Whenever anyone talks about how high interest rates are now, I remember when my wife and I bought our house in 1997. We were pre-approved for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at 7.5%, and we were told to take it.

What we were actually told was, "you’ll never see a rate this low again.

Pong.

I work at a large, private university health system.

Annual up front cost for insurance is $4967 for medical insurance and $609 for dental. Those cover me, my wife, and two of my three children. The insurance is a plan funded by my employer, but managed by Independence Blue Cross, AKA “Personal Choice”.

There are three “tiers” of coverage.

First tier is for facilities that are part of my employer. Generally, for procedures performed at my employer’s facility there is no additional charge. For a primary care provider who is part of my health system, there would be a $20 copay per visit. Specialist would also be $20, and an ER visit would be $200.

There is an “in network” tier, made up of external providers that accept personal choice. Primary care copay is $35, specialist is $50, ER $200.

The third tier is “out of network”. If we see someone out of network, we would have to pay them directly, then try to get partial reimbursement from insurance.

There’s also a prescription plan, but we get a discount by using the hospital’s outpatient pharmacy.

Everyone always talks about the cost to give birth. All three of my kids were born at the hospital where I work, and none of the births cost us any additional money.

https://youtu.be/PZbqAMEwtOE

Edit: if it were actually a commercial, it would be the best commercial ever created.

the 1950s. This was a high water mark for conservatism in the U.S., and in order to go on any date at least one parent, usually the girl’s dad, had to be present.

Perhaps this was a regional thing.

I was born in 1970, but from what my parents have described, dates were not chaperoned in the 50s unless you happened to have particularly strict parents. Like maybe if you were Amish or something.

Here’s the only thing I was able to find online about dating in the 50’s

https://www.plosin.com/beatbegins/projects/sombat.html