Guest post: Health Savings Plans

A guest post by Pioneer98

Many politicians are touting health savings accounts as a way to help with rising health care costs, including ones currently running for office in our area. As someone who will be switching to a one of these health plans in the near future, I wanted to share what I've learned about them.

The pitch: Consumers will get a pre-tax savings account they can save money in, similar to a 401K, to spend on health care. Their employer will also contribute some amount to it, also similar to a 401K. Politicians and businesses are saying these savings accounts will give consumers more power over how their health care insurance dollars are spent. The idea is that this will give consumers more choices and put more price pressure on providers to offer services at lower costs.

The fine print: They fail to mention that these type of savings accounts are only available with a "high deductible health plan". This is actually written into the tax code for these accounts. The deductible is going to be much, much higher than traditional plans (mine is going to be about 6 times higher). Another key difference between these plans and traditional plans is that there is no longer a co-pay. Instead of paying $15 for a doctor's visit or $5 for a prescription, you will pay full price out of your pre-tax savings account for all services (until your deductible is met, of course).

Some benefits: You will be allowed to deposit an amount up to your deductible into this account each year. If you do not spend all the money you save in a given year, whatever is left will roll over to the next year. This is an improvement over flexible spending accounts, which are normally "use it or lose it". Another benefit is that, generally, preventive doctor's visits will be covered 100%, although it's not entirely clear what happens if a preventive visit turns into a "treatment" visit.

The bottom line: Most insurance providers will still offer a sizeable discount if you keep your business "in network". This is actually the fatal flaw of these plans. It will be nearly impossible to find a service out-of-network that will beat the discounted in-network prices. This basically eliminates the chance for consumers to have "more choices", which was the whole purpose for these accounts in the first place. Someday these plans may eventually lead to true competition and "price pressure". But as long as insurance providers are in on both sides of the plan (offering the insurance as well as offering the services), health care costs are likely to continue to rise.

Skatepark Grand Opening

It was 47º and windy when I left for the skatepark ribbon cutting, so I figured there'd be like a dozen skaters and the usual ribbon cutting folks and city officials. Instead, as I got near the skatepark I saw tons of cars and I'd say 200-300 people. There were probably 100 bikers and skaters.The kids seemed pretty good about taking turns so they weren't all crashing into each other constantly.
City officials, some kids, parents, etc, all freezing their ears off.
The fire department set up one of their tower trucks with the American flag hanging from the ladder.
The skatepark, with kids, the crowd, and downtown Davenport in the background.

The new parking lot, full of cars, and our city administrator as the only person over 40 (or maybe even 30) using the skatepark today. There were a ton of kids at this event, and they all seemed very excited about the new park. Its probably the first and only time that 100 kids cheered the Mayor.

A few coming events

From the city's site:
"Davenport's new Skatepark Grand Opening Celebration is scheduled for Saturday, October 14th. Festivities get underway at 1 PM at Centennial Park, located at River Drive and Marquette Street. The ribbon-cutting ceremony takes place at 1PM. Safety tips and information will be available. Concessions will be available. Enjoy the fun, music and giveaways at this free event!"

Also from the city's site:
"The 5-Point intersection; Locust Street, Division Street, & Hickory Grove Road, will be closed for resurfacing starting at 8AM; Tuesday October 17th thru 6PM; Wednesday, October 18th. The detour for eastbound Locust Street will be Washington Street to Central Park Avenue to Lincoln Avenue to Locust Street. The westbound detour is the reverse. Detours for Division Street and Hickory Grove Road begin closer to the construction area. Motorists should be advised to find alternative routes during this construction."

From Alderman Frink's site:
"I will co-host an All Wards Meeting, with Ald. Ambrose in the 4th Ward, from 6-8 pm, Oct. 24th, at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in the 4-H Building. Topics will include the recent city survey and the city budget, as well as any other topic citizens wish to discuss. The meeting is open to citizens from throughout the community. This will be my sixth city meeting of the year in the sixth different ward. I will host meetings in the 2nd and 5th Wards before year end. Additional info: click here."

From the Adler Theatre's site:
"Adler Theatre 75th Anniversary & Grand Opening: Thu Nov 2 2006"

The State of the Blog

The first post of the QuadCityImages blog was made on October 12th, 2005. It was around this time that one of the founding fathers of QC-area blogs, The Fly, decided he or she was going to go back to doing a 1-person blog. Colonel Davenport and I were downsized, so I figured I would spin off my own blog. I wouldn't have guessed that I'd still be doing it 400 posts and a year later, but I also don't regret doing it. I've learned a lot of things and met a lot of people who are all interested in making Davenport a greater city than it already is. One benefit of being non-anonymous is the ability to meet people in "real life" instead of just talking to them via email or comments.

