Are You Feeling the Recession? (2009, insurance, employment)

[leroyleroux]

Actually, I'm stumped. I don't recall either of the two plants being fined and having charges pressed against them. There was a story about a town in Howard maybe two weeks ago. I may have missed the other story, but I think it would have been a pretty big deal around here.

[SDHomesteader]

Well according to all those informercials I keep seeing, we should all quit our jobs and work from home part time making 6,456,345.00 a week selling worthless crap to every other american on the planet.

[Jammie]

Unfortunately, we've taken a bit of a dip. The Friday's Daily Republic showed the most recent unemployment stats for the state's larger cities. Mitchell is now up to 6.4% and not long ago we were way down at 3.3%. Yankton took the biggest hit, but it's not good all over.

On the bright side, I have also been reading that they are seeing a tiny bit of a turn in the economy. We can only hope things improve before it tanks here, too.

[Chris19]

The unemployment rates do not look good when compared to what he had for the past 15 years or so, but we have had it good compared to a good chunk of the country. I talked to my uncle who lives in Las Vegas and has been out of work (construction supervisory work) for the past nine months and he was mentioning that the unemployment rate there is around 10% and he has not found anything yet. Luckily, his house is paid off, wife works, and is in shape to weather the thouger times for awhile.

[Jammie]

I hear ya about Las Vegas. We were there the end of Dec. and they said that up to 75% of the casino workers were laid off. They had lines of people and I thought it was cause they were so busy, but learned that they'd cut three fourths of the front desk staff. LV would be one spot that would instantly suffer when people don't have $$ cause a huge chunk of their economy depends on tourism and entertainment.

[SDHomesteader]

My Inlaws are retired and living in vegas now, they moved there from New York about 2 yrs ago. Sure will feel sorry for them here pretty soon.

(sorry haven't checked in in a couple days, one computer died, the one I had the Username and password stored on and when I reset my password here it kept telling me it was wrong and finally today they got me a new one set and its reset LOL)

[BusySocialWorker]

Regional health just got word of manditory pay cuts and freeze in vacation / sick leave 3% for most of us - of course very glad to have a job, but we will feel the squeeze!

[DannyBanany]

Originally Posted by BusySocialWorker

Regional health just got word of manditory pay cuts and freeze in vacation / sick leave 3% for most of us - of course very glad to have a job, but we will feel the squeeze!

5% for administrators
3.5% for doctors/specialists
3% for all other workers

It's really scary when you're under the knife of a doctor who took a pay cut!

[BusySocialWorker]

actually the docs didnt take a cut - they are independent and only have privillages at the hospital - the 3.5 is for supervisor and managers. plus our ppl was frozen which amounts to about a 15% pay cut... people are happy to have a job, but scared of what the future holds and how the morale of the hospital will be effected. that means no leave for holidays and no sick leave... not sure what I will do when my kids are sick!

[Jammie]

The employees at the hospitals on this side of the state have also seen a paycut and they are having a hiring freeze. It shocked me at first, because that was supposed to be the one recession-proof profession to be in.

But the other day, CNN had a news story that explained it all. This is an old count~but something like 45 million people (plus now) are without health insurance. Many of those people have lost their jobs or taken a cut in pay or in hours. The story went on to say that one out of every ten people don't seek medical care because they just can't afford it. The 1 out of 10 figure was from back in Oct.

AND for every 1.1 million people who lose their jobs, that count goes up another one out of every ten. Within two weeks time, more then 1.1 million people had lost their jobs and that was recent. Considering the fact that many more people lost their jobs since Oct., that count must be about every 3 or 4 out of 10 people just aren't seeking medical care. It's sad, but if you have no money or insurance and don't qualify for medicare or medicaid, what do you do?

One of the questions they asked was if it was people who have a serious illness or injury or if it was just for colds, etc. The answer was that it's mixed~some serious, some not~just everything.

That's one of the reasons that I hope national healthcare becomes a reality. We have money to give healthcare to illegals and to other countries, but don't take care of our own people. And it's not personal~I have health insurance and so does DH, but it's tied to our employer and you never know what could happen the way things are going. I am pretty much un-insurable if I was to go and look for insurance outside of group ins. and there are a LOT of people in that situation right now and it's sad.