Ken For Insurance

Archive for May, 2011

If you are in the military, your insurance will cover dental care. This coverage will be assured during the time when you are still in active service. For some in active service, that might be in real need of excess dental care for their family members, a supplemental dental insurance coverage can be made. Actually, this is not a common happening among most military personnel as the coverage they get to cover the cost of their family’s dental care are usually more than enough to cover their family needs

Retirement from the military will make you to reconsider getting a supplemental dental insurance coverage for your family. This is most especially true to some military men who retired with teenage sons and daughters. Since retirement in the military service is a little bit early as compared to other branches of the government, it would be necessary that a supplemental insurance for dental care of your family will have to be made.

And if you are one of those who have decided to leave the military early for civilian life, you would have to reexamine your insurance coverage and consider all the possible needs that your family might have in the near future. An example will be if there is a need for the teeth of your son or daughter to be subjected to a growth correction with the use of dental braces.

As you will know, dental braces are now quite costly, aside from the dental service that goes with it. This is more particularly true now, since there seems to be a fad among the younger generation to have dental braces. Because of these growing demands for dental braces, the cost and service in the installation of these braces have skyrocketed that without the needed insurance coverage, you will be hard put to pay for them.

In looking for supplementary dental insurance outside of the military service, you have to be careful because of the proliferation of many insurance scams that are going on today. To be sure, do not insure yourself through agents. Visit an insurance company near your place if any, and ask them if they have supplementary dental insurance offerings.

If you want you can first visit the websites of insurance companies and look for supplementary dental insurance offerings. You can find complete listings of supplementary insurance offerings in most sites of insurance companies, complete with price listings and the extent of dental service covered.

If you are looking for dental brace coverage, there are sites that you can go into that offer insurance for dental braces which might be able to suit your needs. Once you find what you are looking for you can then visit their office and personally inquire from them regarding the offer in their website.

More importantly, before you sign on for a policy with the insurance company, try to read first the content of the policy. Study the wordings of the policy and if there are words or phrases you do not fully understand, you can then ask the officer in charge for an explanation. This is important because you have to know up to what extent will be the coverage. Once you fully understand all the content you can then proceed in applying for the supplemental dental insurance coverage.

Make sure that people will take advantage of a life insurance policy because they want to provide assurance of financial resources for families or themselves. However, some still visible world with great caution because they expect a very high premium. What you do not know is that it is an affordable life insurance policy is a reality. Make sure that you can search through cheap life insurance quote. Cheap life insurance quotes will help you find life insurance policies on which do not demand your financial budget. By the time they give information about insurance coverage, premiums, and even additional benefits and policy terms, they will help you choose a policy that is comfortable for you. Because you can get some quotes and then compare them to find out the advantages of such transaction.

Be sure to decide important things for a few points before you start comparing the quotes. The other one would be more beneficial for you-term life insurance or for life insurance. Term life is an option with relatively more cost effective because it has a lower premium. However, death benefits can be claim only for a certain period. Therefore, if you want coverage for life, then you may have to choose insurance for a lifetime. Then you also have to decide to how to have insurance that will benefit you a lot. Maybe it depends on how many dependents and the amount of debt you have.

Let’s start with a basic fact: No claims standard in statute, rule, or common law stipulates that claims settlement should be cheap or based on the lowest possible number.

Given that, if an analysis of the insurer-vendor relationship shows that a major incentive for vendor selection is the vendor’s promise to cut claim costs, the relationship is almost assuredly suspicious in nature. A blatant objective of saving money casts doubt on the fairness and impartiality of that claim process.

That is, however, exactly what you see with several of the most popular claim valuation services, such as Enservio “Shopping”  and Insurersworld.com (IA). Insurers World advertises the fact that they have their own warehouse of items that they offer to the Insurance Carrier at discounted prices, and also states that they have relationships with such vendors as Amazon.com in which they receive additional discounted prices on items that are not available in IW’s warehouse: 

“With our warehouse containing thousands of items from many major brands, we are able to replace almost anything… We also have relationships with vendors such as Amazon.com, so we can replace anything that we don’t stock on site. This means one stop shopping!”

Enservio has recently partnered with “ReStoreMall.com” to create the brand “Enservio Shopping”, which will function as a service aimed to incline insureds to purchase their claimed items through Enservio.

“The ReStore Mall is an exclusive benefit, provided by top insurance companies to their claimants as they ReStore their contents and home.”

