Archive for September, 2010

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11 Texas Cities Made Safer from Fires

September 30th, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in fire insurance

Elderly and low income residents of eleven Texas cities (Amarillo, Edinburg, El Paso, Farmers Branch, Galveston, Glenn Heights, Longview, Mansfield, McKinney, New Braunfels, and Wichita Falls) will be receiving smoke alarms from their local firefighters, as part of this year’s “We’re Out to Alarm Texas” smoke alarm campaign. Now in it’s sixth year, the program has saved three lives and prevented several homes across the state from being destroyed by fire.

As part of a partnership between the Insurance Council of Texas (ICT), the State Fire Marshall’s office, First Alert, and the Travelers Insurance Companies to donate the alarms to firefighters who will install them and monitor fire runs to those homes. In total, there were twelve hundred smoke alarms were donated this year, just in time for Fire Prevention Week, which runs from October 3rd – October 9th.

The elven cities were chosen by the State Fire Marshal’s Office because of the willingness of the fire departments there to install the smoke alarms, and because these cities all have high fire fatality counts. The smoke alarms are available to homeowners in each city on a first come, first served basis. Firefighters then install the alarms, and alert the homeowners to possible fire hazards.

Since the We’re Out to Alarm Texas program began in 2005, more than 6,000 smoke alarms were installed in 17 Texas cities. In the first year, elderly residents of Waco and New Braunfels were rescued by firefighters after alerts came in from donated alarms.

According to Mark Hanna, a spokesperson for the Insurance Council of Texas said, “It didn’t take us long to see that the program saves lives and property. The program has brought fire departments closer to their community and helped educate its residents to the benefits of a functioning smoke alarm.”

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Ohio Enacts Emergency Open Enrollment Rule

September 29th, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in health care reform, health insurance, pre-existing conditions

In order to improve protection for children under the age of nineteen who have pre-existing medical conditions, the Ohio Department of Insurance has issued an emergency rule establishing uniform periods of open enrollment in the state’s individual insurance market.

According to the director of the Ohio Department of Insurance, Mary Jo Hudson, “Recently enacted federal health care reforms provide that children under age 19 cannot be denied coverage or subjected to coverage limitations or exclusions because of a pre-existing health condition. We have issued this emergency rule to lessen confusion and uncertainty in the marketplace for consumers and insurers and to level the playing field for insurers offering this coverage. The rule also will make consumers more aware of children’s coverage while providing guidance to Ohio insurers so they can comply with new federal law requirements in Ohio.”

The rule (3901-8-14) is designed to address the worry that insurance for children under age 19 with pre-existing medical conditions would only be available during limited periods of time when the purchaser knows that the child will require medical care. This “adverse selection” phenomenon exposes is thought to expose insurance companies to unfair financial risk because it increases the percentage of policy holders who will definitely be making claims. Since insurers have the right to not sell individual health insurance policies to children of that age, the financial risk involved with carefully timed policy purchases for children with pre-existing condition could result in some insurance companies not selling policies to children under the age of 19.

The Ohio rule, which will require all insurance companies which sell policies for children under the age of nineteen to accept them as new clients during specified open enrollment periods, will make the proverbial playing field a bit more even, which will allow the insurers to continue offering the product.

Currently, insurers are having a one-time transitional open enrollment period that began on September 23rd and will end on November 15th. Beginning in July, 2011, open enrollment periods will be each July and January (all month long).

This emergency rule can be found under Featured Links on the Department’s website, www.insurance.ohio.gov or on the Register of Ohio web site at www.registerofohio.state.oh.us.

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Grand Island, NE Buys Terrorism Coverage…Again

September 28th, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in terrorism insurance

If you’re like us, Nebraska isn’t the first place you think of when someone says “ripe for a terrorist attack,” but the folks who live in Grand Island, Nebraska think otherwise, which is why their City Council has decided to continue the terrorism rider on the city insurance plan for another year.

Gary Mader, the city’s utilities director, said that the city’s general policy doesn’t cover terrorism, which is why the rider had to be added, and a cost of $22,000, up from $20,000 this year, the first in which the city has had such coverage.

When terrorism coverage riders first became available in 2003, the Grand Island City Council voted against buying it, which makes last week’s vote to purchase the coverage for the second year in a row an interesting turn of events.

The terrorism coverage was created by a 2002 federal program, passed in reaction to the the events of September 11, 2001.

In a statement to the Grand Independent, Mayder said that the question most people, businesses and governments are facing is the determination of what constitutes terrorism. He said that there are several groups which could be classified as terrorist, some of which are domestic, while others are internationally based.

