Reader Question

I dont know how you guys can get such a great deal on condo insurance…but I am so glad you do. You saved me well over 45% on my current condo insurance premiums.

What really gets me is the policy you guys got me was with a better company than what I previously had…and I was paying MUCH more for it.

Dan, Houston TX

Thanks Dan, We have special arrangement with agents looking to sell their condo insurance at a discounted price to get new customers. I am glad you were able to reap the benefits of our hard work.

Free NO OBLIGATION renters and condo insurance from the form above!

Reader Input

Thank you Thank you Thank you! I was getting jacked around every where for renters insurance. I thought it was something simple to buy…but I was wrong. There are soo many loopholes for the insurance company to deny your claim. Thank you so much for the free quote.

I was able to get really good renters insurance coverage for my condo for less than $180 a year. WOW!

Janice, Flint MI

You are welcome! Anyone else want to save 50% or more on renters insurance??? Get a quote above and save a TON of time and cash.

Question: How does one go about obtaining vehicle insurance for a 17 year old driver in Dallas, without paying an arm and a leg?

Comment: I think this is a super question to inquire about your teen driver. At 17 years of age this teenage driver can not legally enter a contract since they are not considered an adult. I would assume that most teenage drivers would be considered “safe” drivers they are still not old enough to sign the insurance contract.

I would also assume that most insurance companies would require a parent and or a legal gaurdian to sign the contract and to be financially responsible for the vehicle and the driver’s actions.

I would start off your investigation by making a few phone calls the local insurance carriers in your area and get their opinion on this question.

I really do not see why you could not get decent coverage for your teen driver, but a better question might be are you going to be able to afford this type of coverage?

You might also want to contact the Dallas car insurance bureau or DMV to ask them if there are any restrictions for obtaining Dallas auto insurance in your area or specific situation.

A reader today asks: How does one go about obtaining vehicle insurance for a beginner 17 year old driver in Georgia, without paying an arm and a leg?

I think this is a super question to inquire about your teen driver. At 17 years of age this teenage beginner driver, can’t legally enter a binding contract since they are not considered an adult. I would also guess that most teenage drivers would be considered “good” drivers they are still not old enough to sign on the dotted line of the contract.

I would also assume that most vehicle insurance agencies would also require a parent and or a legal gaurdian to sign the contract and to be financially responsible.

You might want to start off your investigation by making a few phone calls the local insurance carriers in your immediate area and get their opinion on this question.

But I really do not see why you couldn’t get coverage for your teen driver. A better question to ask my be are you going to be able to afford this type of coverage?

You might also want to contact the Atlanta GA car insurance bureau or DMV to ask them if there are any restrictions for obtaining car insurance in Georgia.

Reader question:

What’s the deal with those discount health insurance cards?

Martha

Great question.

Discount medical health insurance cards claim to be a great alternative for people who don’t have the money to be able to afford insurance. For that very reason, they may be a little attractive at first, especially to any of the millions of uninsured who have no other option. It would be a great idea to offer low cost health insurance to those who fall through the gap between government aid and medical self sufficiency. However, upon closer look, this discount medical health insurance cards aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be.

The business of discount health cards is growing fast, and many health insurance companies are now offering them as an affordable alternative to full on health insurance plans. What they do is give the card holder discounts on things like doctor appointments, hospital visits, and prescriptions. In some cases, they may be the only option for someone who can’t afford health insurance, and thus it won’t matter that that person is still footing the whole medical bill, just with a slight discount. However, for those who feel the need to avail themselves of this option, an eye should be kept out for the many cards that are fraudulent.

Many sellers of these fraudulent discount cards make it look like the cards are actual health insurance, when they aren’t. They are not regulated, and there’s no way to protect yourself as a consumer if you get one of these cards. Even the more normally legitimate businesses that offer the cards tend to make it look like the savings and discounts that you get from them are much more than they actually are. If you fall for this, you could end up paying more for a card every month than it’s saving you money.

Even if the discounts they promise are technically on the card, a lot of times there will be a bunch of under the table fees that will take those away, so that in the end the only thing that this card you have will be is a piece of useless plastic. It can have the effect of making some people who can barely afford their health insurance plan exchange it for a card, convinced by the companies that it is an actual health insurance plan, only to find themselves paying all of their medical bills.

