Your baby’s weight and insurance
There’s a school of thought that says, “the number don’t lie”. The assumption is that numbers are facts and facts are always true. So if someone counts the number of times something happens, this gives you a basis from which to estimate the probability of the same thing happening across a population. This is the basis of underwriting for insurance purposes. Teams of highly trained people called actuaries count how many traffic accidents there are. They break it down into the age, make and model of car, the age, gender and profession of the driver, the time of day, the weather conditions, and so on. We happily accept information that, in the first half of 2009, only 16,626 people were killed in crashes, a 7% drop as against the same period last year. We are not surprised when we read this proves that there are 1.15 deaths per 100 million miles driven. The facts are facts and must be true.
Except when we apply the same approach to health insurance, some people get upset. Perhaps it’s appropriate to be writing this at Halloween but the same actuaries have been counting the number of people who die from various diseases. For the purposes of this article, one of the main areas of interest has been the question of obesity. There are detailed numbers available across the country showing that people who have a high Body Mass Index (BMI) are more likely than thin people to die of heart disease. The medical evidence proves what are called “comorbidities”, i.e. the presence of two or more conditions which, more often than not, suggests a cause and effect at work, or that there’s an underlying vulnerability to both conditions. We are not so unhappy to accept a link between drug abuse and mental illness, but mention a possible link between body weight and disease and, suddenly, people are upset. People do not want to hear a link between their lifestyles and the probability of early death.
The reality is that adults with a BMI of 30 and above are either being turned down for health insurance or charged a higher premium. No matter how politically correct it may be to talk about obesity, insurance companies protect themselves by classifying obesity as a pre-existing condition justifying refusal or a premium loading. So welcome to baby Alex, a newcomer to Grand Junction. He’s four months old and breast-feeding. He’s a happy, bouncing baby weighing in at seventeen pounds. With a length of 25 inches, this puts him in the 99th percentile for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s height and weight charts for babies of the same age. So the health insurance company refused coverage. Their cut-off point is the 95 percentile. When you think about it, this is a dramatic piece of news. It seems you are never too young to be overweight. This is not something to be dealt with through an increase in health insurance rates. This is a blank refusal of coverage. At four months, the actuaries have already decided this baby is too big a risk to insure. The parents are naturally upset. Even though their pediatrician has no health concerns, they are talking about putting the baby on the Atkins diet. They may joke but this may be a real sign of change in the health insurance industry. There is no sentimentality here. After all, the numbers don’t lie, except the insurers changed their mind when the publicity hit. Alex is now insured. Some good news to end on.
Why are premium notices a source of stress?
Life is never fair. Just when you think you have hit rock bottom and things cannot get any worse, they get worse. You would have thought that a recession would mean premium rates would stay the same. In your dreams, you might have hoped for the rates to fall. After all, there’s massive unemployment – it’s the worst level of unemployment for more than sixty years. With household incomes falling and no job security, this is not the time to find premium rates increasing. Yet when those premium notices drop into your mail boxes, the evidence is there. And it’s not just you. Premiums are going up for most drivers. This is so unfair! All but three states in the union have mandatory liability insurance. For everyone who wants to stay legal on the roads, the price of driving is getting to deterrent levels. First it was the price of gas shooting up like a rocket. Now it’s those premiums! What’s going on?
There are two quite different problems coming together at the same time. One comes from the general downturn in the economy. The other is connected with the system of regulation for the insurance industry. On paper, the companies have an easy ride. They collect in the premiums, receive the claims, pay out on the claims and keep the balance as profit. Except the worst recession in decades caught them off guard. It all comes down to what insurers should do with the money they have collected in. Their answer was to invest most of it in the stock market. That way, they earned dividends and got capital growth until it was needed to pay out on the claims. But some invested in these new securitized bonds based on mortgages and other loans. So, when both the property and the capital markets were hit, insurers found themselves with big losses. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been a problem, but the insurance industry has to play by different rules. They are regulated by the insurance departments and commissioners for each state. To protect all you people who buy policies, the key rule is that the companies must have enough capital in reserve to pay out on the claims you make. When the stock and bond markets collapsed, many companies either broke the rule or were too close for comfort. So companies have been moving cash around between states to keep themselves legal and putting up the premiums to collect more.
It’s ironic that a rule designed to protect consumers should be pushing up the premiums so fast. Who would have thought the auto insurance industry would lose so much of the money they had invested. After all, they employ all these clever people called actuaries to measure the risks for writing policies. You would think they would have seen the risks of some of the investments they were making. Yet, like most of the other investment managers, the insurers were taken by surprise. The result is that, overnight, many were close to not having enough money to pay out on your policies. That was and remains a serious problem. That’s why the auto insurance industry is asking you all for more money.
Types of cars and insurance costs
The car you own determines to a large extent the premiums you will have to pay for insuring it. Of course, your claims history, driving and credit records, your age, sex and location will also influence the rates, but not to the extent of your actual vehicle. You can make everything you can to improve the other factors but if your car is expensive to insure on its own, don’t expect to have low rates on it.
