Cavalcade of Risk #156: Call for submissions

FMF hosts next week's CavRisk. Entries are due by Monday (the 30th).

To submit your risk-related post, just click here to email it.

You'll need to provide:

■ Your post's url and title
■ Your blog's url and name
■ Your name and email
■ A (brief) summary of the post ("Remarks")

PLEASE remember: ONLY posts that relate to risk (not personal finance tips and the like).

Thanks!

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Life Insurance: Getting Better Rates by Refinancing

Your life insurance needs naturally change over time. Children grow up and move on, financial situations change and families grow. If your lifestyle has changed, it’s probably time to “refinance” your term life insurance policies. By periodically examining your life insurance needs, you can explore more cost-efficient options that will save you in the long run.

The cost of life insurance has dropped 60% in the last ten years. This is mostly due to the fact that we are living longer. Competition has also caused companies to offer better rates. By changing your policy, you could have a much lower rate than was set years ago.

Take the time to consider how your life has changed. If your children have grown up and gone out on their own, you may want less expensive coverage. If you’ve changed your lifestyle, such as losing weight or quitting smoking, you could be eligible for cheaper premiums due to a raise in your health status.

You may be happy with your policy, but if you’ve had it for a while, it could be worth it to simply look into your options. There are more features offered, longer premium guarantees and better conversion options available today than there were five years ago. You can buy a cheaper policy with more features.

You have nothing to lose from simply looking into your coverage. Start with calling your current life insurance agent and ask him or her what they can do to fit your existing coverage to your needs.

Many insurance web sites will give you a basic idea of the variety of coverages available. Remember that quotes are usually based on the healthiest level of being, which you may not qualify for. Always assume that you are receiving a low figure. Make sure that you double check with an insurance agent before committing to the coverage off of the internet sight. You can often do this by phone, or they will come to your home.

Independent agents represent many different companies and can offer you more choices. They are knowledgeable of many different policies and can find one that will best fit your individual situation.

Even if you decide to stay with your current insurance company, you may find that you need to rethink the amount of coverage. You may have too much or too little. Do the math, you could save money.

Don’t terminate your old policy until the new policy is in force. You don’t want any gaps in coverage to occur.

If your health has gone downhill since your initial policy was created, you may not want to change policies – your rates will increase. Most insurance companies write in a two-year contestability period on new policies. That means they have the right to challenge a death claim.

Do the research and honestly evaluate your coverage needs. Refinancing you life insurance could be very beneficial to your finances.

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Elements of a Employed Website Brief

It testament be ineffectual to book on updating your business or administration's website if you don't know how to pass it affect to your advantage. To maximize the website's aptitude to put your performing in a strategic relation, you moldiness read how to modify an impressive website outline. Catalogued below are the key elements that determine the affectivity of a website brief:

1. The Spot Conference

The most arch proposal that you pauperization to ask yourself when making a website outline is: "Who is the place opportunity". These are the ones who you wait to interact your products and services because of their implicit needs. There are cases too when you gift hump to direct a group of audiences with different interests and needs.

When you see your target audience, it present then be easier for you to conceptualize the airway of your website brief in the way that is most appealing to them. You module be competent to "influence" them to countenance finished the contents of your website and modify them interested of your products and services.

2. The Spot Response

Erst you hold identified your train conference, the incoming imperative challenge would be: "What do you essential them to do?"

Do you necessity them to operation a cause, or buy a fluid or but simulate your updates? You hump to make as to what your targeted greeting is. Both of the responses that you might need from the interchange that you are effort might be:

a. to part up to something
b. to participate in a marketplace
c. to tie a make
d. to scuttlebutt on your journal posts
e. to buy your products
f. to pertain your computer to another people
g. to leave their representative accumulation

There can be a grouping of responses that you can get from the incompatible visitors of your website. All of this interchange leave be lost if you leave not design your website outline so as to "journey" them into wanting the same object -- of pedagogy, the action that give benefit you and your accompany much.

3. Method of Publicity

Precondition that there is a cloudy rivalry out there, you must be fit to come up with your own method of message. Conceive of a UPS or a "Single Orienting Evidence". This serves as the perceive locution which you signify your visitors to recall. This type of promotion has been utilized since case immemorial but it is soothe very impressive yet in the online domain.

4. Refer Your Competitors

It is easier to defeat in the competition if you experience what your competitors are doing. You can reproduce their strategy, improve it or devise a strategy that is completely divers from theirs'. Then you can alikeness which method is solon strong and act upon the problems if there are any.