There are many of these companies out there who are trying to steal your money without actually giving you anything in return. One company has already charged unwilling customers for cards that they never wanted, fraudulently using their credit card numbers.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

If it weren’t for getting health insurance through your employer, more Americans would be uninsured than there already are. Its greatness, however, does not in any way make it any funner to sift through all of the different plans offered by your company to try to figure out which one best fits the needs of your family. Such tedious work is necessary, but for someone who already has a full time job, it can be a serious violation of the little free time that you have. Even so, if you want to do what’s right for you, research and time are basic necessities.

If you get group health insurance with your employer, usually you’ll get an option of what kind of plan you want, and the type you choose will determine both how much freedom you have in determining your health care path, and how much you will be paying for your monthly premium. Figuring out whether you should opt for more expense with freedom or cheaper premiums with lots of restrictions is difficult, so here’s some points to follow.

• Network. Deciding between a plan where you are required to stick to a network of physicians or going with a different plan can often be determined just by seeing what the selection offered by the plan’s network is. Research into a few of the doctors and make sure they give quality care, ask other patients about them, and so on. You may have a family doctor that you’re attached to and should choose a more flexible plan if you want to keep going to that doctor.
• Travel. Are the doctors in the network within good distance of your home and office? Do you have options if you have an emergency and have to go to the nearest place? What happens if you get sick or injured while you are traveling?
• Price. Lucky for you, as someone who has group health insurance through their employer, your boss will be picking up part of the tab. Still, you should find out the details about what exactly your company will pay and what will be left over to you, as well as asking questions about co pays and prescriptions and the like.
• Freedom. Do like to pick your doctor or save your money? Usually, employer sponsored health insurance will require you to stay within a network, but often there are more expensive options for going out of the network.
• Think ahead. You may be a healthy bachelor right now with a health care plan that fits you, but what about down the line? If you get married and start a family, will your insurance cover your spouse and children? Pregnancy? Retirement? What about huge things such as surgery or treatments if something happens in the future that you can’t foresee? If such things are covered, are they covered immediately, or do you have to wait until the end of the year for your company’s enrollment?
• Coverage. Does your health plan cover preventive care? What about physicals and dental appointments? Prescriptions? Ambulance and ER visits?
• Extras. These are the things that not all health care plans provide for, but you might need in the future. Lots of plans don’t cover mental health care, but do you need it? What about family planning, such as abortion or infertility treatments? Chiropractics?
• Pre existing conditions. This might be one of the biggest things that you need to worry about if you have one and need to get good health care coverage.
• Coverage caps. Health insurance plans do not provide you with infinite coverage. Often, they’ll set a certain amount that they can pay out through your plan over a year or a lifetime. You should make sure that this is a decent amount so that, even if you end up with some huge medical bills, you will come out okay. Many employers will offer health savings account to help their employees avoid problems with these caps.
• Claims and complaints. One of the most important things to getting a good experience out of your health insurance plan is being able to have a voice in your coverage. You should be able to complain and be listened to. You should be able to fight against claims being rejected or being reimbursed for too little.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

According to research, one out of every five Californian women are without health insurance coverage. That’s twenty percent, a disproportionate amount of the population, where the nationwide number is fourteen percent. The grade given to Cali by the study from The Women’s Foundation is only an average: in the category of access, it received in F; health status a C-; and health policy a C-.

That’s two million women in California who don’t have insurance, and sixty percent of them have full time jobs. There are certain types of women who are less likely to have health insurance in California, and those include younger women, women over 55, women of color, and immigrant women. There are adequate programs in place in California to cover the health care for children under the age of 19, but for their parents and for anybody else that is below the poverty line, there simply isn’t an option much of the time.

All of these women being without health insurance coverage has a big impact on the state’s overall women health statistics. California has one of the worst records for the prevention of cervical cancer through regular tests such as pap smears. It is in the bottom tenth percentile among the states when it comes to access to various forms of contraception, while at the same time having a less than normal access to abortion procedures. One of the areas where California has seen the least success is in the area of mental health care for women, which has gone down by eighty percent over the past ten years.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Reader question:

I’m about to start my own business. What do I need to know about health insurance?

