college when I drove around and camped out and tried figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.
32. Massachusetts. Cape Cod.
33. Maine. It's a bigger state than you think. And did you know that it used to belong to Massachusetts?
34. Wyoming. Yellowstone national park.
35. Rhode Island. On said college trip I remember eating at a restaurant here and thinking that it was likely a mob front.
36. Vermont. On said college trip I remember camping a few nights here and being cold in the middle of July.
37. New Jersey. On the way from my brother's wedding to New York a few weeks before 9/11, I remember getting stuck on the New Jersey turnpike in a massive Sunday afternoon traffic jam. If it wasn't for this New Jersey would be even lower on the list. Atlantic City is a hole.
38. Ohio. I remember this to be a wholly unattractive state.
39. Arizona. I remember it was 114 degrees in Phoenix.
40. Indiana. I have friends from college who live here. I don't think I've ever visited them.
41. Illinois. I know I've been to Chicago, but can't recall being anywhere else in the state.
42. Louisiana. My college friend Glen lives there. Cajun country.
43. Alabama. No memories but I've taken it as fact that I once went there.
44. Connecticut. I vaguely remember a waterfall at a place I vaguely remember as Devil's Elbow. I'm too lazy to confirm that this exists.
45. New Hampshire. To get from Maine to Vermont you have to drive through New Hampshire.
46. North Carolina. One day on our honeymoon we thought, hey, we oughta drive into North Carolina. So we can say we've been there.
47. North Dakota. On our second Minnesota trip we drove through North Dakota for an hour. We ate at a McDonald's in Fargo.
48. Wisconsin. On our first Minnesota trip we drove through Wisconsin for an hour. We didn't stop to eat. No cheese sightings.
But not all visits are the same. I got to thinking about all the states I've been to and what I remember about each. Some I spent just a few hours in...some I have spent almost half my life. Shouldn't that factor into the equation, quality over simply quantity? So, here's a ranking of my 50 states visits ranked by the total hours spent in that state. It's not exact, but it's probably close.
1. Oklahoma. I grew up there from the time of nine months through the time I left for college. Also my parents still live there. Probably 37% of my life has been spent in Oklahoma.
2. Kansas. I was born here and have spent most of my adult life here. 32%.
3. Arkansas. I went to 3 1/2 years of college here.
4. Oregon. I spent three years here. I miss being 20 minutes from the ocean and 45 minutes from up in the mountains.
5. Tennessee. I went to grad school here for two years. Memphis, not one of my favorite places.
6. Montana. In college I spent two months on a mission effort in Great Falls. What a beautiful state.
7. Texas. My sister lives in Texas and has so for a long time, plus we have taken several family vacations here.
8. Colorado. So many great memories as a kid of skiing and church mission trips. This should be higher.
9. Missouri. I lived within a stones' throw of Missouri for 3 1/2 years. All the Royals games I have attended should push Missouri up the rankings.
10. South Carolina. My wife and I got married here and spent a week in this state.
11. Virginia. My brother lives here. I've been there a few times.
12. Mississippi. When I was grad school I preached in tiny backwater churches here sometimes. And one night my friend Derek and I went to Tunica to see the casinos. Probably the #1 reason why I don't gamble...casinos are depressing places.
13. California. I've taken several family trips here, and when I lived in Oregon would sometimes cross the border to look at the Redwoods.
14. Washington. Also related to Oregon. Mt. St. Helens is awesome.
15. Hawaii. Spent six beautiful days in Hawaii a few months ago with my wife. Laid on the beach. Listened to humpback whales sing underwater. This too needs to get higher.
16. Michigan. Saw a Tigers game once. Flew there for a wedding once. It's starting to get thin.
17. Iowa. Field of Dreams, yeah.
18. Minnesota. Took two family vacations here. Neither is all that memorable.
19. Nebraska. Nebraska probably is near the top of the ranking of percentage spent in that state that I was driving to go somewhere else.
20. South Dakota. In high school we took a mission trip to the Black Hills. Mt. Rushmore!
21. Idaho. My casino friend Derek and I drove to Idaho once so he could do a wedding. Also, my u-Haul broke down here while moving to Oregon.
