Cost of dying is biggest item in health care costs, actuaries tell Romanow
The high cost of dying has more to do with soaring health care costs than the aging population does, according to the Canadian Institute of Actuaries.
In its submission to the Romanow commission on the future of health care, the institute said that 30 to 50 per cent of total lifetime health care expenditures occur in the last six months of life. Noting the sensitivity of the subject, the group suggested greater use of less expensive palliative care and living wills.
The debate on health care cannot move forward without a recognition that about 30 per cent of spending currently comes from the private sector, the institute said. That sector includes doctors, who are private entrepreneurs, and hospitals, which are generally private, non-profit corporations.
Standard insurance principles, including deductibles and co-payments, should be applied to medicare, the institute said.
Where an analysis of medical efficacy results in a service being dropped from provincial health plans, it should still be available to consumers who can pay directly or through private insurance, CIA said.
It also called for prescription drug coverage for all Canadians, noting that costs could be controlled through a national drug formulary that uses cost-benefit analysis. A British Columbia study showed that one-third of the 147% increase in drug costs for seniors over 15 years was the result of a shift to new, more expensive drugs with no improvement in therapeutic outcomes, CIA said.
Backing Up Buyers - insurance for online buyers
MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, major banks began offering online B2B back suppliers credit instruments to their promises to deliver products to customers. Now, insurers are offering to cover online buyers’ obligations to pay.
One proponent of the insurance product is Joshua ten Brink, vice president of online seafood exchange GoTradeSeafood.com. He contends that vendors around the world are interested in trading with new partners, but most are wary of extending credit to unfamiliar companies that could present payment collection problems. While the industry has traditionally used letters of credit, the process of securing one takes hours–sometimes days–making it unsuitable for speed-seeking Internet merchants.
Hoping to boost the exchange’s transaction volume, ten Brink offers buyers credit ratings and insurance products from the France-based credit giant The Coface Group. New buyers pay up front for a credit rating that is executed and backed by Coface. “The rating is an alternative to a letter of credit,” says ten Brink.
But differences do exist between traditional and cyber letters of credit. Most notably, the Internet gives insurers access to real-time credit information on buyers, so insurance companies can parcel out coverage on a transaction-by-transaction basis. That’s a significant departure from traditional plans, in which merchants pay for portfolio coverage allowing insurers to spread risk over many transactions.
Such automation can be crucial to making the coverage cost-effective. Witness Earthking Alliance’s Econstructionparts.com. The online marketplace bears the buyer’s risk on transactions ranging from $500 to $50,000. To mitigate the risk without creating an internal credit department, vice president Patrick Carroll turned to eCredible, a unit of Swiss Re’s NCM, for credit checks, as well as insurance for up to 90 percent of the dollars promised. “It takes a little bit of the margin on all open account transactions, but that’s far less than any other structure would take to handle the volume.”
To date, few buyers have used rating and coverage packages, but insurers predict that will change when online markets become more liquid. To that end, heavyweights like Coface and NCM, along with Gerling Credit Insurance Group and AIG, are leveraging their huge corporate credit history databases and moving buyer credit instruments to the Web.
The determinants of private medical insurance prevalence in England, 1997-2000
The aim of this paper is to examine possible determinants of the prevalence of private medical insurance (PMI) in England. The entire British public has access to free care in the National Health Service (NHS) financed by general taxation and national insurance paid by all employed United Kingdom (U.K.) residents. There is no option for U.K. residents to opt out of contributing to the NHS, and NHS coverage is comprehensive. Thus, PMI is supplementary, typically purchased to guarantee faster access to health care (particularly specialists) and in some cases, better amenities in health care facilities. In the United Kingdom, PMI covers treatment for curable, short-term illness or injury. PMI does not cover general practitioner (GP) services, chronic conditions, or conditions an individual had prior to taking out insurance. At the end of year 2000, 6.88 million people in the U.K. (approximately 11.5 percent of the population) were covered by PMI and the value of the PMI market was estimated at 2.45 billion [pounds sterling] (Laing and Buisson 2001), 5.1 percent of the estimated year 2000/2001 NHS expenditure of 48 billion .
