Insurance

You probably wouldn't send a holiday card depicting the family dog biting the boss. Or one that shows a brand new flat screen falling out of the back of your truck.

While these scenes aren't ones you'd like to experience at the holidays, experts say it's wise to keep in mind that accidents (like these, as well as ones similar) do happen. Even at the most wonderful time of the year.

"Holidays mean more guests, more driving, and more new possessions than any other time of year. It's important to make sure all your presents, parties and travels don't fall outside your current coverage," said Tim Gaspar, president of Gaspar Insurance Services in Los Angeles.

Early Saturday morning the Senate gave unemployed persons a Christmas gift. Through a trick in legislation, unemployment benefits were extended for the long-term unemployed who were slated to lose those benefits December 31. The Senate bill also provides up to 15 months of help with health insurance benefits through COBRA subsidies. Without the legislation benefits would have ended for any unemployed who already received nine months of help with their health insurance benefits on December 31.

The House of Representatives approved a six-month extension for a total of 15 months of COBRA benefits last week, so now the legislation is ready to go to the President's desk for signature.

In order to get the legislation through the Senate, Democrats had to use a trick. They attached the extension to the must-pass 2010 defense appropriations bill.

Have you ever wondered what happens to your car after you turn the keys over to a valet? If you've ever found damage to your car after letting a valet park it, you know that it can be hours of phone calls before you get even the basic information you need to file a claim. Also you may find it difficult to prove that it was the valet who did the damage.

Well folks who parked at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown St. Louis may have a very strong case to prove damage when someone calling himself "valet underground" posted dozens of videos on YouTube showing a valet doing donuts, peeling out, burning out, revving engines and spinning tires in expensive cars, in the parking garage about six months to a year ago.

As we watch the healthcare debate rage on in Congress, it's helpful noting that wholesale change of a flawed-but-longstanding system has happened in the past, despite the odds against it. A good example from the history books: Boss Tweed.

"Everything will fall apart if we change it." "The government will ruin it." "The government could never do it as well as the private citizen can." "Give us a way to opt out."

The refrains from Capitol Hill's healthcare debate may remind us of a past adventure in "socialism": not the time when we switched from private militias to standing government-organized armies (although that happened, too), but the pre-Civil War era in New York City, when the job of firefighting was wrested from the private sector and placed in government hands. It's hard to imagine that anyone today thinks that old system of response was superior. But that's pretty much how our healthcare system works -- and it's a mess, letting a whole class of people fall through the cracks.

Now that the party season is at hand, and you may be planning to host a big shindig, think about protecting yourself or your company from a huge liability bill by getting event liability insurance.

Accidents can happen at parties, especially if booze is being served, and you could get stuck with the bill if one of your guests causes damage.

With weddings and bar/bat mitzvah parties costing $20,000 and more, you can also protect deposits and get them back as long as the reason for cancellation is one of the allowable excuses in the policy. Yes, some policies even allow "cold feet" as an excuse.

Considering that you can get as much as $2 million in insurance for as little as $450, it's worth the cost to protect against a much larger liability.

For anyone who is serving in the military, or served and was honorably discharged, you're now eligible to be a customer of one of the top-ranked banking and insurance companies in the country. USAA, started in 1922 by 25 military officers to insure each other's cars, is opening its doors wider. It recently announced an expansion of its customer base from enlisted military to all living service men and women who were honorably discharged.

Ever since the news got out that the U.K. plans to force some of its large, bailout-receiving banks to sell off some operations and become smaller, there's been plenty of speculation on this side of the pond that we might do the same thing.

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, threw down the gauntlet when he said recently that banks considered "too big to fail" should be broken up to make the economy more stable. (Fisher's full speech on the topic is here if you're interested.) A committee in the House of Representatives is pushing for new legislation that would go even further and let the government break up other kinds of companies -- not just banks -- it deemed a threat.