22. Florida. I went a work conference in Tallahassee once. It rained the whole time.
23. New Mexico. My wife's G-Pa was buried here, so I spoke at his funeral.
24. Utah. My sister once lived here. Mormons and skiing.
25. West Virginia. I had a job interview here one weekend for a church. They never bothered calling back.
26. Kentucky. Ditto.
27. Georgia. I vaguely recall taking a family vacation when I was a small child here. I don't remember much about this.
28. New York. The week after my brother got married I remember going to a Mets game with my friend Rob, and thinking wow, those planes from LaGuardia get really close to buildings. This was two weeks before 9/11. Also upstate is beautiful. Baseball hall of fame.
29. Maryland. Orioles games while near DC.
30. Delaware. Rehoboth beach. I think that's how you spell it?
31. Pennsylvania. A beautiful state I remember from the year after college when I drove around and camped out and tried figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.
32. Massachusetts. Cape Cod.
33. Maine. It's a bigger state than you think. And did you know that it used to belong to Massachusetts?
34. Wyoming. Yellowstone national park.
35. Rhode Island. On said college trip I remember eating at a restaurant here and thinking that it was likely a mob front.
36. Vermont. On said college trip I remember camping a few nights here and being cold in the middle of July.
37. New Jersey. On the way from my brother's wedding to New York a few weeks before 9/11, I remember getting stuck on the New Jersey turnpike in a massive Sunday afternoon traffic jam. If it wasn't for this New Jersey would be even lower on the list. Atlantic City is a hole.
38. Ohio. I remember this to be a wholly unattractive state.
39. Arizona. I remember it was 114 degrees in Phoenix.
40. Indiana. I have friends from college who live here. I don't think I've ever visited them.
41. Illinois. I know I've been to Chicago, but can't recall being anywhere else in the state.
42. Louisiana. My college friend Glen lives there. Cajun country.
43. Alabama. No memories but I've taken it as fact that I once went there.
44. Connecticut. I vaguely remember a waterfall at a place I vaguely remember as Devil's Elbow. I'm too lazy to confirm that this exists.
45. New Hampshire. To get from Maine to Vermont you have to drive through New Hampshire.
46. North Carolina. One day on our honeymoon we thought, hey, we oughta drive into North Carolina. So we can say we've been there.
47. North Dakota. On our second Minnesota trip we drove through North Dakota for an hour. We ate at a McDonald's in Fargo.
48. Wisconsin. On our first Minnesota trip we drove through Wisconsin for an hour. We didn't stop to eat. No cheese sightings.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
For all the Obamacare haters, my personal story (so far)
I know that Obamacare has a bad name amongst many of you. The recent election was in essence a referendum on it and President Obama, and it was hated. Conservative talk shows and Fox News regularly campaigns against it, and the coming Republican majority of congress has pledged to end it. Court cases may soon mean that all that I'm going to write about goes away. But listen to my story before you decide to keep hating.
My wife and I both work jobs in which our employers are unable and unwilling to provide health insurance. That's fine...having health care through an employer makes you more attached to those employers than you should be; you face great uncertainties about changing jobs because you don't want to have to change your insurance. But for us, this freedom to move has meant we needed to buy health insurance ourselves. When we got married a decade ago, we paid what I already thought was a high amount for insurance and we have kept it for a decade. It has been pretty good insurance, paying most of the bills when she had her appendix out while out of state and when we had our two children. But yearly the rates went up, usually 12-15% per year on average. Over the course of a decade the premium to cover us (and eventually our two children) tripled. It's not like we were sick much, either...just yearly shots for the kids and a yearly visit to the allergist for our son. Maybe a few other appointments, but our rates showed us paying much more in than we were getting out of the insurance. A few times we looked into other plans, but most anything comparable cost even more than we were already paying...so we stayed where we were.
Then Obamacare went into effect. And for the first time the rates stopped skyrocketing...I think that last year our premium only went up 3%. We were hoping that maybe with competition the 'affordable' part of the Affordable Care Act really meant something. But a few weeks ago we got our renewable notice for 2015, and once again the rates went way up: 13%. We were now going to be paying more per month for health insurance for a healthy family than the combined cost for our mortgage, homeowners insurance, a car payment, and car insurance for both cars. Something was definitely wrong.