It seems clear that the objective is to pressure the insured to replace all claimed items through Insurers World’s online portal. The rub is, however, that he or she would be acting on falsely conveyed information.

Insurers World does not mention one crucial fact— that their “appraised” values are only reflecting their “discounted” rates which are below market value. The insured does not realize that the pre-existing business relationships that Insurers World has established with vendors (and their own “warehouse” of their own stock for sale) allows them to offer Like Kind and Quality replacement items at discount, below replacement cost.
So, what happens if the insured does not choose to make their purchases with Insurers World?

Simply stated, the value of their insured loss will not accurately represent the amount of the insured’s loss. As a result, the insured will not be able to fully replace their claimed items, and become whole; in fault by the Insurance Carrier.  
It quickly becomes apparent that valuation methods such as Insurers World’s program, should not, and cannot provide accurate valuation for an insured’s claim.
Another point to consider with regards to these types of valuation methods is the “Law of Agency”, an aspect of commercial law which deals with the contractual, quasi-contractual, or non-contractual relationships when legal relationships of a Third Party are created by an Agent, authorized by the “Principal”. Under Agency Law, the insurance adjuster, who is “outsourcing” his or claim responsibilities to an outside party (such as Insurers World) must ensure that any and all methods of the outside party are in compliance with principles governing the claim process, such as, but not limited to:

Fairness and impartiality

Transparency

Competency

After even a brief analysis of Insurers World’s methods, can anyone ensure that these principles are being met? My opinion and concern on the issues pertaining to Insurers World’s valuation methods is also supported and demonstrated in a related case, stemming from the use of software packages used in valuing un-insured/under-insured motorist bodily injury claims. Although the referred case is in reference to bodily injury and not personal property replacement, the actions are the same, and the result is the same— the Insurance Carrier is quoting inaccurate values for claimed items in favor of the Insurance Carrier.  
We will use one of the most popular website/software programs used by Insurance Carries as an example, Computer Science Corporation’s (CSC’s) software, “Colossus”. According to CSC’s Web page:

-Colossus® is the insurance industry’s leading expert system for assisting adjusters in the evaluation of bodily injury claims. Colossus provides adjusters access to your company’s claims data within a defined BPO framework for evaluating injuries, treatment, resolution, impairment and general damage settlements. Colossus helps your adjusters reduce variance in payouts on similar bodily injury claims.-

Because Colossus’s marketing rests on a promise to cut bodily injury costs, (please refer and compare to Insurers World’s approach cited above) critics allege that insurers use Colossus and similar software programs to reduce the amount of money paid out and hide the faults of the program.

Another example of how cost-cutting imperatives can cause problems appears in McGowan v. Progressive Preferred Ins., 637 S.E.2d 27 (Ga. 2006), a recent Georgia case. In McGowan, plaintiffs alleged that insurance companies cut a deal with CCC Information Services to intentionally undervalue automobile property damage claims on totaled vehicles. CCC uses a computer program as a “data base” from which it derives a vehicle’s estimated value in the local market.

In Hayes v. Allstate Ins., 758 So.2d 900 (La. App. 2000), determined for many factors, the methods utilized by CCC to determine vehicle values was “not reasonable”. 
Concerning CCC’s use of advertised vehicles in its comparison, Mr. Smith testified that, to make a proper determination of the value of the vehicle advertised, it would have to be physically inspected. Additionally, we note that the advertised vehicles do not indicate the size of the engines for purposes of comparison to Ms. Hayes’ vehicle. Allstate, which is in the business of adjusting automobile claims, should have realized that such information was not sufficient to provide an accurate comparison. Hayes v. Allstate Ins., 758 So.2d 900 (La. App. 2000)

These cases clearly demonstrate that trepidation is necessary when utilizing valuation methods like Insurers World’s. To be clear, I see no problem with the usage of these programs to aid in the claim process; however, they should not define the claims process. The insured should be notified of Insurers World’s practices, and all claimed items should be valued at the replacement cost value. If the insured chooses to replace their contents with Insurers World, then, in my opinion, the insured is entitled to the cost savings of purchasing in bulk, and the insurance carrier should not profit of the insured’s decision to utilize a bulk purchasing service. It is my opinion that regulators should prohibit Carriers from using Insurers World or any other discounted service to set value on claimed items.   
Maybe in an “Insurer’s World” this practice is fine, but in my world, it is a demonstration of suspect claim practices.