It's a very satisfying idea: Banks that get too big to handle should be forced to downsize. Only trouble is, a lot of economists think it won't address the problem. "The problem is, the really emotionally satisfying things that we could do all create more harm than good," said Douglas Elliott, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. On the subject of breaking up banks dubbed too big to fail, Elliot told WalletPop, "It would hurt the economy, which ends up hitting the average person."

Whether you're a child rushed to an emergency room for care or an adult who has put off preventive medical care, if you don't have health insurance, you are more likely to die. That's been confirmed by three different health studies.

• Johns Hopkins School of Medicine found that uninsured children who are hospitalized are 60% more likely to die.

• Harvard University found that large numbers of uninsured adults have chronic illnesses that are undiagnosed and under-treated, which means they are not getting treatments that could prevent strokes, heart attacks, amputations and kidney failure.

Queasy-stomached home owners who can't bear to watch the equity in their homes continue to dwindle have an option: Equity protection policies. These policies, will, for a fee that generally ranges from 1% to 3% of your home's equity, guarantee against further losses when it comes time to sell.

Most of the policies work like this: At the time the contract is purchased, the company takes a snapshot of the average home price in the customer's ZIP code. If, at the time of sale the ZIP Code property value has declined, the company would make up the difference -- in most cases, less a 10% "deductible."

The best technique for selling life insurance is known in the trade as "driving the hearse up to the door."

When the salesperson drives the hearse up to the door, he describes at length all the horrible things that can happen if the family hasn't bought enough life insurance and leaves widows and orphans to starve.

"Well-funded marketing campaigns and perverse incentives to brokers are targeting seniors' home equity and using reverse mortgages as their tools," attorney Tara Twomey said in the NCLC news release.

If you lost your job, right now you can get a 65% subsidy from the government to help pay for a continuation of your health benefits under COBRA for nine months. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act may be a weird name for a bill about health insurance, but it's basically the law that requires companies to let people pay to remain on their group health insurance plans for at least 18 months.

But that could end shortly. Congress passed the 65% subsidy as unemployment rose in this country, but it's due to expire Dec. 31. A bill to extend the subsidy for a total of 15 months was introduced last week by Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa. Originally, the subsidy was available for nine months. So someone who began collecting the subsidiary on March 1 would run out of help at the end of November.

Americans are throwing $2.2 trillion at rising health care costs. But experts say there's a way we can cut out as much as $1 trillion. "Take better care of ourselves," says Margaret Lewin, MD, medical director of Cinergy Health.

It sounds simple. Take care of yourself, spend less on health care.

But experts say Americans are missing the mark when it comes to smoking, diet and other lifestyle choices.

In 1999 the American Association for Retired People officially changed its name to AARP to avoid the misconception that it was only for retired persons. Since that time, it has vigorously pursued baby boomers as they enter their golden years.

Now, the association seems to be reaching even further down the ages, all the way to young people interested in gaining financial wisdom, by unveiling a new Web site, LifeTuner.

LifeTuner is "an online personal finance community site born out of a growing recognition that young adults need to take a much more active role than previous generations in planning and preparing for their own financial security."

The site contains the usual personal finance background information, calculators and other tools, expert Q&A and a community section where users can engage with one another. Like most AARP products, it seems well thought out and professional, and will probably be as good a resource as any for young people who want to start down the road of financial independence.

For the second time in as many weeks, upstate New York's ailing economy got a $100 million shot in the arm. Today, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced a historic nationwide reform of the consumer reimbursement system for out-of-network health care charges. A new not-for-profit company, FAIR Health, Inc., and an upstate research network headquartered at Syracuse University will develop a new, independent database for consumer reimbursement. The team will also create a new website that gives consumers the chance to compare prices before they choose their doctors--something that's never been done before.

Joining Syracuse University in the upstate research network are the State University of New York at Buffalo, Cornell University, University of Rochester, and SUNY Upstate Medical University. The new database will make FAIR Health a center for health care research and an engine of health care reform.