So we decided to use the health care marketplace on healthcare.gov when open enrollment began today. Could we find something better? Hopefully. I started shopping and now had almost too many choices, 32 different plans from 4 different providers. Some of them were rather cheap, but had lots of out-of-pocket expenses. Others were expensive (in other words, basically what we were going to pay now), but paid for almost everything (which was not the case with what we had).
I will confess that the signup was not the easiest in the world...it took me almost half an hour to get to the actual health plans after telling them most of my life story. I think I had to indicate that I was a white male non-Latino a half-dozen times. But eventually I got there, and all the information about the details of the plan were stated rather clearly. Again, there were almost too many choices, but we settled on something in the middle of the pack...a decent deductible, a decent maximum out-of-pocket, and decent co-pays. We also added on a separate dental plan. All in all, the plan is very comparable to what we had previously as far as costs we will incur through the year.
So, what't the damage? Compared to what we paid this year, 27% less for both plans. Compared to what we were going to pay for next year, almost 35% less. And this doesn't factor in the $1600 in tax credits it says that we will receive for 2015. (To be honest, I'm not sure whether that's $1600 for each of us or just $1600 for all of us. I think it's all of us, but hey, that still ain't bad.) The total amount we will save even with the smaller number comes to over $6800 for our family.
Now, Obamacare may be distasteful for you because of your ideology...should the government be involved with this at all? I know...keep your government hands off my medicare, you are saying. But health care companies, like most large companies, have generally shown that they can't be trusted to do the right thing on their own. When forced into something, they're not going to be able to bleed us as much as they were doing before. Yes, maybe I could have found all these things on my own rather than through a government website. But a one-stop shopping area for health insurance that meets certain standards and can't free-market itself into cheating me? Fine by me.
Or maybe you hate Obamacare because you don't like that it's changing your own insurance. You are working for a company that is being forced to change their own policies (or even end their policies) because of skyrocketing health care costs. But let me ask you this...is it Obamacare doing this? Or is it the last vestiges of a dying employer-based health care system grabbing whatever it can before collapses in on itself? What's really the really the problem? Maybe it's just that your company sucks, and is run by somebody upset because he won't be able to afford a third vacation home. You figure that out.
Maybe there are other, genuine reasons to hate Obamacare. There are other affects of this that will not be known for awhile. The bureaucracy of healthcare is only increasing, and that's distasteful to me. I don't really want to go through the government to get health care, and given other government involvement (hello, VA!) with the health care system, I'm still a bit wary. Likely direct control of the health care system is not good. I've been wondering if maybe a single-payer option is good, and let the government run the whole thing. Probably not. Quality will suffer and innovation will dry up if that's the case.
Of course I don't know what the future holds with this. There's a real possibility that it turns into a disaster. If it tries screwing over me or my family, I'll come back and say that it did so, and find something else and join you in your hatred. Who knows, maybe this plan will also go up 13% each year and in a few years I'll be back where I started.
For now, though, I'm looking forward to taking that $6800 that I will be saving in 2015 and doing something productive with it. Maybe I'll demand-side boost other parts of the economy. Maybe I'll add some extra funds to my kids' college fund or to my IRA. Maybe I'll give more generously to some charities. Hopefully I won't have to pay more taxes to support the evil government. But one thing I do know is that a lot more of my family's money will not be going into the pockets of health insurance companies in 2015. And that surely is a good thing, right?
My wife and I both work jobs in which our employers are unable and unwilling to provide health insurance. That's fine...having health care through an employer makes you more attached to those employers than you should be; you face great uncertainties about changing jobs because you don't want to have to change your insurance. But for us, this freedom to move has meant we needed to buy health insurance ourselves. When we got married a decade ago, we paid what I already thought was a high amount for insurance and we have kept it for a decade. It has been pretty good insurance, paying most of the bills when she had her appendix out while out of state and when we had our two children. But yearly the rates went up, usually 12-15% per year on average. Over the course of a decade the premium to cover us (and eventually our two children) tripled. It's not like we were sick much, either...just yearly shots for the kids and a yearly visit to the allergist for our son. Maybe a few other appointments, but our rates showed us paying much more in than we were getting out of the insurance. A few times we looked into other plans, but most anything comparable cost even more than we were already paying...so we stayed where we were.
