Tag: insurance

Nationwide Legalization Of Medical Marijuana Could Save $29 Billion In Annual Health Insurance Costs, Study Finds

New research by the medical cannabis company Leafwell suggests that state-level medical marijuana legalization may significantly reduce health insurance costs. In states with legal medical cannabis, companies paid 3.4 percent less for health insurance premiums compared to where marijuana remained illegal—a savings of about $238 per employee per year.

If all states were to implement medical cannabis programs, the study says, the country could save an estimated $29 billion in health insurance costs annually.

“This report strengthens the case that investing in cannabis care isn’t just beneficial to patient care, it’s also good for business efficiency,” Leafwell Chief Medical Officer June Chin said in a statement about the new findings. “By including cannabis in insurance plans, employers can foster a more inclusive and supportive work environment, enhance employee satisfaction, and ultimately contribute to a healthier, more resilient workforce.”

The study, published this month in the journal Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, looked at data from an annual surveys of employers, analyzing a period from 2003 to 2022.

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Woman’s insurance canceled after drone flies over her home

A woman had her insurance canceled after a drone flew over her home.

According to CBS News,a woman from Modesto, California told CBS Sacramento that her home insurance company of nearly 40 years dropped her coverage because of what it spotted with a drone.

Joan Van Kuren told CBS that she’s been renovating her home for more than three years, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to have her driveway redone, her kitchen updated and bathroom renovated, among other changes and upgrades.

“It was amazing,” Van Kuren told CBS when asked how it felt to get all the projects finished. “It was wonderful because it took forever.”

Soon after, however, Van Kuren said she was notified by letter that her home insurance company of nearly four decades, CSAA, had dropped her. According to CBS, the company cited a substantial increase in hazards with clutter or unsanitary conditions, with the letter calling it an unacceptable hazard and liability exposure.

Van Kuren told the network’s reporters that she decided to contact CSAA about the decision.

“She said they flew a drone over the home,” Van Kuren told CBS. “It almost feels like someone’s looking in your windows, you know, when they tell you that they flew a drone over your home and looked at it. It’s like, whoa.”

According to CBS, CSAA told Van Kuren that there was debris on the left side of the house.

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Insurance Data Showing the U.S. Excess Death Crisis Slides Behind a $10,000 Paywall

The Society of Actuaries has put up a five-figure paywall for access to new reports on covid mortality that in the past have revealed shocking rates of above-normal, or “excess,” deaths. 

In a post on its website, the SOA—a national source of risk data for life insurers—said it will charge $10,000 for four updates of post-pandemic deaths through next February.  

“This new series of group life mortality quarterly reports and data are only available for purchase,” SOA communications manager, Michael Nowak, confirmed in an email. Previous reports—which showed young workers dying at far higher excess rates than senior citizens—are still available on the SOA website, he said, and new, less-technical ones will be released to the public at an unspecified time.

Some industry watchers suggested the non-profit society, whose members pays dues, may be trying to develop a new business model. But it also may be attempting to extract itself from the contentious and politically charged issue of excess deaths and, moreover, what is causing them.  

Nowak would not grant my request to interview an SOA official who recently told a trade publication that deaths in young insured adults in 2023 were still far above normal. “Very important information in our reports we’ve been studying,” the official told me before our communication was cut off.  

Moreover, in an email, Nowak included an advisory, writing, “Please know that the SOA Research Institute data and reports on COVID-19 mortality does not validate any claims made to suggest a causal relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and mortality.”   

I had not asked about such a relationship.

The society’s primary job is to help insurers set rates based on the likelihood of injury and death, an indisputably technical and costly task. But because it is considered an unbiased source of trend information, its reports have also helped define the pandemic toll on working-age, insured people. While SOA has the right to use its reports as it sees fit, their loss would be a blow to pandemic information.  