Since 1988, Laing and Buisson, an independent specialist consultancy in health and community care, have reviewed the U.K. PMI market. The number of subscribers covered through an employer-paid plan has increased by approximately 23 percent since 1990, while during the same period, the number of subscribers who were either paying individually or as employees (as partial payment of a company plan) declined by about 6 percent (Laing and Buisson 2001). At the end of 2000, 66.5 percent of PMI subscribers were in plans fully paid for by their employer (Laing and Buisson 2001).
Tax policies introduced between 1979 and 1997 encouraged both employer-paid and individual PMI subscription. Employers did not pay employers’ National Insurance contributions on PMI provided to employees as a benefit-in-kind. (1) And in 1990, tax relief on the total premium cost, at the marginal tax rate, was provided to holders of individual PMI over age 60 years.
Some of these incentives were weakened in 1997. Tax relief for individual PMI premiums paid by those over the age of 60 years was discontinued (Laing and Buisson 2000b) and the Insurance Premium Tax on all PMI policies (in effect, a sales tax on PMI purchase) was increased to 5 percent from 4 percent (introduced in October 1994 at an initial rate of 2.5 percent [HM Customs and Excise 2001]). Also, in April 2000 the government extended employer-paid national insurance contributions (2) to cover PMI benefits in kind (Laing and Buisson 2000b). Evidence exists to suggest that incentives intended to increase PMI prevalence were expensive, and largely unsuccessful in stimulating demand (Emmerson, Frayne, and Goodman 2001). Furthermore, the elimination of tax relief for those over age 60 years increased premiums for individual subscribers in this age group by 29.9 percent (Emmerson, Frayne, and Goodman 2001).
The future trend of PMI prevalence may be influenced by two factors: substantial increases in premiums on individual PMI policies (over the calendar year 1999 they were estimated to have increased by over 15 percent or five times the rate of inflation in 1999 [Laing and Buisson 2001; U.K. National Statistics 2001] and the current government’s significant increase in funding to the NHS, pledging to increase real NHS spending by 7.3 percent in each year until 2007 [HM Treasury 2002]).
Data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) 1997-2000, the U.K. Department of Health and Laing’s Healthcare Market Review 1999-2000, are used in this analysis. The panel nature of the survey allows a national, representative sample of households to be followed over the years for which data on PMI subscription are available. The BHPS has not previously been used to examine determinants of PMI prevalence. Previous analysis utilized cross-sectional data that do not well reflect the dynamic nature of the PMI market. Insurance status, PMI policy changes, individual circumstances and waiting lists are all subject to change over time. Our analysis also incorporates data from other sources. We include data on inpatient and outpatient waiting times estimated at the health authority (HA) and regional level (provided by the NHS Waiting Times Team), as well as data on the number of private acute care beds, at the regional level (Laing and Buisson 2000a), and estimates of the regional distribution of physicians working in the private health care sector (DH 2001). The results provide new evidence as to what factors determine the size of the PMI market in England.
MODELLING THE DECISION TO PURCHASE PMI
Several factors impact on the decision to purchase PMI. These include the perceived magnitude of a potential loss because of illness, relative to income and an individual’s degree of risk aversion (Cutler and Zeckhauser 2000; Santerre and Neun 2000). Choice and convenience, as offered by a private health care alternative, are also benefits sought by PMI subscribers (Bosanquet and Pollard 1997; Barr 1998). In some cases quality of care available through private insurance, relative to that available through an NHS system, may also be an incentive (Besley, Hall, and Preston 1999).
Price effects are also important. The recent increase in premiums in the individual PMI market, and the concurrent decline in the prevalence of individual PMI coverage, may reflect relatively high price elasticity in this market.
