According to the Los Angeles Times and IFAwebnews.com, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus beat both Sen. Ted Kennedy and President-elect Barack Obama by being the first one out of the starting gate in the quest for health care “reform.”

And Baucus’s quest for the glory might, according to the Times, catch the incoming president and his staff off guard. :: Continues

Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy is a brawler, and as nice as he comes across sometimes, insiders have said that he is tough as nails and would just as soon step on a fallen man than step over him.

That being said, a safe bet would be that Ted Kennedy is going to try to introduce legislation designed to overhaul the U.S. health care system — and enact universal care — before a new President Barack Obama has the chance. :: Continues

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is a boondoggle that is costing Americans billions and billions of wasted dollars, is rife with fraud, and in some cases doing the opposite of what it was intended to do.

Continually lowering premiums have made it a money pit for federal funds, and the continual misuse by some homeowners is nearly criminal (and encouraged by the fed).

To make matters worse, some in Washington actually think that people who don’t have the insurance should be allowed to retroactively acquire the coverage, following a flood.

How crazy is that?

Michael Crowley, writing in Reader’s Digest, does an excellent job, in a short article, of exposing just how ridiculous this plan has become.

Variable annuities appear to be causing stockholders at insurance companies like Hartford Financial Services, Lincoln National Corp. and Prudential Financial offering these products to develop a case of the jitters, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Shareholders fear the insurers will be forced to sell these products to generate the capital needed to meet regulatory requirements. With market declines, Fitch recently said capital needed to support the variable annuity industry had increased by as much as $15 billion this year.

What remains unclear, according to the article, is how much of a role VAs play in the companies’ financials and how they will manage the risks associated with these products in a new economic climate.

Yet another impact of the sagging economy on the insurance industry.

If there is one thing scarier than the recent economic meltdown, it is a Congress and White House controlled by one party, with veto-proof power to enact laws that can do, well, just about anything they want them to do.

Consider this: House Democrats are actually floating the idea of dismantling the current private pension fund known as the 401(k)  and replacing it with a new, federal retirement plan. And with possible control of both branches of government, it could happen. :: Continues

The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik recently analyzed online life expectancy calculators, based largely on the projections each gave for the life expectancy of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, or, put another way, the chances that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will become president during his term (if he wins election Nov. 4).

The numbers varied by as much as a decade, with 14 years for McCain being the longest projected lifespan for the Arizona senator, who is now 72 years old. Bialik in his Numbers column describes the errors and fallacies of each mainstream life expectancy calculator.
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According to a great column by Anna Wilde Mathews in the Wall Street Journal, Americans overall will fare slightly better under health care changes proposed by Sen. John McCain than they will those of Sen. Barack Obama. :: Continues

Frankly, I am unsure about whose plans to implement changes to health care will benefit or harm my business; Sen. Barack Obama’s call for mandated coverage or Sen. John McCain’s proposal for individual health insurance tax credits. Both have their merits, and many — including myself — are mulling over which would be best for their own business and the industry as a whole.

But I do know one thing for certain: In the final debate between the two presidential candidates, Obama looked directly into the camera and told Americans a big, bald-faced lie. :: Continues

In these difficult times, where everyone is struggling to make sense and make money in the floundering economy, a little humor in the form of the 20 most unusual names of pets for whom their owners paid insurance is the perfect antidote.

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Two videos on YouTube should be required viewing for anyone who honestly thinks a single-payer (universal) health care system is better than the private sector when it comes to health care. Both are a few years old, but their impact is not diminished.

The first one (titled “A Short Course in Brain Surgery”) is about five minutes long and is anecdotal, but speaks volumes.

The second one is about 25 minutes and shows what Canadians really think about their country’s form of socialized medicine.

An interesting footnote to the first video deals with a medical care broker — an interesting industry that has cropped up in Canada, where brokers actually search in other countries for basic medical care that Canadians cannot obtain in their own country. The medical care broker is worried that if the U.S. adopts single-payer health, he will have no where to send Canadians for quality and timely health care.

The fine folks leading American International Group seem to have failed miserably at understanding the financial markets - and now, public sentiment.