In six articles published in mainstream venues, Dr. Pierre Kory, president emeritus of FLCCC Alliance, and I have used Society of Actuaries findings to call attention to the unheralded problem of excess deaths in America. In the first nine months of 2023, 158,000 more Americans died than normal, fifty times the toll in the World Trade Center attacks and more than in every U.S. military conflict since the Vietnam War. 

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UK insurers refuse to pay Nord Stream because blasts were ‘government’ backed

The legal team representing high-powered insurers Lloyd’s and Arch says that since the Nord Stream explosions were “more likely than not to have been inflicted by… a government,” they have no responsibility to pay for damages to the pipelines. To succeed with that defense, the companies will presumably be compelled to prove, in court, who carried out those attacks. 

British insurers are arguing that they have no obligation to honor their coverage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which were blown up in September 2022, because the unprecedented act of industrial sabotage was likely carried out by a national government.

The insurers’ filing contradicts reports the Washington Post and other legacy media publications asserting that a private Ukrainian team was responsible for the massive act of industrial sabotage.

A legal brief filed on behalf of UK-based firms Lloyd’s Insurance Company and Arch Insurance states that the “defendants will rely on, inter alia, the fact that the explosion Damage could only have (or, at least, was more likely than not to have) been inflicted by or under the order of a government.”

As a result, they argue, “the Explosion Damage was “directly or indirectly occasioned by, happening through, or in consequence of” the conflict between Russia and Ukraine” and falls under an exclusion relating to military conflicts.

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Insurers Spy On Houses Via Aerial Imagery, Seeking Reasons To Cancel Coverage

Insurance companies across the country are using satellites, drones, manned airplanes and even high-altitude balloons to spy on properties they cover with homeowners policies — and using the findings to drop customers, often without giving any opportunity to address alleged shortcomings. 

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase across the country in reports from consumers who’ve been dropped by their insurers on the basis of an aerial image,” United Policyholders executive director Amy Bach tell the Wall Street Journal. Reasons can range from shoddy roofing to yard clutter and undeclared trampolines.  

Much of this surveillance is done via the Geospatial Insurance Consortium, which boasts of its coverage of 99% of the US population.

In pitching its ability to provide high-resolution “imagery and insights” for property reviews, GIC says insurers can use the service to “review risk and exposure on a building such as proximity of vegetation to the structure, whether a roof needs updating, and verify the exact location for a policy.” 

“If your roof is 20 years old and one hailstorm is going to take it off, you should pay more than somebody with a brand new roof,” Allstate CEO Tom Willson told the Journal, unapologetically and ominously adding that, where the company’s use of digital imagery is concerned, “there’s even more to come.” 

Wilson framed aerial spying as a pricing issue, but many consumers are finding that companies are using it to suddenly drop their coverage altogether. 

The Journal describes the experience of northern California resident Cindy Picos, who was dropped by CSAA Insurance last month, with the company saying aerial imagery revealed that her roof had aged beyond its life expectancy. She paid for an inspection of her own, which found the roof was good for another decade. CSAA wasn’t impressed, and said its decision was final. The firm also refused to share its photos, though it now says it’s changed that policy and will let customers see them — if they ask. 

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How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You (and Opt Out of Sharing When You Can)

Cars collect a lot of our personal data, and car companies disclose a lot of that data to third parties. It’s often unclear what’s being collected, and what’s being shared and with whom. A recent New York Times article highlighted how data is shared by G.M. with insurance companies, sometimes without clear knowledge from the driver. If you’re curious about what your car knows about you, you might be able to find out. In some cases, you may even be able to opt out of some of that sharing of data.