I never really had much interest in how many hits I was getting, so I never added a counter to the site. My fairly unprofitable AdSense ads on the right side have a page that keeps track of things, including hits, so that does act as somewhat of a counter. Since adding the AdSense banner, I've had 62,912 hits. That certainly doesn't come out to the 1000+ hit days that Fly used to have when people got really riled up, but I feel that there are enough comments and readers to keep the blog interesting. We've all seen what happens when too many people comment, with the QCTimes' online comments.

I'm proud that you readers seem to provide much more intelligent discussion than the QCTimes and QCOnline commenters. I also do read every comment, so having 4 or 5 30+ comment threads can get kind of time consuming anyway. I'm also proud that I have never deleted a comment due to content, although WindingHills has gotten pretty close. I'm sticking with fully anonymous comments, even though it can be a source of frustration. Its the back and forth between you, the readers that keeps me going on here, and its been great so far.

Thanks for being good blog readers/commenters folks, and hopefully I'll still be around in another year.

QuadCityImages

Dreaming of a white... Halloween?

Sure, it might be over 2 months to Christmas, but the snow was flying this morning. It was coming down pretty good for about 5 minutes, and there were a few periods of light flurries throughout the night. Probably don't need to break out the shovels and snowblowers yet though...


Coming later today (or... early tomorrow):
The QCI blog 1 year anniversary post, The State of the Blog.

The Malin Thing

Malin to get cost-of-living increase -QCTimes

In my view either:

A. Malin pulled the world's greatest bluff, daring the council to go to court over whether his raise was legit, and if it was, for him to get $600,000.

B. His raise WAS legit, and the council made a mistake earlier


I'd suspect the answer is B. Malin really isn't the thief type, despite what various disgruntled employees say about him. I always thought it was humorous that the same types of people who always railed against the city legal department on the blogs suddenly took Thee's word as gospel when it was against someone they hate even more, Craig Malin.

As people have said before, this whole thing came down to some aldermen wanting Malin gone. Also, the QCTimes played the part of instigator instead of investigator, throwing fuel on the fire and selling papers like hotcakes. Hamerlinck and Company don't like the fact that our administrator isn't a drone who takes no initiative. There's an argument to be made that a city administrator is only supposed to do what the council says. That said, our city could elect a council full of people who can't read a sentence, much less come up with an original idea. (At least one ward already has.) In that scenario, do we want an automaton that can only do what he's told, or an innovative city administrator that can come up with new ideas on his own? We have a professional run our city to keep our amateur city councils from doing too much damage, so I'm pretty opposed to the council taking power away from the pros and giving it to themselves.

I wonder if he'll still give the raises to charity...

Friday Stuff

Will Bettendorf's riverfront project really succeed without somehow taking business away from the RiverCenter or Adler? Will Bettendorf ever have a real downtown?

Anyone else planning on their first visit to K's Merchandise in months or years now that they're liquidating? If anyone needs figurines, lava lamps, or indoor fountains, I can't think of a better place to get them. Or family-sized deep fryers. It took Sam Goody to about 60% off before things started being a good deal, but K's is reasonably priced enough that even 25% will make some things good deals.

Also, what do you folks see possibly going into K's soon-to-be-vacant location at Kimberly and Marquette?

The Great Train Expo (model railroad show) is returning to the QCCA Expo Center after a 1 or 2 year absence. I emailed organizers last year and they said they didn't make enough money here, but they'd be just down the road in Des Moines for 2005. Apparently in 2006 they have reconsidered, and will be back in Rock Island.

Will my Dodgers win a single game against the Mets? (I sadly predict not) For those who care, here's a link to BridgeToSomewhere's baseball predictions of last February. He was surprisingly right about the Dodgers making it to the playoffs, but not too much more.

The Sounds of Progress

When you work 3rd shift and sleep during the day, watching an excavator being unloaded across the street from your apartment isn't exactly a happy event.

I'm sure this means they're going to start work on the small surface lot behind the 4th Street Lofts. I hope they're able to leave the railroad tracks that run down the alley, even though they don't go anywhere. They add character to the neighborhood.

8:00AM Update: Now they've deployed some sort of self-propelled jackhammer that looks like a gym locker on wheels. Its a slow smashing, so my glass of water is doing the Jurassic Park thing on my desk. Good times.

