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Certainly the latter.
I have pretty decent insurance through work, but if I’m picking up a prescription, it’s cheaper for me to say I don’t have insurance and use a free discount card (like GoodRx) than to use my insurance. We’re talking $150-$200 for one prescription (a one month supply) with insurance vs $30 without.
To be fair, I have an HDHP with an HSA so my insurance is only supposed to negotiate a discount until I hit the deductible, rather than paying for it. Full price is $200-$250, I think? (I get generics and each generic variant has a slightly different price.) So technically they’re providing a discount, just not a very good one.
Insurance also likes to require a “prior authorization,” which was always a fun surprise after making it through the pharmacy line. That normally takes a couple days to resolve, at minimum, and sometimes longer. If you’re not familiar with prior auths, it’s basically when the insurance company says “Hey doc, can you justify why you’re prescribing this and answer these eight questions?” and then they have someone without a medical degree review the answer and see if it’s good enough.
The only downside to paying out of pocket with a discount card is that the $30 doesn’t go toward my deductible. But since my deductible is multiple thousands of dollars, unless something else happens during the year, I won’t hit my deductible off the $150-$200 prescriptions + regular doctor visits alone. But that’s at most $360 out of pocket that wouldn’t have gone toward the deductible, assuming I had a health crisis in December, vs $1440-$2040 saved if I don’t.
X-rays are even worse, because you’re not told the price ahead of time.
1·1 year agoI have more fun playing ping pong / table tennis if I can spin the ball.
unless one is sure the thing is actually beneficial, which is like actually pretty nebulous because even the people who have the Thing sometimes don’t think it is better
Could you ask to use someone else’s racket to see if you like it? For more expensive equipment, you might be able to try it before you buy it or rent it.
I agree that low-effort obligatory gift-giving is wasteful, but gift-giving doesn’t have to be like that.
in the two contexts described above, I feel like it is spiritually cheating. Yes, everyone* does it, but If you say something is based on skill, and then you find out that for the same skill level you get to win more games if you buy the Thing, this feels like an awkward, though way less pronounced parallel to pay to win video games
Some equipment is for safety. I hope you’re not skimping there.
When you start to get more competitive in sports that can benefit from more expensive equipment, there’s a certain amount of budget that you’re basically expected to be spending at a given level. If you’re spending beyond that level, then people might feel like you’re getting an advantage over them, but otherwise, the playing field is level. Also, more expensive gear might not even be better for you at a given skill level - with table tennis, you need more fine control with a “faster” racket than with a slower one.
That said, it sounds like you’re using a $1 rubberless racket, and those are terrible to play with. You’re literally not able to even use fairly basic techniques with them. The difference between one of those and even a $5-$10 racket is huge - far bigger than the difference between one of those and a $50 racket for sure.
Factually incorrect.
First, consider that regardless of whether they are prohibited from arresting people for insulting them, they do. Those charges are often dropped or thrown out, sure - albeit with no consequences for the police officer - but I would consider having to deal with that hassle “punishment” that they can inflict purely because of their authority.
But there’s also institutional support for an officer to punish you for lawful, protected conduct. If you upset an officer and in response, he cites or arrests you for a minor but legitimate offense that he’d have otherwise not cared about, you’re very unlikely to get that technically legitimate charge thrown out of court. It may be that police are technically prohibited from doing this, but in practice, “He only arrested me for — insert random crime here, let’s say jaywalking — because I called him a pig, said I’d engaged in coitus with his mother the previous night, and asked if he’d like to watch next time or if he had a night in with his partner’s nightstick planned” isn’t going to suffice to get the charge thrown out, even if the judge believes you, if you were actually breaking the law in question. And since pretty much everyone is breaking laws all the time, this means that as long as the police officer can find one that you’re currently breaking, you’re fucked.