The theory of insurance markets places significance on the concept of risk aversion (Cutler and Zeckhauser 2000). An individual is risk averse if he or she is willing to pay to guarantee certainty and avoid a potential loss of uncertain size. Measuring risk aversion is difficult, however. At best, surveys are able to measure factors that contribute to uncertainty and the potential for loss. In a health system where services are publicly financed, care is typically provided free at the point of use and therefore uncertainty of financial loss relating to poor health does not exist.
Within the U.K. context, a key motivating factor in choosing to purchase PMI is to avoid waiting for treatment within the NHS. The impact of waiting times on PMI prevalence may reflect, to a degree, a preference for timely health care as opposed to having to wait for care. Waiting times are only one aspect of NHS performance that may influence demand for PMI, however. Quality, in terms of health outcomes and facilities, and patient experiences are other important factors.
Other supply-side factors may also be relevant. While the BHPS data do not indicate whether or not respondents are aware of the accessible private facilities in their area, data on their prevalence can be used to indicate the likely impact they have in the decision by individuals to purchase PMI coverage (Propper, Rees, and Green 2001). The relative significance of individual awareness of accessible facilities versus their actual prevalence may be minor if the individual is reliant on their GP for advice with regard to the merits of the private versus the public sector.
Thus, the theory and evidence on the PMI purchase decision suggests examining factors relating to the impact of personal characteristics such as income, employment status, age, and attitude to the private sector, along with premium costs, risk aversion, NHS performance, and the prevalence of private facilities. The data from the BHPS and our other sources are suitable for examining some of these factors but not others. The impact of disposable income, age, political preference, employment sector, waiting times, and the supply of private facilities can be assessed with the data assembled.
METHODS
The BHPS began including questions relating to the prevalence of PMI in its sixth wave, in 1996. The BHPS is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex. The initial sample for Wave One of the BHPS consisted of 8,167 issued addresses in Britain, drawn from the Postcode Address File. The initial selection of households for inclusion in the survey was made using a two-stage clustered probability design and systematic sampling (ISER 2001). The sample for the subsequent waves consists of all individuals over age 15 in all households containing at least one member who was resident in a household interviewed at Wave One. Further information on the sampling and survey design is available from the BHPS Online documentation (ISER 2001).
Three questions in the BHPS describe PMI coverage. Respondents are asked if they are covered by PMI, how the insurance is paid for (if they are covered), and what is the cost to the respondent of the medical insurance. The possible determinants of medical insurance prevalence identified in the BHPS were: age, educational achievement, income, area of residence, whether the respondent is in paid employment, political party supported, sex, self-reported health status, whether the respondent smokes, whether the respondent lives alone or with a partner, and whether or not there are children living in the respondent’s household.
Data on waiting lists and waiting times, aggregated by health authorities, were linked to individual responses according to their place of residence. (3) The geographic unit of place of residence in the BHPS is local authority. Because local authorities and health authorities are not co-terminus, some waiting times data were averaged across health authorities. The indices employed were the percentage of patients who waited over 6 months for an inpatient stay and the percentage of patients who waited over 13 weeks for an outpatient appointment. While it is true that waiting lists and waiting times would not necessarily be consistent within a HA, and thus would not influence individuals within a HA identically, this seemed the most appropriate way to take account of the extent to which respondents were influenced by the level of wait encountered in the NHS. Sensitivity analysis incorporating regionally aggregated waiting times data was conducted to determine if the unit of aggregation of waiting times data influenced the results. Finally, because variations exist in how waiting lists are determined in England, Scotland, and Wales, we restricted our analysis to residents of England.
We obtained data on the supply of private beds, at the regional level, in 1997 (Laing 1997). Within much of England, the distribution of private facilities is such that the population will not have access to more than one facility. This is not the case in London and the southeast, however, where the concentration of facilities is relatively high. For this reason, we used the wider regional level to assign access to private beds to respondents. The number of private acute medical and surgical beds per 100,000 population was calculated for each region (ONS 1998).
