Under a Gibbous Moon

I recently replaced my old laptop with one made by ASUS. One of the nice things about ASUS laptops is that they have a free, two year accidental damage warranty (ADW). After I brought it home I downloaded the forms, filled them out, and mailed them in so that I could take advantage of this.

I recently received and email from ASUS stating that my laptop does not qualify for that ADW because it was purchased from a retailer (Best Buy) that offers their own warranty service. Specifically:

Deny Reason: Bought from Best Buy – Retailer does not participate in ADW

It’s good to know that Best Buy’s terms of sale with ASUS preclude them from giving you their free warranty so that Best Buy can sell you theirs.

For anyone who has been following my personal Twitter feed knows, my wife was recently laid off of work. When this happens, one of the things that you recieve is your COBRA statement.

As I was reading through it, I was reminded of a frequent argument that I read during the big debate of the health care bill. In its various forms, it stated that anyone who did not have health insurance was just plain lazy, I only pay X dollars out of my check for health insurance and that’s not much.

True, my wife paid about $120 a month for family coverage. Sounds like a reasonable price that anyone could afford. Of course, what made this claim ridiculous is that anyone who has been self-employed (or just pays attention) knows that the employer typically bears the largest portion of the cost for their employees health insurance.

The full cost for my wife’s family coverage health insurance is $1,840.98. Per month. For scale federal minimum wage is $1,256.67 per month.