Insurance Quotes & Advice

When life insurers created variable annuities, they thought they had a reasonable competitor to the widely popular mutual funds.  It offered customers the possibility of reasonable returns for very little risk, but unfortunately that risk passed onto the insurance companies themselves.

A few years back, no one foresaw the stock market falling by roughly 40% over a short period of time and now insurers are paying the price over the success of their variable annuity investment vehicle.  By giving customers the option to pretty much guarantee their principles, insurers have opened themselves up to considerable losses at time when their own investments have taken a beating.

A number of life insurers have received access to the Troubled Asset Relief Program and although at this time only the Hartford looks like it will accept federal funds, that could change quickly.  Capital is the lifeblood of any insurance company more so than for any other financial institution due to the inconsistent nature of their liabilities.

The longer the recession drags out, the more likely we will see other insurers seeking to bolster their capital reserves by accessing the federal funds despite the public stigma such an act would entail.  Unless we see a substantial recovery in the stock market in the near future, a number of life insurers are still looking at some significant losses in the upcoming quarters.

To be successful, insurance companies need to carefully manage their risk profiles and in this case they failed miserably and could be paying the price for quite some time.

The Obama administration faces numerous obstacles in their effort at healthcare reform.  Despite efforts to seek bipartisan support, Republicans have been firmly against any sort of public healthcare plan and there a quite a few of the more conservative Democrats that have their objections as well.

It’s obvious the current system is completely broken, we have Medicare which will go bankrupt in a little more than 8 years as well as 50 million Americans which are uninsured which cause a massive drain on state budgets across the country.  Unfortunately there is no easy or cheap fix, as things stand now, it’s looking like the administrations current proposal will likely cost over a trillion dollars in the first decade alone.

Thus far Massachusetts has been the only state to attempt mandating universal healthcare insurance, but they are quickly finding out that the costs have far exceeded their expectations and have been forced to ask for federal support to fund their program.  With federal budget deficits expected to exceed $3 trillion over the next two years, the federal government would be hard pressed to find ways to fund such a program on a national level.

However, it is equally obvious some sort of change needs to take place, the unfunded liabilities of the Medicare program are staggering and despite previous attempts to control costs, they continue to spiral out of control.  It is at a point where annual federal healthcare costs now exceeds the entire military budget spending.

American business are struggling to pay for the healthcare costs of their workers.  One only need look to the auto industry to see how their healthcare costs put them into a distinct disadvantage with their competitors around the world.

As difficult it is to say, dealing with the growing number of uninsured has to be considered a secondary objective and it could quite possibly be fiscally unfeasible.  Something first needs to be done to control healthcare costs and any type of reform that doesn’t focus on that will be doomed to failure.

Although this year’s hurricane forecast for the Atlantic basin calls for an average year, forecasters remain cautious due the unpredictability of weather patterns they expect this year.  As always it is important to be prepared, maybe even more so than years past.

Researchers are concerned about quickly developing tropical depressions just off the coast of the Eastern seaboard as well as in the Gulf of Mexico.  Typically hurricanes start forming off the coast of Africa, giving forecasters plenty of warning to gauge it’s strength and it’s likely track.

However, storms forming off the coast may only give a day’s warning to residents to prepare for the worst.  Although it’s a rare occurrence, we have seen tropical depressions form in the Gulf of Mexico in year’s past quickly developing into hurricane and striking the coast the following day.

Now researchers are concerned that could also happen in the warm ocean current off the East coast.  The Gulf Stream, a warm water ocean current turns sharply north after passing Florida and could become a breeding ground for a tropical depression this year.

The Northeast should be especially concerned, since a major hurricane hasn’t hit the area in over a decade and the residents there are likely not as prepared as those in the Southeastern and Gulf states.  Granted residents are usually more concerned about Nor’easters forming during the winter months than they are of a hurricane but that preparedness should translate well.