Additionally, we examined the effect of the regional distribution of physicians and surgeons working in the private sector. To approximate this data we included the number of NHS physicians and surgeons working under maximum part-time and part-time contracts per 100,000 population in each of the eight regions in England as of September 2000. (4) The distribution of surgeons across contract type varies considerably from that of consultant physicians overall, with a greater proportion of them working under maximum part-time contracts. Based on Department of Health data taken in September 2000, 26.7 percent of consultant physicians were working under maximum part-time contracts, while within the surgical group the corresponding percentage was 43.9 percent (DH 2001). This data may not accurately reflect private work, however, as many physicians may be working part-time in the NHS to allow for time to utilize in other ways.
for the book mark: - Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s RECON
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s RECON: Regional Economic Conditions site - once the domain of bank examiners to help them track changes in local economies - is now available to the public. With this user-friendly site, just point and click to find tables and charts of data on employment, income, wages, and home sales, among other variables. Data is available for states, metro areas, and counties. For example, you can get information on Philadelphia’s total payroll and government employment growth for the past 20 years and compare it to the state of Pennsylvania and the U.S. You can use the drop-down menus to take a gander at graphs, tables, and maps depicting economic conditions and how they have changed over time. This site also computes location quotients and offers an annual state-level measure of economic diversity. An added attraction: A “shopping cart” feature lets you assemble a series of charts and tables, and then print these out at the end of your session.
The Lone Star State’s Department of Criminal Justice Web site provides visitors with all sorts of stats on its criminals and incarceration rates. This includes data on death row inmates, probation, prisons, financial and health services, substance abuse, felony punishment, and risk management in the prison population. You can also click to view scheduled executions, and even gender and racial statistics for death row offenders. Curious about who’s on death row? Read the profiles of current and executed inmates, documenting their crimes and vital statistics.
If you’re looking for resources on all things African, this site is the mother lode. Need stats on Kenya’s population and employment rates? Search by country or continent to find information on this and much more, including daily news articles and colorful relief maps that you can click for a closer look into geography, climate, health, religion, history, business, government, sports, and travel and tourism. The site also provides a wealth of links to African embassies; political, conservation, and health organizations; business and education sites; and media, among others. As a bonus, Afri-facts provides quick and interesting tidbits on the continent and individual territories. For your memory bank, Africa forms nearly a quarter of the world’s total land area.
Insurance Online
A new Internet tool was recently launched to help manage organizational risk. The site was developed by InQuisLogic Inc., a Stamford, Conn.-based company dedicated to bringing Internet-based services, tools, and solutions to the risk management community.
The Web site is a subscription-based service that provides information and tools to help risk managers identify the impact of risks on a company’s operations. The company has formed an alliance with IBM Corp. in Armonk, N.Y, for data repository and application development, as well with CMGI, the founder of Lycos and GEO Cities, for Web site management and Telcordia Technologies Inc. for network management and development. Chicago-based Aon Corp. and Bermuda- based XL Capital Ltd. are investors in the new company.
The site allows users to search for information about various risks by category, by business process, or through a keyword search. The site offers a background report on each risk, including root causes, effects, alerts, and the upsides, and provides resources for managing this risk, including best practices, lessons learned, tools and processes, and expert contacts. The site also includes a discussion area for risk managers to share thoughts. The company plans to add another level to the site, for an additional fee, that will be industry specific in nature. Company officials say this should be available by September.
The Web site of Denver-based Colorado Compensation Insurance, a nonprofit insurer and Colorado’s largest workers’ comp carrier, allows policyholders to access policy and claims information. Through the site, policyholders and agents can monitor the progress of a claim, run reports to summarize policy and claims data, view payment histories, find doctors in the company’s network, and exchange e-mail with company representatives. This area on the site is encrypted and password protected. For security purposes, policyholders must register with their agent or underwriter. The information available on the site is in a “view-only” format, meaning that changes cannot be made to data.
