Industry is breeding cars for lower insurance premiums!

The world of technology is changing fast. When I was young, it was not uncommon for tradespeople to use a horse and cart for local deliveries around town. Now, we have trains that ride on a magnetic field, jet aircraft and hybrid cars. The idea of a hybrid is quite fascinating. As a gardner, to be able to take two different species and create something new with the best qualities of both. As a technologist, to be able to take a conventional internal combustion engine and combine it with electric motors. It's like a marriage. When the two components work well together, they are strong. If there's disharmony, breakdown follows close behind. So what's driving this hybrid technology? The main reason is fuel economy. Gas prices have been rising fast with the $4 gallon reached and passed. Although some prefer to play around with biofuels to keep conventional engines running on greener fuel, the better strategy looks to use less fuel. It's now not uncommon for hybrid vehicles to achieve 50 mpg - a big improvement on the SUVs and Hummers. The retail prices have been quite high as the first of these new cars rolled out on to the public roads so, to encourage the switch to this more eco-friendly technology, there have been various federal and state tax incentives. Some states have been giving priority in the use of parking spaces or reductions in tolls. All these add up to big savings, which get even bigger when you look at the auto insurance industry. Many of the companies offering auto insurance have been offering a discount of up to 10% for those using the new technology. Using a site like this is the best way of shopping around to find out which company is offering the best rates. This is not a corporate policy to combat global warming. It reflects the reality that those who buy hybrid cars are more thoughtful and careful, buying a vehicle that is slightly less powerful than the conventional car, and one that will probably not be driven quite as many miles in a year as the conventional car. People who drive less powerful cars more slowly have fewer accidents and so justify lower premiums. It's sad that Detroit chose to stay with the gas-guzzler as the main product line. The big three U.S. car producers are facing an uncertain future as the hybrids grow more popular. If they survive the economic downturn, hopefully they can retool and compete in delivering this new technology. Until then, imported cars save money both at the gas pump and in reduced auto insurance premiums. They are a good buy.

Rating the insurance companies

Has it occurred to you that it's not very fair when insurance companies start poking around your life. They want to know how well you drive your vehicle, what you have in your home worth protecting, how likely you are to fall sick and, most cheerfully, when you think you're going to die. There's no part of your life they don't investigate and build into their models for deciding how much to charge you as a premium in your latest policy. So you retaliate. Instead of blindly picking a company out of yellow pages, you use a site like this to get comparative quotes from all the best companies. You then start poking around in their lives. Are these companies financially strong? Will they still be around in a few years time to pay on your claims? You want to choose the best company to insure you whether it's auto, home, health or life insurance. Why bother? Look around you. Banks and large insurance companies like AIG have been getting bailouts from the federal government. Checking out the financial strength of an auto insurance company is necessary before you start paying them your hard-earned dollars. So where do you look? There are a number of companies that make their living by rating the performance of other companies. Some are general. So, for example, Standard & Poor rate the whole range of commercial enterprises including those in financial services (see their website at http://www.standardandpoors.com). Others are more specialized like Fitch and A.M. Best which have the insurance industry as their primary focus (see their websites at http://www.fitchratings.com and http://www.ambest.com/). You should also find the website operated by the Insurance Department or Commissioner of Insurance for your own state. The best states not only operate a complaints service, but publish an annual report identifying all the companies against whom complaints have been upheld. This gives you a good measure of how the companies actually deliver on their advertised services. Then you should ask around all your family, friends and colleagues at work. Check out what the word-of-mouth is on the companies you are thinking about giving your auto insurance business. The everyday experience of these people is a vital source of information. Slightly less reliable are the "complaint" or consumer report sites. Most of the people who put up reports are motivated by revenge. They have had poor service and want the world to know about it. Many commercial sites that depend on commission by selling auto insurance add their own "better" reports to balance out the bad. Read both good and bad with a skeptical eye. When you have rated the auto insurers, decide which one gives you the best value terms and buy.

What happens when the uninsured go to the emergency room?

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that an increasing number of people are now unable to afford medical insurance. Some 47 million people do not have medical insurance. When they begin to fall sick, there is nothing that can be done if money is short. When it comes to a choice between food on the table and treatment, most people decide to eat. They hope they will get better. When health does not improve, there is no improvement in the choice to be made. If treatment remains unaffordable, they have to wait until their sickness worsens to the point it can be considered an emergency. At this point, people decide to go to the emergency room at their local hospital. Federal law is very clear. Hospitals are under a positive legal obligation to treat everyone who walks in through the door. It does not matter whether the emergency is real, in the sense of a traffic accident inflicting unexpected injury, or to some extent manufactured, where the condition only becomes an emergency because of a deliberate delay. People must be given treatment. The difficulty is that most of the uninsured cannot afford to pay their bills. The hospitals can and do issue invoices for the treatment given and drugs supplied. This is also a part of the law. People have a responsibility to pay for their treatment. But hospitals are realistic about their chances of collecting. Continued pursuit for payment usually results in bankruptcy and the creditors only get a few cents in the dollar. So, hospitals make a rational decision. They spread all the unpaid bills among all those who can pay. In other words, whether you are paying out of your own pocket or you are relying on your own health insurance to pay for your treatment, a percentage of every hospital's bill is a provision against bad debts from the uninsured. The irony is that everyone who is insured is also insuring all the uninsured for their emergency room visits. If you have been wondering why your own health insurance premiums have been going up so sharply of late, it's because there is a wave of uninsured people going to the emergency rooms around the country. The health insurers are having to pay more and this additional cost gets passed on in the premiums. Is it going to get any better? No. It's actually going to get worse. Ever more people are finding health insurance unaffordable. Even with sites like this which allow people to find the cheapest insurance around, many still find the premiums too much. That does not mean you should give up. Using this site will get you offers. Then it's up to you to negotiate directly with the insurer or its agents to get the best actual premium for the cover. It's not worth the risk of being uninsured. If at all possible, get some cover.