Car Insurance

You can save on your car insurance-if you know where to look. Which of the following do you see as possibilities for saving on insurance?

1. Your car is equipped with anti-lock brakes,

2. Your teenager has just gotten a driver’s license.

3. You and your spouse are over 50.

4. Your car has an anti-theft device.

5. You live in the inner city and park on the street.

6. Your teenager has completed driver’s education.

7. Your teenager is in the top 20 percent of his or her class.

8. Your teenager goes to college 100 miles from home and has no car at school.

9. You park in a garage.

10. You own your home.

ITEMS 2 AND 5 WILL RAISE YOUR INSURANCE COSTS. But all the others offer options to save on insurance. If your car has special equipment that makes it safer to drive, like anti-lock brakes or running lights, or if it is protected from theft and vandalism, you can save money. Ditto if you and your spouse are over 50, have clean driving records, good credit, and demonstrate stability such as owning your home or living at the same address for several years.

Teenagers can wipe out your insurance budget. But you’ll cushion the blow if your teen gets good grades, takes driver’s training, or is at college without a car.

Be sure to tell your insurance agent about any of these factors that could lower your rate. While you’re on the line, you may want to pare your premiums by increasing your deductible for collision coverage. Doing so means that you will pay more of the upfront costs if you have an accident. But if you’re a good driver, you’re betting against the odds of an accident. You can also drop collision insurance on older cars that are already paid for.

Check out the NEA Member Benefits Web site to learn more about home financing, insurance programs, and other topics. No member dues dollars are ever used to support NEA Member Benefits programs.

How to buy insurance when you’re the trapeze-flying, bull-riding, self-employed parent of a 16-year-old driver.

Bello Nock has performed on a trapeze attached to a helicopter flying 500 feet above the ground, walked across a high wire 300 feet up, and donned an inflatable suit to let himself be stepped on by an 8,000-pound elephant. But even Nock, a daredevil clown with the Big Apple Circus, has life and disability insurance.

“You have to shop around and get someone to listen to your story,” says Nock, a father of three. His insurance broker, Rich Brooks of River Forest, Ill., has worked with Nock’s family for years and knows the risks and safety measures involved with the stunts.

Not every insurer is receptive. But AIG, CNA, Lloyds of London and Transamerica have all insured the Nerveless Nocks (there are eight members of the troupe), though Bello pays about three to five times as much as he would if he didn’t have a high-risk job, says Brooks.

If they search hard enough, motorcycle racers, race-car drivers, oil-rig firefighters and even people who are already in poor health can find life and disability insurance. A few auto-insurance companies accept almost anyone–including your teenage son and people convicted of driving under the influence. One life insurance company even covers people with HIV. But “it’s not unusual for one company to charge triple what another would charge for the same person, or to decline the case entirely,” says Byron Udell, president of AccuQuote, an insurance-quote service.

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY sport utility vehicle drivers seem like such assholes? Surely it’s no coincidence that Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, tours Washington in one of the biggest SUVs on the market, the Cadillac Escalade, or that Jesse Ventura loves the Lincoln Navigator. Well, according to New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher’s new book, High and Mighty, the connection between the two isn’t a coincidence. Unlike any other vehicle before it, the SUV is the car of choice for the nation’s most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be.

According to market research conducted by the country’s leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be “insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others.”

He says, too, that SUV drivers generally don’t care about anyone else’s kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what’s practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them. David Bostwick, Chrysler’s market research director, tells Bradsher, “If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in the back and pretend you’re still single.”

When Jon Dell’Antonia of Oshkosh was notified by his property insurance company that his policy would not be renewed, he got ready for a fight.

He had been a customer with the insurer for more than 40 years. But in a recent three-year period, he received three insurance payouts totaling less than $20,000 all related to separate hail- and rainstorms that had damaged his house and a car. The company no longer considered him a good insurance risk.

“Sure, I know it cost them some money. I’m not arguing that. But that’s why you pay premiums,” Dell’Antonia said.

While badgering the insurance company to rescind its decision, Dell’Antonia, a former Oshkosh mayor, called state Sen. Carol Roessler. He told her there ought to be a law to stop insurance companies from canceling or refusing to renew policies over claims that resulted from acts of nature.

Today, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Roessler calls for exactly what Dell’Antonia suggested. Introduced this spring, the bill, SB 141, would prohibit an insurer from canceling or not renewing an auto or property policy solely because of claims stemming from unpreventable damage caused by tornadoes, hail, wind, rain, lightning or “forces of nature.”

n July 2004, in its ongoing effort to expand coverage of the service sector in the Producer Price Index (PPI), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) introduced a new price index for the direct health and medical insurance carriers industry. This index, NAICS 524114–Direct Health and Medical Insurance Carriers, appears in table 5 of this publication and is available online via the BLS homepage: www.bls.gov. Data are available for December 2002 to present; prior to December 2003, the index is published as discontinued series SIC 6325.

The primary output of this industry is the contractual transfer of the risk for payment of medical costs and financial intermediation. The policy underwritten by the insurer represents a unique output. The policy lists the conditions for which restitution would be made to the policyholder to cover medical costs. The amount of risk being transferred to the insurer is clearly stated in terms of covered benefits (and benefits not covered), and it obligates the insurer to pay claims for all such occurrences. The indexes for this industry measure the change in the total premium (employee and employer contribution) paid to the insurer plus the return on the invested portion of the premium.