CCIA also recently launched an Online Service Center that allows all policyholders to report injuries electronically and check the status of a previously reported claim. Registration and password are not needed to access this service.
Don’t forget Katrina: the disaster that happened
New Orleans Inlate July, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced the schedule for an official ‘three days of reflection’ that would mark the anniversary of Katrina. Some events seemed fitting enough: a prayer breakfast followed by the ringing of church bells at the moment of the first levee break; a jazz funeral procession led by Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, who helped restore order after the storm; a concert by trumpeter and local-boy-made-good Wynton Marsalis. But when the mayor got to the slightly less reflective items on his list — a comedy show, a fireworks display over the Mississippi, a masquerade ball — the battle-weary citizens went ballistic. Letter after letter published in the local TimesPicayune pointed out what everybody already knew: Katrina, which hit New Orleans on 29 August, was the biggest natural disaster in America’s history; 1,300 people died and less than half our population has returned; the recovery plan won’t be completed until the end of the year, and many of our neighbourhoods still look like so many piles of kindling; if it’s up to Congress, we may never get category five levees. Which of these facts, exactly, had inspired the idea of fireworks?
No one knew the answer, but it didn’t matter. A week or so later, the mayor’s office announced that the anniversary events, like most things in the new New Orleans, were still ‘evolving’. As it turns out, Nagin had gone public with the lineup when plans for the comedy show and the fireworks were not yet ‘fully formed’, his spokeswoman said, and now there’s not enough time or money to implement them.
Second, the ‘masquerade gala’ has nothing to do with either masking or a ball, and is actually a private party thrown by Marsalis at a club called the Masquerade Lounge — the mayor misread the item on his personal schedule and put it on the public one.
The anniversary saga was an example of what happens here pretty much every day.
Public announcements are based on little or no grasp of the facts; high-falutin’ plans are made and then simply abandoned or forgotten. Living here is not unlike living in a falling-down, half-empty house with a violent but occasionally charming alcoholic. One day you get punched in the face and then out of nowhere you might get a really nice dinner. But mostly we take it in the face.
In April the number of murders per month began soaring back towards their pre-Katrina level — in July 22 people were killed — but since half the population has yet to return, the murder rate has actually more than doubled since this time last year. Worse, almost all of it is drug- and gang-related, carried out by a newer, younger class of teenage hoods. The police force is overburdened by the fact that much of the city is an empty wasteland.
There are endless places for the bad guys to hide their drugs, their weapons and themselves.
Those of us who came back early are fortunate enough to live on dry ground — the oldest footprint of the city known alternately as ‘the sliver by the river’ or the ‘isle of denial’. Still, services are spotty at best — the huge live oak trees that were blown over by the storm uprooted the water mains, so that more water leaks through the city’s pipes than actually comes out of our taps. Every day, two blocks from my house, I pass the same utility pole in the same spot on the street’s median and wonder if the wires sticking out of it are live, if anyone will ever pick it up. Debris remains all around us, but if I dare to get depressed by the sight of it, I drive through the devastated lower ninth ward and into the fishing villages of St Bernard Parish, where all that’s left of the houses are concrete slabs moved 200 feet by the water, and boats are still ‘parked’ upside down in the few trees that are left.
An oysterman I met there told me about living with his family of five on his boat, slightly larger than the average diningroom table, for months after the storm.
They didn’t get a Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency) trailer until February. He is in his eighties, and his sixty-something-year-old son, hit by a drunk driver years ago, has one leg. When I ask him why they stay in such cramped and desperate circumstances, he says simply that it’s home, and points to what’s left of the house he built with his father in the 1930s. He fared better than most, he says — the walls and beams are still intact — so he’s rebuilding, by himself with his own hands.
