If you’ve ever felt that trying to read your health insurance policy is like deciphering gobbledygook, you’re not alone. DALBAR, Inc., a Boston-based company that evaluates customer-service experiences for the financial services industry, has evaluated 34 leading insurance companies (including the federally funded Medicare program) and found that most of them fail to explain benefits [...]
Archive for the “Insurance Tips” Category
Where are your mental health records?
Think only your therapist sees your mental health records? Think again. Your mental health records may be shared with your health insurance company, and even with a state agency that oversees your insurer. In New Jersey, state agencies and health insurance companies require psychiatrists and therapists to turn over confidential mental health records for patients [...]
Don’t kiss that frog!
I’ve always tried to steer my children away from petting zoos that are at carnivals and other events. In my mind, the only place germier than a petting zoo is the pediatrician’s waiting room. Now there’s more evidence that it’s wise to avoid contact with animals that aren’t the family pet: The U.S. Department of [...]
What an Insurance Agent Does for You
In the Information Age, many industries are moving from a much more personal and person-based approach to an impersonal approach. Where at one time you’d go into your local bank and talk to one of your neighbors about getting a loan to buy a new home, today you’re just as likely to log into a [...]
Do Children Need Life Insurance?
The most important question to consider when you’re looking at buying a life insurance policy for a child is “why?” What is it that you’re hoping to accomplish? Life insurance is designed to provide peace of mind, and to provide a monetary settlement if someone passes away. When life insurance makes sense For an adult [...]
Watch Out for Life Insurance Scams
When you think about life insurance fraud, you probably think about those cases where someone’s taken out a life insurance policy on a family member who then, through an elaborate series of intricate tricks and maneuvers, fakes their own death. The family then collects the life insurance, and the “dead” man retires in wealth on [...]
Getting Life Insurance over 60
As baby boomers get old and older (and somehow look younger and younger, thanks to cosmetic surgery and Botox) their needs change. When you’re in your 30s and have small kids at home, you want to make sure they’ll be all right if, God forbid, something horrible happens to you. That’s why you buy term [...]
Single, Flexible and Fixed
No, this isn’t a blog post about what kind of girlfriend you’re hoping to find. It’s much more mundane than that, but may be just as important. I’m talking about life insurance. One of the frustrating things about life insurance is all the specialized terms. Over the years, life insurance has changed as peoples’ needs [...]