Abigail

Great question.

Having self employed health insurance is more important than even having health insurance while you are employed by a company. Consider the fact that all of your health insurance is funded by yourself, and if you don’t have it, should something happen to you that puts you in the hospital for a few days, you’ll be out of work. And if you’re self employed, you don’t get paid for things like sick days and vacation time, so not only will you have a huge hospital bill, but you will also be out several days of work with no recompense.

Getting health insurance if you are self employed is financially responsible even if nothing happens to you medically while you have it. The self employed are allowed to claim their health insurance costs on their tax returns as a business expense. For self employed people looking for a good health insurance plan, there are health savings account, which are tailored specifically for the self employed.

If you intend to be self employed, you need to find out what you will do about health insurance before leaving the job you’re at now. Looking for health insurance if you happen to have a pre existing condition, or your family does, can be difficult, and you might have to end up getting insured through your state’s high risk pool, which can be costly.

You might want to save costs and guard your personal information by not employing a health insurance broker. This is understandable, but if you choose to go this route, you will need to put much more effort and research into your search. You will need to understand the different terms and policy speak that come along with health insurance plans so that you can be sure that the plan will cover you and your family. Or you could choose to go with a broker. They cost, but they also know more about you, although they tend to be pushy.

As mentioned before, a good plan for the self employed is a health savings account. These are trusts with a bank or credit union which are tax exempt and are paid into by you, in the form of cash. In order to work, they have to come side by side with a health insurance plan with a high deductible. It gives you greater coverage than your average plan.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Randall Jackson, Sr., of Lexington, Kentucky, owns a small car repair shop with only three workers other than himself. They work well and hard, but Jackson is unable to give them the one thing that he believes is necessary for an employer to provide for his employees–health insurance. He has worked side by side with these good men and see them go through struggles with their health and that of their families, but as not been able to offer a helping hand because the price of health insurance is so high that he, in his small business, cannot afford to provide it. Not even for just three employees.

This situation is a big one concerning Lexington health insurance. It is required by law that companies with more than fifty employees provide health insurance plan options to its employees, but that leaves smaller companies with fewer employees high and dry. These companies are able to slide under the law without insurance, even if they can afford it, but for the most part small companies in Lexington are unable to provide health insurance coverage to their employees because it is too much cost in addition to the payroll. These small businesses already have enough trouble keeping ahead with a proft. Adding health insurance coverage would diminish that profit by quite a bit.

The state of Kentucky has come up with a solution, though, and although they are only trying it out at the moment, it will probably do a lot of good to help small companies and their employees with health insurance in the future. Called ICARE, which stands for Insurance Coverage Affordability and Relief to Employers, this jump start program is intended for providing small businesses with enough money to insure their employees. Passed by the state legislature in early 2007, the program will provide small businesses with forty dollars per employee, which will go towards their health insurance coverage. This forty dollar per person sum is given for each month, and if a certain employee is high risk or has a pre existing condition, then they are provided with extra for him or her.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Reader question:

I’m just been accepted as a student at Columbia University in New York, and I heard that you have to have health insurance to go there. Is that true?

Albert

Yep.

You could say that Columbia is looking out for its students by requiring every student who attends classes there full time to be covered by a decent Columbia health insurance plan. It’s both trying to make sure that it is not responsible for any student ‘accidents’ and to make sure that its students are provided with proper health care. It can seem like a huge burden for many students to buy expensive health insurance after many are already putting forty thousand dollars a year into Colombia just for tuition and their dorm. It’s important as a student at CU, then, to compare health insurance quotes and determine which plan is best and cheapest for you.

Like most universities, Columbia University has clinicians on the campus who can help treat you if you fall ill or get injured and can prescribe you medication. However, there are many emergency situations that these clinicians are not qualified to deal with, and Columbia wants its students to be able to go get good health care from a hospital at these times.

Columbia doesn’t just leave its students hanging out to dry and having to find health insurance coverage on their own or else. Rather, it offers a program called the Student Medical Insurance Plan with which students can register for basic or comprehensive coverage. Whenever you register for classes full time at this school, your name is immediatly enrolled in this plan. If you already have health insurance and those don’t want to use the Columbia health insurance plan, then you can submit a waiver.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.