If he didn’t look so stubbornly capable, I’d think he was crazy. He may well be, but it doesn’t make much difference, because so is everyone else. Everybody is suffering from one form or another of what the mental health folks like to call post-traumatic stress disorder. In the days immediately after the storm, TV commentators got very excited about the impending cholera and typhoid epidemics. My friend Brobson Lutz, a doctor and former city health officer, told me from the start that it was nonsense, that all our health problems would be in our heads. He proved his own point by regularly emailing me from his bathtub, where he also drank the scary water in a civic-minded show of ‘in vivo’ testing.
Saying ‘I do’ to insurance; Death, theft, cold feet: More are
If your idea of the perfect wedding venue is a drive-through chapel in Vegas, this article is not for you.
If, however, the wedding of your dreams involves a June ceremony with a dozen attendants, a sit-down dinner for 400 guests and an open bar, perhaps you should consider wedding insurance.
Wedding insurance will cover your losses if bad weather, airport delays, a military call-up or a sudden illness prevents you or your intended from getting to the church on time.
If your caterer is shut down by the local health department, most insurance policies will cover the extra cost of finding a last- minute vendor to feed your guests.
Travelers Insurance added wedding insurance to its product line in February. Fireman’s Fund Insurance plans to announce this week that it will expand its existing policy for weddings and other special events. WedSafe, a unit of Aon, also offers a wedding insurance policy.
Premiums range from $95 to more than $1,000, depending on the size of your wedding and the level of coverage you buy. Some costs that wedding insurance will cover:
Liability. Liability coverage will protect you from lawsuits if an exuberant guest slips and falls in the conga line. Some reception venues include liability in the rental cost, but many of them require you to have your own coverage
Sudden death or illness. If the groom has an appendicitis attack the day before the wedding, wedding insurance will cover the cost of non-refundable deposits. Likewise, insurance will cover your expenses if a parent’s death or illness forces you to postpone the wedding.
Lost or damaged formalwear. If the bridal store files for bankruptcy before you pick up your Vera Wang gown, wedding insurance will cover the cost of a new dress.
Photo mishaps. Your wedding photos are supposed to provide a lifetime of memories, but what if they’re all out of focus? Or the photographer simply disappears? Wedding insurance policies will cover the cost of reassembling your wedding party and retaking the photos or videos.
Stolen or damaged wedding gifts.
There are also things wedding insurance won’t cover:
Change of heart. Traditionally, wedding insurance has excluded deposits forfeited because of runaway brides or reluctant grooms. Wedding insurance is intended to cover events that are out of your control, such as a hurricane that makes your wedding site inaccessible.
Fireman’s Fund last week unveiled “change of heart” coverage under certain circumstances. To qualify, a policyholder would have to show that he or she was an innocent party.
For example, if the father of the bride finances the wedding and the groom gets cold feet, the policy would cover the father’s losses.
PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT:
Even if you don’t buy wedding insurance, there are other ways to protect your investment. The Better Business Bureau offers these recommendations:
Research vendors thoroughly. Get references from relatives and friends and obtain a reliability report on prospective vendors from the BBB.
Keep your deposit as small as possible. Because most deposits are non-refundable, limiting the size of your deposit will protect you from a large loss if you cancel or reschedule your wedding.
Use a credit card for as many expenses as possible. That way, you can dispute charges for unsatisfactory service. When you pay with a check, getting your money back is much harder, says Paula Fleming, spokeswoman for the BBB. Save your receipts so you’ll have documentation to support your case.
In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line
George Hutchinson demonstrates a keen capacity for meticulous research in his exhaustive unraveling of the fife of Nella Larsen, a biracial novelist and shining light of the Harlem Renaissance. Celebrated in the late 1920s for two works of fiction, Quicksand and Passing, both loosely influenced by her personal experiences, Nella Larsen was the first black woman to become a Guggenheim fellow; she was twice the recipient of the Harmon Award for literature; and she was the first African American known to have graduated from library school. Despite these accomplishments, Larsen has been characterized as a mysterious, tragic figure and a shape-shifter because she negotiated fame and success between and along the fault lines of race, class and gender–and then, disappeared.