This week company officials were rightly taken to task by Congress for holding an expensive retreat in California, to the tune of $440,000, including $23,000 in spa treatments, at a posh resort. AIG officials, with the ink still wet on the $85 billion loan from the government, said the trip was for independent insurance agents for one of its subsidiaries, not its financial service executives. :: Continues

So the annual Life Insurance Awareness Month ended with a bang Tuesday with news that actor Heath Ledger’s life insurance company, ReliaStar Life Insurance, is being sued in Los Angeles for not paying $10 million in benefits to his 2-year-old daughter Matilda Rose.

It seems the insurance company thinks the 28-year-old Australian actor found dead in his New York apartment in January may have committed suicide or lied on paperwork, either of which, of course, would mean no payout. Authorities ruled his death accidental from an overdose of painkillers and other medicines.

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The news might be bleak for Wall Street, but news of a proposed $700 billion bailout of the nation’s financial system might give health insurers a break.

A recent Bloomberg News article published in the Salt Lake Tribune posits the notion that taking a gigantic chunk of money from the fed budget to salvage the financial markets from their losses due to the mortgage crisis, will leave little for proposed changes in the nation’s health care system, which, depending on how one views it, could be good news for some large health insurance carriers.

I am not a fan of federal oversight of insurance; I am not a fan of federal oversight of just about anything.

Sure, when public safety is an issue — such as requiring inspections to avoid tainted foods or regulations that dictate how many hours a plane can fly before it is serviced — well, that is a no-brainer.

But having the government get involved in health insurance (it hasn’t worked so well in places such as Canada and England) isn’t necessarily a good idea. No one can say with a straight face that the IRS or the Social Security Administration are efficient, well-run operations. And heaven forbid we mention the rampant fraud associated with Medicare and Medicaid.

However, the tide will likely shift after the near collapse — and subsequent government bailout — of the world’s largest insurance carrier, AIG. :: Continues

The most vocal — and possibly most unlikely -– critic of the proposed merger between Highmark Inc. and Independence Blue Cross in Pennsylvania has resigned abruptly, according to an IFAwebnews.com article. Neither now former CEO Anita M. Smith nor officials at Capital BlueCross, the Harrisburg, Pa.-based health insurer in Central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley, would offer an explanation for her departure.

The timing, in the heat of the debate over the merging of Highmark and IBC, seems more than a coincidence. Since we don’t have the real reason or reasons for Smith cleaning out her office, I’m left to speculate. I have three-and-a-half theories.

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The stock market had been open for just seven minutes Monday before the first call for federal regulation of insurance was made on CNBC.

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Without question, a recent opinion piece by Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek is THE most definitive I have ever read about universal health care.

Enough said. Just read it already.

Homeowners in Texas and the surrounding areas may unwittingly enter the fray over who is responsible for damage to their homes due to flooding: private carriers or the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

Of course, this assumes that homeowners actually have either one.

A recent Houston Chronicle article begins with the topic of high deductibles for homeowners who suffered damage, then opens up the can of worms about responsibility for flood damage caused by ordinary flood sources and special occurrences such as a “storm surge.”

Many insurers who might face flood insurance claims from homeowners claim they are not responsible, if the insured’s policy does not cover flood damage. No doubt, however, that there will be state or federal mitigation if disagreements arise.

Two interesting takes recently on the subject of increased government intervention into health insurance…

In California, lawmakers passed a law that requires health insurance carriers to spend a portion of premium dollars on patient care, resulting in a drop in the share prices of some of the nation’s largest health insurers, according to an article on Forbes.com.

In another turn, Republicans announced that the party is rejecting a push by some to inject the government more into the healthcare and health insurance industry.

On the one hand, we have a government move that hurts companies and the investment that many Americans make in those firms, and on the other hand we have a group that wants to limit how much the government should dip its hand into private business.

Whew! I don’t need to explain that it’s the collective sound coming from the insurance industry in the smaller-than-expected wake of Hurricane Gustav. (Okay, I just did.)

The three-day Labor Day weekend was hardly that for insurance company executives and the millions of people displaced from their homes by what New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called “the mother of all storms.” Though his intentions - to get people out of harm’s way this time - were good, Hurricane Gustav didn’t cooperate. Or did it. The once Category 4 hurricane (predicted to become a Category 5 storm, the worst) hit at a Category 2 level, landing about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans and sparing the levees much of the storm surge that could have made this storm one of the worst, if not the worst yet.

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