Des Moines Reflections

I drove to Des Moines Saturday afternoon to meet up with some of the people from the AbsoluteDSM website and forums. The people who run the site aren't secretive about their identities, and many of us enjoyed the chance to put faces with screennames. One of the things that was interesting to me was the variety of people who attended. There was a group of people who are professionally involved in development, such as a city planner type person, real estate developers, property owners/rehabbers. There was also a number of people such as myself that don't work in the field, but who take an active interest in it. College students, a financial planner, an elementary school teacher, me, etc. Everyone there was interested in making their hometown, and home state, a better place to live.

We started off with a tour of some projects in the Drake area being done by one of the forum members and his wife. I think everyone there was extremely impressed with what they'd been able to accomplish. I heard someone say that they had renovated 10 homes in that neighborhood, and even moved a house from the Drake campus to an empty lot and rehabbed it. They also were planning to move 2 more houses in November to make way for a new Drake building. They'd built an attractive townhouse-style apartment building, a brick commercial/residential building that fit the surrounding block perfectly, and are currently in the process of renovating a historic dairy. More pictures of the tour, taken by someone with a real camera, can be found here.

After leaving the Drake neighborhood, which is known as Dogtown, we went to Raccoon River Brewery in downtown Des Moines. I drove past the Chipperfield library on the way, and its quite a sight lit up at night. The copper skin that's mostly opaque during the day becomes almost completely clear at night with the building's lights on. Even at 9:30pm on a Saturday, a crew was working to take down an old parking garage with a wrecking ball, but they knocked it off for the night around 10pm. Des Moines has really had a surge in downtown residential development, and more projects are still underway. Hopefully downtown Davenport can enjoy similar success over the next decade or two.

A Couple Des Moines Images

I planned to write an entry this morning after work about the meet-up in Des Moines, but for some reason I'm exhausted so I'm going to bed. Here are the pretty much the only 2 pictures that I took.The meeting was at a "coffee shop and wine bar" (two beverages I don't drink) in the small campustown area near Drake University, so I took some time Saturday afternoon to walk around the area. I'd never been to the campus, and I must say it was pretty nice. Its not in the best area of Des Moines, but its improving. This is partly due to the efforts of the people who hosted the meeting.
Here are most of the people who attended, hearing about the renovation of a historic dairy building into apartments and street-level retail.

I'll probably post a bit more about this later today.

Weekend Open Thread + Crane picture

You've got to admit, that's a serious crane. I'm not sure what they're lifting, but apparently something needs to be put on top of the MidAmerican building.

I'll be out of town today, as I'm representing the QC area at a small get together in Des Moines with some of the folks from AbsoluteDSM.com. The people on that site seem to be a lot more excited about some of things happening in Davenport than a lot of Davenport residents are...

I won't be all the way out of touch, since I think the bar we're eating at has wireless internet, and I'll have my laptop. So don't get too rowdy while the moderator is away.

Also, GO IOWA!
(I saw some OSU fans skulking around
downtown yesterday, so watch out)

4th Street Lofts Images

I got to walk through the 4th Street Lofts tonight, and took some pictures of the progress. The actual apartments are still in various stages of completion, so I took mostly shots of the views from the windows.

This is going to be one of the neatest areas of the building. The image on the left is from my pre-renovation tour almost a year ago, and the image on the right was taken today. They've reused these old doors in what would have otherwise been a plain hallway, with the actual apartment doors interspersed between the old metal-clad doors.

Here's a view out of a south-facing window, which will someday be improved by the destruction of the cement plant. It had a pretty good view of the lock and dam, even with the trees, but my camera isn't much for zooming in.
The view to the west, which could someday include a repainted bridge and hopefully a renovated Blackhawk hotel. It will also probably include washed windows.The view to the east is the building I live in, the Crescent Macaroni Building or Davenport Lofts. People on both sides of the street will have to be mindful of keeping their blinds closed if they don't want an audience.

Alexander Company is hopeful that people will be able to start moving into the 4th Street Lofts by December, and 5 apartments are already rented, despite this week being the first time any potential renters have been able to get in to see the building.

Finally someone got the "WitQC?" image

I'm not sure if it was someone who actually knew where the architectural feature was from, drove around the downtown one-ways until they saw it, or just guessed every downtown building, but someone finally got Where in the QC is this? #11.

The winner was anonymous 6:10, who said the Democrat on Brady Street.Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture of the Democrat building itself, as I was down there taking pictures of the Kapheim memorial progress and the John Forest block project. This shot at least shows where the design is located on the building. I was trying to come up with a 3rd clue somehow tying into the Democrat name, but fortunately someone got it before I had to try and come up with something clever and witty.

