beniebuzz blog

Obamacare implementation feels like that summer I had a cast – it’s dragging on and on! Now that we’re days away from the Health Insurance Exchanges going LIVE on 10/1/13 and weeks away from the 1/1/14 start date, most people are scrambling to figure out what the heck it means to them. 

Are you feeling behind the 8-ball because you don’t read every Obamacare article or watch CNN 24/7? Relax. I’m sharing my tips and brain power in these 6 things you need to know about Health Insurance Exchanges….

1. Refresh me…what’s a Health Insurance Exchange?

Last week, I went to a Heart concert (they were amazing – can’t believe all the songs I knew that I didn’t remember!). So, there I am, sitting with my drink on the lawn and all of a sudden I notice a small gathering of people in front of me taking drags off cigarettes.  And WHAT was the first thing I thought? “Wow, those people are going to pay SO much for health insurance!” (I now see the irony of my realization about the costs of smoking at a "Heart" concert!).

“Well, it’s finally happening. After years of drama on Capitol Hill, a Supreme Court case, a presidential election, and a Mayan apocalypse that could’ve stopped it dead in its tracks (but didn’t), the marquis elements of the Affordable Care Act - sometimes called Obamacare - are about to kick in and big changes are coming to health insurance in 2014.”

That’s the first line of the video you’re about to watch: The YouToons Get Ready for Obamacare! 

Are you starting to think about school starting?  Even though we have about a month before schools start throughout much of the country, I cringe as I write this article because it seems like summer just started.  AND then there are some parents who secretly (or not so secretly) can’t wait for school to start!

Has this ever happened to you? I had just worked an 80 hour week preparing for vacation with my family. We left after work on Friday and arrived at our destination hotel late that night. I was SO excited with the prospect of sleeping in on Saturday morning! But, my plans were foiled, for what did I hear at 6:30am? Not the pitter patter of little feet, but the jumping, screaming, running pounding feet of excited vacationing kidlets. All that sound reverberating through the acoustical hotel hallway with nothing between me and my well-deserved REM sleep but a flimsy wood door.    

I used to think being a smart consumer was getting my Coach handbag on sale at the Nordstrom Rack or buying my favorite new shoes during a Friends & Family event. But, I never thought being a smart consumer also applied to how I spent my money on healthcare – that is, until I read Jim Skinner’s book Smart Money: The Simple Guide to Becoming an Educated , Empowered, Money-Saving Champion of the Healthcare You Deserve.   

Did you know that during the 1920s and 1930s, a movement arose to scrap Mother’s Day and Father’s Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parents’ Day? As with many things in America, commercialism won out! According to History.com, struggling depression-era retailers and advertisers “redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a ‘second Christmas’ for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards.”

Did you know there was NO summer vacation until the early 1900s? Before that, breaks were dependent on the location of schools – they were planned quarterly (town schools) or to coincide with planting and harvest seasons (rural schools). 

Fast forward 100 years and it seems like the entire year revolves around summer break! We plan for summer vacations, summer jobs, summer school, summer camp and let’s not forget the summer movie line up (Despicable Me 2 comes out 7/3, just sayin’!).