Category: Insurance

When I found myself without health insurance I looked on the Internet for options. What I discovered was enough to make me sick. There are countless Google ads and web pages designed to attract the attention of millions of Americans that have no health insurance. The language used is clever. Easy, fast enrollment and low cost are emphasized. They feel your pain. They want to help. Moreover, you can also ask your auto insurance provider for health insurance as well. Auto Insurance Specialists provides health insurance along with auto insurance that will make it more convenient for you. 

Here is what I discovered. If you will out any type of expression of interest, the form will seek your phone number. Pretty soon you will get a call. Their empathy with your plight is maxed out. Details are sparse. Even the word insurance is a scam because many of these phony companies offer discounts on medical services if you use providers in some network. If you ask them to send you details in writing by either email or regular mail, they will explain that first, you must enroll with them. They expect you to pay upfront before you even get to see any policy details whatsoever. Clearly, their strategy is aimed at desperate people, starving for health insurance. No sensible person should pay $100 or $200 before having the opportunity to carefully read all the details of any product pretending to offer health insurance. But desperate people all too often do dumb things.

In a few cases, I was able to find some details on the Internet. Having the patience to read everything, the so-called fine print, often buried in footnotes, is absolutely essential. You are likely to discover that you will be required to pay for all medical services, their full costs upfront, unlike real health insurance that requires only a co-payment from you and the rest paid by the insurance provider directly to the physician, hospital or laboratory. The phony Internet company only says that afterward, you will get some reimbursement.

Another variation is that the phony company promises significant discounts if you use a provider in some network. But do their networks include quality physicians? In one case I was able with some effort to find the actual list of physicians in my state. Trust me; the network did not include anything close to a large number of kosher physicians. Nearly all of them had very foreign names. The absence of ordinary but diverse American names raised a big red flag. Similarly, claims of coverage for prescriptions are likely to be phony.

In another variation, I discovered that the alleged insurance did not cover any costs from physicians or hospitals, only guidance, information and accident and life insurance of dubious quality.

Often, the monthly premiums these crooked companies offer should immediately tell you that they are selling useless coverage. For example, saying that for $100 or even $200 a month you can get medical, dental, prescription and hospital coverage. Just isn’t realistic.

Here is another alarming thing I experienced. There appears to be some type of network of scam health insurance operators out there. Your phone number will get passed around. So you soon start getting calls from companies that you did not reply to on the Internet. After I realized how terrible all these companies are I started to quickly say something like this pretty quickly: “Is this another health insurance scam where you expect me to pay you money before I even get to read any details of the policy you are offering?” Guess what. The call is abruptly ended by the caller. This happened repeatedly.

Let me note that in 2004 it was reported that Federal investigators had found a sharp increase in the number of bogus and unlicensed health insurance companies in recent years, leaving at least 200,000 policyholders stuck with potentially worthless health coverage. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found that every state had been affected. It had identified more than 144 companies selling health coverage they are not licensed to sell. And according to research done at Georgetown University, four of the biggest unauthorized insurers have left at least 100,000 victims with $85 million in unpaid medical bills.

Legitimate health insurance at a reasonable cost may, indeed, be impossible to get for millions of Americans. But clearly government agencies and industry groups have done nothing to prevent legitimate-sounding but phony entities on the Internet from taking advantage of desperate and gullible people. They use a variety of dishonest, misleading and crooked scams to get victims’ money and raise false hopes of having coverage for health care costs. It’s all enough to make you sick.

Driving under the influence of alcohol can ruin or take your life and the lives of those around you. If you are killed, your family would be devastated emotionally, but they may also be devastated financially. If you are the breadwinner in your family, the survivors will have to learn how to survive without your support. If you take another life with your DUI, your family could be sued for tremendous amounts of money.

DUI Repercussions

If you do drink and drive and are lucky enough not to kill yourself or anyone else, a DUI will still be devastating. To start, you will lose your license and your driving privileges will be revoked. You are also likely to incur some pretty hefty fines, possibly up to $10,800 or more, and you may even serve time in jail. None of this sounds like a good time, but the truth is that this is just the start. Once you finish serving your time and your suspension is finally over, you are going to find that the cost of the DUI is still ongoing.

SR-22 Insurance

When it comes time to get your driver’s license back, you are going to have to endure some pricey hoops. You’ll incur costs to get your license back. You’ll also have to try to find car insurance that will accept you. You will, no doubt, have been dropped by your previous insurance company. You will be considered a very high risk driver and your premiums are going to reflect that. You’ll likely have to get SR-22 insurance from a state approved insurance agency. This can often cost you more than double the amount that you are used to paying for car insurance. You will have to carry the SR-22 insurance for a preset amount of time, depending on your state. Even after you have finished that time limit, your rates are unlikely to go down.

How Long will a DUI Stay on Your Record?

Depending on the state in which you live, a DUI can stay on your record anywhere from 3 years to life. You can rest assured that you will not see any favorable change in your insurance rates as long as the DUI is still on your record. Other blemishes on your record can make matters even worse. If you get a ticket or have an accident your rates will jump even higher. This is often the case even if the ticket or accident is on your record from prior to the DUI.

Getting Back Behind the Wheel

Getting back on the road after a DUI will take time and it will cost a large amount of money. The fees and fines alone can add up to no small amount even before you’re able to consider the possibility of getting your license back. Once you get yourself together, you can slowly work your way back to some semblance of where you started. It will be hard work and it will be expensive. If you were to repeat the past and get another DUI, things could get far worse.

Do you realize that most car insurance companies do not pay a death benefit in the case of a fatal automobile accident? One local family in Athens Pennsylvania learned the hard way in September when their 22-year-old daughter Stephanie lost control of her car and was fatally injured. Her full coverage from a nation wide automobile insurance company did not pay the funeral expenses for the young woman.

This is a very good reason specifically to ask your automobile insurance company if they have a death benefit in case a death occurs. This way your family is not left having to come up with the host cost of burial and other related expenses in their time of grief as Stephanie’s family has.

Stephanie came from an average small town American family and was in college, as is her younger sister Jen. Both girls worked in addition to college to pay their own way, with a little help from their parents. Both girls paid their own automobile insurance for this nation wide company and though they were covered. Their automobile insurance is from the same company their parents have used for years.

At the risk of litigation, I will not name this insurance company but I bet you can guess the name. If you have auto insurance that moves forward rather than stay behind you have the same one. In my way of thinking if you do carry full insurance you assume, you are covered every possible way. However, you may not be, so check the small print so your family is not paying funeral expenses out of pocket.

Stephanie’s parents have had to come up with all of these related funeral expenses out of pocket. Mother Missy is a home health aide and her father is a truck driver, like most Americans they do not have tons of extra cash sitting around for unexpected expenses such as this. No family such have to pay for such expenses when they have full coverage otherwise. The community had rallied around this family and held a benefit to raise some funds to help the family.

Missy is doing many interviews locally to inform the public about the fine print of the automobile insurance company she deal with. She wants to make sure that no other families have to endure the hardship of an insurance company while dealing with the loss of a child. I am quietly doing my share to help Missy and her family to get the word out there. Missy is more than just another family, she is a neighbor, and Jen the younger daughter had been here often. My heart still goes out to this family on the loss of their oldest daughter.

You will find very sparse information on this topic, because the companies do not want it to be known. If you are one of the families who learns of this first hand, than you feel the need to get the word out there so the public knows. Forward this article to anyone you know who had automobile insurance company and bug them to check their own policy so they are not caught unexpectedly.

Death coverage on auto insurance policies does not exist.