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ObamneyCare© and The 1rst Amendment: UHC Clarifies

In a pair of emails, United HealthCare helpfully clears up any, um, misconceptions about how HHS Secretary Shecantbeserious is moving forward with coverage for convenience items birth control:

"On March 16, 2012, [Shecantbeserious] issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking ... to develop alternative ways organizations objecting to coverage of contraceptive services for religious reasons can fulfill [ObamneyCare©] requirements to provide these services."

Here's an easy one: How about scuttling the mandate?

Oh, sorry: too simple and rational. My bad.

More at the link.

The second item focuses on the religious exemption part of the convenience items birth control mandate:

"Qualified religious organizations wishing to exclude contraceptive coverage from their health benefit plans must submit the appropriate [Torquemada-approved] certification with their renewal forms ... no less than 30 days before the next renewal date."

Bet nobody expected that.

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Fix Medicare

A majority of Americans believe Medicare is broken and needs to be fixed. A recent survey revealed 83% of Americans felt this way and 51% said major changes were needed.


A Harris Interactive Poll had this to say about Medicare.

"There's a clear majority who think there is a problem that needs to be addressed, but (people also believe) if the changes are going to cost me money in terms of higher co-pays, higher deductibles or higher taxes, no thank you," said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Poll.
When people were presented with nine proposals for slowing the rate of Medicare spending, the poll revealed strong approval (72 percent) for cutting the price Medicare pays for prescription drugs to pharmaceutical companies, and modest support for trimming fees to hospitals (47 percent favor, 28 percent oppose) and doctors (41 percent to 35 percent).

Translation - fix Medicare by making health care companies, hospitals and doctors agree to work for less money.

Sounds like a DC "fix".

Few favor higher taxes and out-of-pocket contributions, such as increased co-pays and deductibles. Fifty-three percent and 60 percent, respectively, oppose those options. But a majority said people with higher incomes should pay more for Medicare benefits than lower-income individuals (57 percent favor, 21 percent oppose).

Tax the rich, make the rich pay more for Medicare, but don't ask me to make sacrifices.


Isn't this the way everything in America is these days? Make someone else responsible. Make them pay. Don't expect me to sacrifice. They created this problem, not me.

With 49 million on Medicare now those numbers will grow to 80 million in the next few years as baby boomer's turn 65 and join the ranks of government health care paid for by working taxpayers.

Wonder how our children and grandchildren will feel about that?

A majority of adults (54 percent to 18 percent) polled agree that doctors and hospitals should be paid based on quality and results, rather than the volume of care provided. Even in Washington, D.C., Taylor noted, "there is an acceptance . . . that the traditional fee-for-service way of paying for things is a kind of toxic incentive and needs to be changed."

OK, but who determines the standard of care and how do they gauge quality?

Something tells me this Medicare problem won't be solved any time soon, and some folks will not be happy with the solutions.

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Patient Assistance Programs

Patient Assistant Programs (PAP's) have been around for some time. If you have trouble paying for your prescription medication, you should explore PAP options.


What is a PAP?

These are programs set up by drug companies that offer free or low cost drugs to uninsured individuals who cannot afford their medication. Most brand name drugs are found in these programs.

Companies offer these programs voluntarily; the government does not require them to provide free medicine.

Who is Eligible?

Each program has it's own rules. Usually an individual must:

• Be a U.S. citizen or legal resident

• Have no prescription insurance coverage

• Have an income under 200% of the Federal Poverty Level

In some cases, patients who are on Medicare and have a Part D drug plan can still use the services of a PAP.  Ask your prescription drug plan carrier if they will help in applying for assistance.

Several years ago I became acquainted with these programs and have recommended them to friends and clients. Most are large national companies but some are small and "client friendly."
 
Susan Marx is a former client as well as a friend. I have called on her numerous times to help friends and clients find a way to pay for their medication.

SPIN (Special Patients in Need) is a Georgia based Patient Assistance Program with clients all over the country. You do not have to be a Georgia resident to use their services.

They can help you find a way to pay for thousands of Generic or Brand name medications.

SPIN offers a wide range of public assistance programs for low income individuals including free clinics, free cell phones, home mortgage assistance and more.

We invite you to contact Susan at Special Patients in Need if you are on Medicare, or if you are having difficulty in paying for your medications. We've included her website in our "Resources" section in the sidebar.

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