Then Obamacare went into effect. And for the first time the rates stopped skyrocketing...I think that last year our premium only went up 3%. We were hoping that maybe with competition the 'affordable' part of the Affordable Care Act really meant something. But a few weeks ago we got our renewable notice for 2015, and once again the rates went way up: 13%. We were now going to be paying more per month for health insurance for a healthy family than the combined cost for our mortgage, homeowners insurance, a car payment, and car insurance for both cars. Something was definitely wrong.
So we decided to use the health care marketplace on healthcare.gov when open enrollment began today. Could we find something better? Hopefully. I started shopping and now had almost too many choices, 32 different plans from 4 different providers. Some of them were rather cheap, but had lots of out-of-pocket expenses. Others were expensive (in other words, basically what we were going to pay now), but paid for almost everything (which was not the case with what we had).
I will confess that the signup was not the easiest in the world...it took me almost half an hour to get to the actual health plans after telling them most of my life story. I think I had to indicate that I was a white male non-Latino a half-dozen times. But eventually I got there, and all the information about the details of the plan were stated rather clearly. Again, there were almost too many choices, but we settled on something in the middle of the pack...a decent deductible, a decent maximum out-of-pocket, and decent co-pays. We also added on a separate dental plan. All in all, the plan is very comparable to what we had previously as far as costs we will incur through the year.
So, what't the damage? Compared to what we paid this year, 27% less for both plans. Compared to what we were going to pay for next year, almost 35% less. And this doesn't factor in the $1600 in tax credits it says that we will receive for 2015. (To be honest, I'm not sure whether that's $1600 for each of us or just $1600 for all of us. I think it's all of us, but hey, that still ain't bad.) The total amount we will save even with the smaller number comes to over $6800 for our family.
Now, Obamacare may be distasteful for you because of your ideology...should the government be involved with this at all? I know...keep your government hands off my medicare, you are saying. But health care companies, like most large companies, have generally shown that they can't be trusted to do the right thing on their own. When forced into something, they're not going to be able to bleed us as much as they were doing before. Yes, maybe I could have found all these things on my own rather than through a government website. But a one-stop shopping area for health insurance that meets certain standards and can't free-market itself into cheating me? Fine by me.
Or maybe you hate Obamacare because you don't like that it's changing your own insurance. You are working for a company that is being forced to change their own policies (or even end their policies) because of skyrocketing health care costs. But let me ask you this...is it Obamacare doing this? Or is it the last vestiges of a dying employer-based health care system grabbing whatever it can before collapses in on itself? What's really the really the problem? Maybe it's just that your company sucks, and is run by somebody upset because he won't be able to afford a third vacation home. You figure that out.
Maybe there are other, genuine reasons to hate Obamacare. There are other affects of this that will not be known for awhile. The bureaucracy of healthcare is only increasing, and that's distasteful to me. I don't really want to go through the government to get health care, and given other government involvement (hello, VA!) with the health care system, I'm still a bit wary. Likely direct control of the health care system is not good. I've been wondering if maybe a single-payer option is good, and let the government run the whole thing. Probably not. Quality will suffer and innovation will dry up if that's the case.
Of course I don't know what the future holds with this. There's a real possibility that it turns into a disaster. If it tries screwing over me or my family, I'll come back and say that it did so, and find something else and join you in your hatred. Who knows, maybe this plan will also go up 13% each year and in a few years I'll be back where I started.
For now, though, I'm looking forward to taking that $6800 that I will be saving in 2015 and doing something productive with it. Maybe I'll demand-side boost other parts of the economy. Maybe I'll add some extra funds to my kids' college fund or to my IRA. Maybe I'll give more generously to some charities. Hopefully I won't have to pay more taxes to support the evil government. But one thing I do know is that a lot more of my family's money will not be going into the pockets of health insurance companies in 2015. And that surely is a good thing, right?
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