While Mader doesn’t actually believe that Grand Island is a likely terrorist target, he says if it did, the financial losses could be significant. The city’s power plants, for example, are worth around $300 million.

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Most Americans Feel Healthcare Reform Didn’t Go Far Enough

September 27th, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in health insurance, insurance news

ModernHealthcare.com reported over the weekend that, despite a lot of controversy about the health care reform legislation passed last spring, most Americans don’t want less reform; they want more.

A new poll from the AP found that U.S. citizens who feel the health care reform law should have greater scope outnumber those who think government involvement in healthcare is wrong by 2-1.

When the reforms passed in March, 2010 finally complete their phase in in 2019, more than 30 million people who currently don’t have insurance, will, but, that will still leave another 20 million (give or take) without coverage. The AP poll found that 40% of adults think the new legislation didn’t go far enough to really change the state of the healthcare system, no matter whether they support or oppose the law, in theory. On the other hand roughly 20% of those polled oppose healthcare reform because they feel the government shouldn’t be involved in it at all. Overall, 30% of those polled were for the law, 40% opposed it, and another 30% were essentially neutral.

The survey in question involved interviews with about 1250 randomly chosen adults from across the country, conducted from August 31st – September 7th. There is a margin of error in the results of plus/minus 3.9 percent.

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Friday Filmstrips: Get Your Smokey On

September 24th, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in advice and how-tos, fire insurance, friday filmstrips

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you know that fire has been an issue in California, Colorado, and now Michigan recently, and while we know that most of you have good fire insurance, we also know that a reminder about how fires start is a good thing from time to time, so we’re “getting our Smokey on,” and sharing this PSA from SmokeyBear.com. Incidentally, did you know that the correct name for this American PSA icon is “Smokey Bear,” and not “Smokey THE Bear?”

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Connecticut Asks President Obama to Reconsider Tornado Damage Aid

September 23rd, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in homeowners insurance, wind insurance

Connecticut doesn’t get hit by tornadoes very often, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that most of the state’s residents don’t have wind insurance in their homeowners coverage. After all, even in places where tornadoes happen every year, protection against severe wind storms generally comes in the form of a policy rider.

It should also be no surprise, then, that when an EF-1 tornado struck Bridgeport, CT in June, not only was the property damage significant (think $3 million in Bridgeport itself, plus more in surrounding towns), Connecticut’s congressional delegation requested federal aid for tornado-related damage.

The request was denied, which is why the delegation has now asked President Obama to intercede, and reconsider the denial of aid for Fairfield County. To this end, they wrote to the President on Tuesday, pointing out that FEMAs rejection of the aid will mean property owners won’t have the money to rebuild their homes and lives.

According to Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, and Representatives Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLaura, Jim Himes, John Larson, and Chris Murphy, most of the people affected are low-income, and fewer than 20 percent of those affected had the necessary insurance coverage.

Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell has also appealed the FEMA ruling.

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One-year Extension to Flood Insurance Program

September 22nd, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in flood insurance, homeowners insurance, insurance news

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a month since we reported that the National Flood Insurance Program was on hold, but today’s report on the program is even better than yet another 30- or 60-day extension. Instead, we’re delighted to report that last night, in a unanimous vote, the United State Senate passed a measure extending the National Flood Insurance Program until September 30th, 2011. The measure still has to pass the House of Representatives, but since they passed a measure in July which extended it for five years, there is hope that this will be the political equivalent of a slam-dunk.

If, however, the House does not pass the Senate’s measure, the program, which covers more than five million Americans, will expire next Thursday, September 30, 2010.

Even with a year extension, however, the Senate measure is much shorter than the reauthorization requested by insurance companies and insurance agents, and it doesn’t include any of the verbiage meant to reform the program, which is currently operating at a deficit of $18 billion.

According to Marguerite Tortorello, senior vice president, public affairs, for the insurance group the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), “This does not change the need for a long-term reauthorization that includes fundamental reform of the program and prevents the patchwork of short-term fixes that have allowed the NFIP to lapse four times this year.”

The vice president for federal government affairs of another organization, the Independent Insurance Agents Brokers of America, John Prible, also commented, saying, “Unfortunately, recent years have provided ample evidence of the destruction left behind by floods that highlight the urgency and importance of extending the NFIP. With the program set to once again expire Sept. 30, the Big ‘I’ urges the House to follow the Senate’s lead and immediately adopt the Senate-passed legislation.”

This year’s four extensions are not the first the NFIP has seen. It’s actually been operating under a series of such extension for two years now, and every time an extension lapsed, new policies could not be written, which left new homeowners with protection, and delayed thousands of real estate transactions every day in flood-prone areas.

The latest one-year extension (S3814) was sponsored by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and co-sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Tex., Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

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