Each car make and model is assigned with a certain rating according to its overall safety, repair costs, theft rates, clams history and possible damage to infrastructure. When a new car comes out it is rated like other similar cars before having a decent claims history on its own. The moment there’s enough information to be analyzed, the particular make and model can either be rated higher or lower, which directly affects the insurance rates.
If you’re thinking about insuring your fast sports car or a big SUV be ready to meet a hefty price tag in your insurance policy. These two groups of vehicles are quite expensive to insure due to various reasons. Sports cars are powerful and fast enough to provoke the driver for pushing the limits and violating traffic rules, which means that sports cars are generally dangerous and pose greater insurance risks to be covered. SUVs on the other hand tend to be safe for the driver and passengers inside it, which is good in terms of insurance, but they have increased potential to devastate the other vehicle or infrastructure during the accident. Luxury cars are also quite expensive to insure because they have high repair costs and often fall prey to theft.
In case you are looking for cheap auto insurance and haven’t bought a car yet, experts suggest looking in the middle section of the car model and making class. Small cheap cars often have good gas mileage but due to low mass they aren’t quite as safe as their bigger mid-class peers. What you need is a reliable car with good controls, good crash test results, increased safety and low repair costs. Most car manufacturers (except for luxury car brands) have such models and different variations to satisfy the needs of everyday drivers.
If your car is equipped with such safety features as airbags, additional seat belts, anti-lock brakes and anti-theft devices it is a good chance that you will get cheap auto insurance you’ve been looking for. If your auto doesn’t carry these features, no one restricts you from installing them on your own. But make sure to inform your insurance agent about these modifications to get the discount you deserve. Otherwise your insurance rates will remain the same.
In case you own an old car, it is likely that you will have lower insurance rates compared to the same car but new. However, you should ask your agent about the necessary coverage types, because some older vehicles can safely drop certain types of insurance coverage making your policy even cheaper.
Vivaccio Life Insurance: The Life Insurance Contract for Life!
Life Insurance Vivaccio Initial: Dedicated to your children, it can help them get started in life with a solid foundation in preparing to finance their studies or to help them settle into their later gradually constituting capital.
Life Insurance Vivaccio Rise: This contract allows youth to take off in life. The formula is simple: Capital is available at any time if necessary, and in case of death or serious blow, the capital is guaranteed.
Life Insurance Vivaccio Vitality: For those wishing to build and enhance their capital. This contract allows to diversify its capital with three different investment profiles. In case of death, the beneficiary is assured of receiving the total amount of dues. In case of blow, it offers the possibility of the partial or complete capital is guaranteed.
Vivaccio Income Life Insurance: Designed for the great moments of life, the contract is made for those who want a capital in the form of regular income. For the portion invested in euros, the guarantee is total.
Life Insurance Vivaccio Harmony: To think of those you love, this life insurance policy is dedicated to those who want to enhance capital in order to transmit it to their relatives in the best conditions. Vivaccio Harmony offers a special taxation for life insurance. In case of death, the beneficiary is assured of obtaining at least the total amount of payments and contributions. It also allows an increase of 20% capital provided to beneficiaries while reducing his annual salary (option contract).
The life insurance policy is evolving Vivaccio: no need to change the contract as it evolves over the years and each project while maintaining the prior fiscal.
The contract Vivaccio Life Insurance is offered by La Banque Postale and guarantees a rate of 4.25% gross (excluding social charges) for the year 2007 but only on the funds invested in euros.
Life Insurance in euros capital guaranteed.
Without risk, life insurance contract is a euro savings account which is to accumulate capital by installments scheduled. The ability to make partial withdrawals are in a position where the member meets the terms of the contract, the goal still being to let the money grow for several years and allow to reduce taxation.
The capital of a life insurance contract in euros is guaranteed and the interest generated each year by the capital are acquired. But be careful, however, admission fees and management vary across insurance companies. Take care also in case of bankruptcy of the insurance company. In this case, a guarantee fund shall indemnify each insured up to 70000euros.
You can withdraw your money whenever you want, outside of the cancellation period of 30 days, and without waiting for 8 years and if we respect the term of the contract about the total or partial redemptions.
The contract of life insurance euro is based on a guaranteed minimum annual rate plus a share of profits earned by the insurance company. Less than 4% in 2006, specialists in insurance and finance provide a guaranteed minimum interest rate around 3.5% in 2007.
Regarding the taxation of life insurance contracts in euros, only the interest of the money withdrawn from savings are taxed. You can choose to incorporate these interests in your income and you will be taxed according to the scale of your tax bracket.
For life insurance contracts in euros, payroll taxes are still 11%. But they cover only the interest generated by the contract on December 31 and every year.
Finally, in case of death of the insured or the beneficiaries of life insurance contract signed in euro since October 13, 1998 will enjoy an allowance of 152,000 euros, including all contracts. Above this amount the tax is 20%. And for transactions made after the 70th birthday of the insured, an allowance of 30,500 euros is applicable on payments, including all contracts. Interest is then exempt from tax and the surcharge is subject to inheritance classic.