Insurance

Served in the U.S. military? This bank's for you

Vanessa Richardson Dec 7th 2009 @ 12:00PM EST Filed Under: Banks, Insurance, Credit cards

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.

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Should we break up big banks?

Martha C. White Dec 5th 2009 @ 5:00PM EST Filed Under: Banks, Debt, Insurance, Recession

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."

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Uninsured more likely to die younger

Lita Epstein Nov 18th 2009 @ 11:00AM EST Filed Under: Insurance, Health, Insurance-health

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.

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Ready to gamble that your home value will tumble more?

Ann Brenoff Nov 9th 2009 @ 8:00AM EST Filed Under: Insurance, Real Estate

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."

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CitiGroup Says good-bye to life insurer Primerica

Jennie L. Phipps Nov 6th 2009 @ 6:00PM EST Filed Under: Insurance

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.

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Bad actors continue to prey on seniors

Amy Pyle Nov 4th 2009 @ 5:00PM EST Filed Under: Banks, Borrowing, Home, Insurance, Real Estate, Retire, Fraud, Mortgages

Bad actors have solidly shifted their attention to reverse mortgages, causing a top consumer organization to warn seniors to choose such loans carefully.

A new report by the National Consumer Law Center likens the aggressive lending practices in today's reverse mortgage lending to those common in the sub-prime mortgage heyday -- featuring some of the same players.

"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.

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COBRA coverage for unemployed may be extended

Lita Epstein Nov 4th 2009 @ 1:00PM EST Filed Under: Insurance, Career, Health, Insurance-health

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.

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Grassroots health care reform: How Americans can cut $1 trillion in health care costs

Gina Roberts-Grey Nov 4th 2009 @ 11:00AM EST Filed Under: Insurance, Health

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.

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AARP offers help to young people planning their financial future

Tom Barlow Nov 2nd 2009 @ 6:00PM EST Filed Under: Budgets, Insurance, Technology

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.

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Health care just became a bit more transparent

Gina Roberts-Grey Oct 29th 2009 @ 1:00PM EST Filed Under: Home, Insurance, Health

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.

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Don't be duped by fake health discount plans

Lita Epstein Oct 28th 2009 @ 12:00PM EST Filed Under: Insurance, Health

Television ads promote health discount plans in a duplicitous way to make them sound like insurance, but in reality, they're no more than a discount off the bill if you go to a member provider. You could still be stuck with thousands of dollars in health costs.

Unfortunately, Mary Lloyd found out the hard way when she and her husband signed up for a plan from Cinergy Health after seeing an ad that she could get health coverage for as little as $5 a day. She checked it out because her husband was set to retire, and health insurance was going to cost them $1,200 a month to continue his coverage. She got a quote for one plan that sounded good at $588, but was switched to a cheaper plan during the sales process when she did not get acceptance from the higher-priced plan. The key problem: The higher priced plan was true insurance, while the lower priced plan turned out to be a discount card.

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Two-year-old Colorado girl denied health insurance for being too skinny

Sarah Gilbert Oct 20th 2009 @ 6:15PM EST Filed Under: Insurance, Kids and Money, Health, Insurance-health

Health insurance companies, it appears, are uncannily skilled at creating cute, sweet poster children... for the other side of the health reform debate. Just two weeks ago, Colorado insurer, Rocky Mountain Health Plans denied health coverage of four-month-old Alex Lange because, by growth chart standards, Alex is obese.

Now, according to a report by The Denver Channel, a local affiliate of ABC News, little two-year old Aislin Bates of Erie, Colo. is getting a similar dose of rejection. This time, however, it is because she's underweight and, this time, it's a much bigger insurer: UnitedHealthcare.

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