Coming soon: My reflections on a tour of the new 4th Street Lofts.

Where in the QC is this? #11

Edit: I'm moving this back to the top because no one has gotten it yet.

Clue #1: This place is in Davenport.

Clue#2: You've hopefully only driven by it in one direction, and its near a building being renovated, overlooking something else that's newly changed.

This is a rare weekend where I didn't have a bunch of stuff to attend or take care of, so you folks will have to excuse my relative lack of posts. I was going to be lazy tonight and post an open thread, but instead I'll be nearly as lazy and post a "Where in the QC is this?."

(Click image for a larger view)

A couple new links

Pioneer98, of the Bridge to Somewhere blog, is on a bit of a hiatus. However, he is still posting pictures on the Bridge to Somewhere Flickr site, so I've added the link to that to my link bar.

I've also added a link to the Crescent Lofts new website, even though its unfinished and has little beyond a fancy flash intro and all the floorplans for the building opening later this year.

Real Estate Davenport-style

I spend a couple hours from time to time looking through Ruhl-Ruhl.com at houses in Davenport. Partly I do this out of curiosity, and partly because I hope to buy a home in the next couple years. I picked 4 homes that I felt like saying something about, and here they are. Images are mostly taken from Scott County's online Parcel Search.

1. 1502 Kirkwood -Its our old friend the Kirkwood boarded-up house. It can be yours for a mere 44 grand. I'm sure under that plywood its a real beauty. The pictures on Ruhl&Ruhl's site show how well it was taken care of. Perfect for Bix parties!

2. 1127 Bridge -I remember about a decade ago this house was completely fixed up, at least on the outside, and it really looked great. Then apparently whoever did the fixing instantly moved away and whoever moved in started letting it fall apart from day one. They're asking $95,000 for it, so maybe the inside is still in good shape. The lack of any inside pictures on the site isn't encouraging though. This neighborhood could really use this house being back in good shape.

3. 604 Gaines -This really looks like it has great potential. I can picture what it would look like renovated, and combined with the other efforts in that neighborhood it would definitely be a good thing. Unfortunately, even if I had $90,000 to buy it plus the many thousands to spend on supplies to fix it up, my fear of heights would keep me far away from the 3rd floor and turrets. It looks like it was sold in 1989 for $10,000 and in 2002 for $45,000, so in a few more years it should be worth at least 200 grand.

4. 3117 E Locust -Its the castle-looking home directly across from the 14th hole of the Duck Creek golf course. Its a pretty amazing home, but I found a couple other things interesting about it. Judging from its Parcel Summary on Scott County's site, its assessed at $320,740 and sold for nearly that ($310,000) in 2003. While homes in many Davenport neighborhoods are lucky to get their assessed value for a purchase price, this one did. Not only that, but 3 years later its selling for $549,000! I'm not into the real estate business, so maybe this is just an optimistic starting point, or maybe some serious work has been done to the house. Either way, a bit too rich for my blood. Oh yeah, it even has a website, www.davenportcastle.com, even though I consider this to be the real Davenport castle.

If anyone buys any of these after reading about them here, I would expect the realtor to at least buy me dinner. A piece of their commission wouldn't be too bad either...

Your Dream Downtown

(Note: This image is not my dream downtown, but a whimsical conversation starter)

The recent discussions about the possibility of an indoor water park next to the Blackhawk got me thinking, what things would I really love to see downtown? I have a few ideas that I may share in the upcoming days, but I figured I'd throw it out there for the blog readers to make suggestions.

For the purpose of this exercise, lets assume that none of these buildings or ideas will involve any taxpayer money, or block anyone's views. I know that both of those are improbable bordering on impossible, but pretend they aren't for the sake of argument.

What things would you folks most like to see built, installed, or added to downtown Davenport?

Fly gets his wish

According to the agenda for tonight's council meeting, the city cable commission will actually get some members tonight. Six people are being appointed, and they're all listed as new appointments. This was always one of the Fly's pet peeves, and he'd probably know if 6 is the final number or if that's just a partial cable commission. QCI, however, doesn't know how many people belong on a cable commission. (or really care, but don't tell Fly)

Sunrise on the river

Where in the QC is this? #10

Here we go again.... where is it? Maybe posting it at 6:37am will stop someone from getting it in 10 minutes or less.

Click to enlarge, as usual

After a number of good guesses "hoganj300" got the correct answer, which I'll leave off the front page so others can see if they were right.