Laura!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good for you!

Laura! You rock!!!

Good letters, you two! Proud of you both for writing them, and proud of the editors for publishing them.

BATON ROUGE (AP): There may be more criminal cases related to the rising death count from Hurricane Katrina.

Attorney General Charles Foti tells NBC he will investigate every death at a nursing home or hospital that's not deemed to be from natural causes. And he says he won't hesitate to bring more charges.

The owners of a nursing home where 34 people died are free on bond after being charged with negligent homicide. Authorities say they turned down offers of rescue. But their attorney says some of the frail patients probably wouldn't have survived the evacuation.

Over the weekend, more than 40 bodies were pulled from a flooded New Orleans hospital.

wwltv.com

I need advice.

I'm thinking of applying for a job that would, in almost every respect, be a vast improvement over the job I have now. It's in the field I want to pursue, it's in my town (as opposed to in another state!), it's more money. There are two catches, however: It's temporary (through Feb.), and it doesn't have benefits.

The part about it being temporary doesn't bother me overmuch. I'm set to quit my current job before the end of the year anyway, and I have no current job leads for after I quit, so taking this job will just extend by a couple of months the time period I have in which to find another job (and, optimistically, there's always the chance that they'll love me so much they'll want to keep me on in some capacity once this position is finished).

The no benefits part, though, worries me. Not that my health plan at the moment is all that great, but being without one entirely is a dire prospect. So I'm looking at COBRA, and it looks like I can get a short-term (under 6 months; this is assuming I'll be able to find another job with benefits in the spring) insurance plan for only $25/month. Can that possibly be right? I know I've heard friends talk about paying as much as $300/month for COBRA. Does anyone here have experience or advice with this plan?

TIA!

Katie, I am not sure if this would work for you, but maybe and for any others who are freelancers, contractors, temp workers, etc...Freelancers Union.

Go Laura and Teppy with the mad letter-writing skills!

Kate, I'd look carefully at that $25/month plan, because I've never heard of insurance that cheap. When I used COBRA back in 1993, I was paying around $100/month, and I'm sure it's only gone up since. My guess is that if it's legit, it has high deductibles and/or is designed for catastrophic care--i.e. would pay your hospital bills if you were in a wreck, but NSM the cost of your allergy meds or birth control pills. All of which might be a risk worth taking for 6 months, if you're generally in good health, but be sure you know what you're getting into.

msbelle, thanks for the link--that could be very useful.

Susan, I will definitely look closely at the plan. It's sometimes hard for me to tell, though, exactly what is offered by a specific insurance plan and what would make the most sense for me to get. At the moment, I'm not taking any prescription medication, and I just got new glasses, so I don't have much need for that sort of maintenance insurance; it's the potential car crash or contraction of West Nile virus that worries me.

Congrats on the letter, Laura!

Yeah, what Susan Said, Kate -- it's probably designed to be catastrophic only, or a really really high deductible. You're young and in good health, so if you're not too risk-aversive it might be the way to go for a couple months.