C-Mart

Subsidies cutoff dramatically at around 240% of the poverty line. We generally don't find it beneficial to drop the plan. HDHPs are great with proper communication + HSAs. The problem you may run into is how many plans you can offer. Everyone may have to switch to the HDHP, but you should see a dramatic savings.

Here is 1999 - 2014 http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2039942/original.jpg Kaiser family is a very reputable source for this type of info.

Depending on what you pay those employees (IE what subsidies they may are eligible for) it may be more cost effective to let them get their own insurance. That being said you can't drop your plan and give raises to only those people. Because of that it is rarely beneficial to do so. Fact is it sucks buying health insurance if you are a small business. Negotiation is non-existent because losing an 8 life group is nothing to them. The only advantage is you can more easily get creative with your network because it only affects 8 people.

One of the strangest things about healthcare is the concealment of information. Information between providers (hospitals), carriers (insurance companies), and even the information shared with the carrier and the employer. Turbs3000 mentioned above the carrier told him his rate was going up because losses were higher than premium paid, but you are luck to get your loss ratio (losses vs premiums) let alone what types of claims they were so you can try to implement programs to cut down those costs. When you are self funded you get this information, but companies don't typically go self funded until they are larger than ~250 employees and brokers tell them it is a bad idea because fully insured pays a lot more than self funded. To jewtoys point, companies under 100 if not properly managed/advised by their broker had to switch to a premium calculation method called community rating (not saying this is what happened to him, but we saw it from some business we won). Community rating does not look at past claims, rather age and zip code - that's it. They changed the rate structure from a 10/1 max to a 3/1 max. In the old system a person with cancer could pay 10x more than the healthy person, in the new system it is 3x. What this did shorten the distribution so healthy companies that were previously underwritten paid a lot more and unhealthy companies paid a lot less.

I will PM you, but in case others are interested no, self funded and captive are not the same. In self funding you are basically becoming a healthcare 'carrier'. You pay an aggregate and per employee stop loss, pay a TPA (third party administrator) to handle claims, and you are responsible for claims that aren't covered by the stop loss. Captive insurance is a self-funded model that several companies make to share risk and group purchase the stop loss. It is a great way to 'dip your toe' in the water of self funding as you get data and transparency. The captive is typically, but not required to be founded outside of the country. After being in the captive for a number of yours you get an experience rating that raises or lowers your cost depending on your losses. Companies that have 1000 employees don't need to be in a captive as they are large enough to purchase cheaply and have enough members to be actuarially sound. Companies 50-500ish can go self funded, but it comes down to the owners understanding of healthcare and appetite for risk.

I could go on and on about this, as it is what I do for a living, but I'll keep it short. "naively thought that the companies would absorb the higher costs within their ridiculous profits" Most businesses are small businesses and most of those don't have ridiculous profits. The question becomes how many times can a company take a 40% increase on healthcare and where does it stop? To combat this companies have: Raised deductibles Switched to HDHPs (high deductible healthcare plans) with tax advantaged savings for their employees Raised the % the employee pays vs what the employer pays Dropped healthcare all together (if under 50 employees) Switched from fully insured to self funded and proactively educated its employees about bad habits that cost money - smoking, frequent emergency room visits, etc. The smaller you are the less you can do. I have clients who got flat renewals this year and we have people in our agency that got 180% increases. There are so many variables that go into the calculation it is hard to say XYZ is why you got a raise and XYZ is why you didn't without looking at the specific companies losses and census data. If anyone has specific questions I'd be happy to answer them.

I have another motor sitting behind the car right now. They are notorious for lifter tick and the intake mani cover is insulated to cover it up. It will be going on once it is all out back together. It has acutely gone away with the few miles I've put on it.

In the T56 world maybe. My final gear is .89 - T56s are usually .50. My top speed in first gear is something like 24mph.

Well there is good news and bad. No picture of smoky burnouts, but they happened. Car is up and running and is like a big kid go cart. Smokes the tires through 4th with the 4.10 rear end. Car is back parked for winter. I am ripping the whole thing apart again, welding reinforcements everywhere, redoing the brake lines, making the wiring cleaner, getting the interior back in, etc. I am going to look at another car this week that is simliar to by build, but better in every way. If I buy buy it this will be for sale in the spring. I never thought I would sell it, but the car I am checking out is literally my dream car. And I picked up a new motor because it was cheap. Making me want to throw some nitrous at it just for fun.

Nothing used to piss me off more than watching Steve Mason having a blast behind the bar at 23 playing bartender after giving up 7 goals earlier in the night.

I've always had a soft spot for these cars. I ran the numbers and couldn't get the money out of the build though. Ohh well.

Too late. Though you may be correct about autox, everyone has great things to say about it around an actual track. I haven't installed it yet, but surely going from 1 piston to 4 and a bigger rotor couldn't hurt.

I have $0 invested in my build, so that will be most cars

Great advice thank you. Not worried about short term competitiveness, but something tells me I would rather win with a slow car then get killed because I'm in the wrong class.

How would a <2500 lb, 300hp/300tq, BBK, coilover, sticky tire car do?

Badass congrats. I decided my current build will be competing in auto-x. Any idea what class a motor swapped E30 would fall in and how competitive it would be?

I didn't know what winter was until I moved to Wisconsin. A regular day here is as cold as the coldest day when I lived in Breck. They had a radio warning last year about how if you were outside for 5 minutes exposed skin could literally freeze solid.

With how crazy these prices are getting I'm not looking to get top dollar. Just steal the suspension, sell the rims and clean it up a bit. I wouldn't mind driving it out to Columbus and flying back or buying another car out that way.

Waiting on a custom tune ECU to show up. Ready to fire up other than that then start figuring out the bugs. In the mean time I picked up a... donor type car. same year and color. going to pull all the aftermarket stuff off and put it on my V8 chassis, return it to stock and sell it in the spring. The suspension and wheel setup alone were worth more than what I paid for it. Next picture will be me in the V8 car with a big pile of white smoke behind it.

I would potentially be interested in the tires depending on the price.

I've got the starter working, compression, and fuel. Have some work to do on the DME/EWS to get the spark going and she'll be alive. Some simple brake line/clutch line work and it will be road time.

Looks like an 'acorn' vs 'mag' style problem. If the evo is mag, acorn style should center them as long as your careful. If you are trying to put mags on your wheels that have been using acorn you may have trouble centering the rim or not fitting the wheel hole (less likely). Go to summit, buy a bunch of options, and return what you don't end up using.

Right there with you. 217k on my 2002 F250 4x4 gas (5.4) crew cab. Only time the truck has ever failed me was when the door sensor was stuck and a little light was on for a week. WD40 in the door & a jump and right back up. I have trusted it more than any other vehicle I have ever owned.

NA for now

Yeah most people complain about the 4.10 in the V8 configuration. I am more worried about it being a 'small case' vs a 'medium case'. Luckily most people go with the 5 speed so they have a final drive of 1:1 and my 6th gear is .83:1 so I am hoping that makes it manageable. I did the math on the old tires and my top speed was somewhere around 130. These larger tires should help. I have been out of town the last 5 weekends and again this weekend (Columbus actually) so once the traveling slows down I'll be able to get back out in the garage more to get it running.