Since Larsen’s personal papers and manuscripts were lost after her death, Hutchinson summons her ghost, relying on circumstantial evidence, including insurance atlases, building blueprints, census data, employment records, newspaper clippings and the notes and daybooks of Larsen’s mentor, Carl Van Vechten, the controversial author/photographer and collector of artifacts of black culture. Though he was called a culture vulture, voyeur and white decadent by some, it was through Van Vechten that Larsen made many life-altering liaisons, meeting Ethel Waters, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, and most propitiously, Alfred and Blanche Knopf, the publishers of Larsen’s novels.
In telling Larsen’s life story, a dance between privilege and alienation, racial pathing and sexual identity, Hutchinson recreates a dense, contextual road map of the Harlem Renaissance–event by event, dinner party by dinner party, after-hours joint by after-hours joint. He documents Larsen’s interactions with a huge cast of characters, including James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Aaron Douglas, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay and many others. While Hutchinson renders the frenetic pace and racial dynamics of the period with accuracy, the author introduces so many players that the sidebars and namedropping become mind-boggling, and intermittently, slow the pace of the storytelling.
Hutchinson corrects previous inaccuracies about Larsen’s familial relationships and describes with balance how Larsen’s star lost its luster when she was charged with plagiarism for putting the work of white author Sheila Kaye-Smith in African American dialect and claiming it as her own in the short story “Sanctuary.”
Hutchinson also argues convincingly that most critics of her day missed Larsen’s analysis of the complexities of racism, and how she used interior dialogues in her writing to reveal a treasure trove of information about the psychology of racism and its effects on the intimate lives of women.
Like Hutchinson’s prior work, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, In Search of Nella Larsen is rich in detail about literature and culture, race relations, the evolution of intellectual thought and modernism, New York’s bohemia and cabaret society, urbanization in Larsen’s birthplace (Chicago), life in the South at the black institutional strongholds of Fisk and Tuskegee, and other relevant topics. At 487 pages, plus 100 pages of endnotes, In Search of Nella Larsen is not a light read, but it is essential for history buffs and students of the Harlem Renaissance.
Couples say ‘I do’ to wedding insurance
If anyone knows the value of a good insurance policy, it’s Romeo Lavarias.
As the director of emergency management operations for Miramar, Fla., Lavarias has seen his share of disasters. So it was a no- brainer when his fiancee, Stephanie Goldstein, suggested buying insurance for their wedding, set for July during the upcoming hurricane season.
“My job is to prepare our city in the event of a disaster, so naturally, this is right up my alley,” said Lavarias, whose city was hit by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. “The number one reason was hurricane season.”
Heading into a prime weddings month in June, and with weddings becoming ever more elaborate and expensive, more couples are opting to buy wedding coverage. Natural disasters aside, many reception facilities now require liability coverage for out-of-control celebrations. Wedding planners often require insurance, too, in case of cancellations.
Increasingly, policies cover all sorts of contingencies.
Lost the bridal dress? No problem. Guests stranded by a hurricane or a Denver snowstorm? Covered. Photographer ruins pictures? Piece of cake to restage. There is even a policy that offers reimbursement in case the bride or groom gets cold feet.
Fewer than 1 percent of the betrothed purchase policies in the United States, said Kyle Brown, executive director of the Bridal Association of America in Bakersfield, Calif.
But given that the average cost for a wedding is $27,000, according to insurance industry estimates, Brown thinks it’s a good buy.
“For 1 percent or 2 percent of the cost of your entire wedding, you can insure it,” Brown said.
Since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans wedding planner Jennie Keller requires every couple to buy insurance. She once required it just for couples marrying during hurricane season, which runs from June through November.
“I know that you can’t play around with Mother Nature,” the New Orleans native said. “Wedding insurance will cover it all even if you cancel your wedding.”
Among the companies that offer it are Fireman’s Fund, WedSafe Wedding Insurance Program offered through Affinity Insurance Services Inc., and Traveler’s Insurance, which added the coverage in February.
Depending on the company and the type of coverage, a policy can cost anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to more than $1,000.
Typical coverage can include reimbursement of nonrefundable deposits for misfortune such as a death in the family or a military deployment. Some policies cover repairs for a damaged dress or replacement of lost wedding attire, theft of wedding gifts, and the cost of gathering wedding party members to retake photographs and videotape.
Policies also can pay for some counseling if canceled or postponed nuptials cause emotional stress, according to the Insurance Information Institute in New York.
Even a “change of heart” can be insured in a special option Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. began offering this month that costs about $25 on top of the policy. It’s for those who pay for a wedding only to have the groom or bride back out, said insurance broker Rob Nuccio of RV Nuccio and Associates, who wrote the option.
“Oftentimes, there is an innocent person involved in that. There is the poor father who lays out 50 grand and he’s just left dumbfounded,” Nuccio said.
Nuccio drafted his company’s first insurance policy in 1990 when couples primarily purchased liability coverage required by reception facilities. Now, he says, more are adding cancellation insurance.
“After some kind of natural disaster like Katrina, the interest is high, but the public has a fairly short memory and it tends to drop off after that,” he said.
Not everyone is won over by the policies, however.
Independent insurance agent Michelle Mestnik of Colorado Springs and fiance Nathan Green opted for a $350 liability policy for their July 7 wedding, which is expected to cost about $10,000. Mestnik doesn’t think she needs specific wedding insurance.
“I have looked into it. It does not sound like that great a deal,” she said. “If your husband is going overseas, great. They can give you some leeway and help you out there.”
But Lavarias, who plans to marry in the Miramar area that same day, said all bets are off during hurricane season.
“It doesn’t matter how many there are,” he said. “It only takes one to hit you to make it a horrible hurricane season.”
Lavarias, 42, and Goldstein, 36, were engaged in September and began their wedding planning, the 7-7-07 date a tribute to their love of Las Vegas.
But rather than leave it to chance, Goldstein said a friend suggested she look into insuring the nuptials, which are expected to cost up to $75,000.
“I feel comfortable putting down $565 to insure such a large wedding,” said Goldstein.
TAKE YOUR MATES TO CIS INSURANCE CUP GAMES
The CIS Insurance Cup is well under way and throughout the season fresh will be giving you and a large group of your friends the chance to go see the action live. Battling it out in the fourth round will be: Aberdeen v Inverness Caledonian Thistle; Dundee United v Hamilton Academical;
Celtic v Hearts; Motherwell v Rangers THE PRIZE How would you like to experience the excitement of seeing a CIS Insurance Cup fourth-round match and take 14 of your mates along with you? fresh has teamed up with Co-operative Insurance (CIS) to give one lucky reader the chance to watch all the action with 14 of their friends and five adults. We have 15 junior tickets (under 16 years old) and five adult tickets for each match in the CIS Insurance Cup fourth round. That means we have four sets of tickets to give away. All tickets will be for the home end.
HOW DO I WIN? All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is answer the simple question below:
Q: Who beat Kilmarnock in the third round? (Hint: check out the quiz opposite) Send your answer, along with your name, contact number and which game you would like to attend to marketing@sundayherald. com by October 15. Usual Sunday Herald competition rules apply. Five responsible adults must accompany the 15 winning young people attending. This may be parents, teachers or football coaches.
Please note that the tickets will not be released without written consent from the parents of all 15 winning young people. The prize fund consists of 15 junior tickets and five adult tickets, it does not include any transport. It is the responsibility of the winning group to organise transport to and from the game. CIS Insurance and Sunday Herald can take no responsibility for the actions of supporters within the stadium. There is no cash alternative for the prize.