Why Your Car Collects and Shares Data

A car (and its app, if you installed one on your phone) can collect all sorts of data in the background with and without you realizing it. This in turn may be shared for a wide variety of purposes, including advertising and risk-assessment for insurance companies. The list of data collected is long and dependent on the car’s make, model, and trim.  But if you look through any car maker’s privacy policy, you’ll see some trends:

  • Diagnostics data, sometimes referred to as “vehicle health data,” may be used internally for quality assurance, research, recall tracking, service issues, and similar unsurprising car-related purposes. This type of data may also be shared with dealers or repair companies for service.
  • Location information may be collected for emergency services, mapping, and to catalog other environmental information about where a car is operated. Some cars may give you access to the vehicle’s location in the app.
  • Some usage data may be shared or used internally for advertising. Your daily driving or car maintenance habits, alongside location data, is a valuable asset to the targeted advertising ecosystem. 
  • All of this data could be shared with law enforcement.
  • Information about your driving habits, sometimes referred to as “Driving data” or “Driver behavior information,” may be shared with insurance companies and used to alter your premiums.  This can range from odometer readings to braking and acceleration statistics and even data about what time of day you drive.. 

Surprise insurance sharing is the thrust of The New York Times article, and certainly not the only problem with car data. We’ve written previously about how insurance companies offer discounts for customers who opt into a usage-based insurance program. Every state except California currently allows the use of telematics data for insurance rating, but privacy protections for this data vary widely across states.

When you sign up directly through an insurer, these opt-in insurance programs have a pretty clear tradeoff and sign up processes, and they’ll likely send you a physical device that you plug into your car’s OBD port that then collects and transmits data back to the insurer.

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Your car is secretly spying on you and driving your insurance rates through the roof: report

Drivers of cars manufactured by General Motors, Honda and other popular brands say that their insurance rates went up after the companies sent data about their driving behavior to issuers without their knowledge.

Kenn Dahl, 65, is a Seattle-area businessman who told The New York Times that his car insurance costs soared by 21% in 2022 after GM’s OnStar Smart Driver computerized system installed in his Chevy Bolt collected information about the particulars of his driving habits.

Dahl said that his insurance agent told him the price increase was based on data collected by LexisNexis, which compiled a report tracking each and every time he and his wife drove their Chevy Bolt over a six-month period.

According to Dahl, the 258-page report contained information about the start and end times of his trips, distance driven and other data detailing possible instances of speeding, hard braking and sharp accelerations.

The report contained information about one particular trip in June which lasted 18 minutes and spanned 7.33 miles

During that same trip, the LexisNexis report recorded two instances of rapid acceleration and two incidents of hard braking.

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California state health insurance to cover sex changes for illegal immigrants

The Golden State is expanding its massive health care system this year, which means more taxpayer dollars will fund sex change surgeries for state residents, regardless of their citizenship status. 

According to a memo first circulated in May 2022 and reported by the Daily Caller Foundation, California’s Medi-Cal covers costs for hormone therapy and procedures “that bring primary and secondary gender characteristics into conformity with the individual’s identified gender, including ancillary services, such as hair removal, incident to those services.”

Nearly 700,000 illegal immigrants between the ages of 26 and 49 qualify, as of Jan. 1, for these federal health care services, which will cost California taxpayers an estimated $3.1 billion. For those living in California illegally within this age range, it translates to approximately $4,058 per year in medical coverage subsidies funded by the state’s general fund.

“Gender affirming care is a covered Medi-Cal benefit when medically necessary,” the memo states. “Requests for gender affirming care should be from specialists experienced in providing culturally competent care to transgender and gender diverse individuals and should use nationally recognized guidelines.”

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Biden Administration Approves Health Insurance for Illegal Immigrants in Washington State

The Biden administration has approved a waiver that will allow Washington state to offer health insurance to illegal immigrants.

The waiver, known as the “State Innovation Waiver” was submitted by the state in the spring and approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Treasury Department on Dec. 9 under section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to officials.

Washington requested the waiver in an effort to expand residents’ access to qualified health plans, stand-alone qualified dental plans, as well as the state affordability program regardless of their immigration status.

“The waiver will help Washington work towards its goals of improving health equity and reducing racial disparities by expanding access to coverage for the uninsured population through the state Exchange, all the while not increasing costs for those currently enrolled,” the departments said (pdf).

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Jabbed And Denied Life Insurance

According to an article by Brain Peckford, a recent post-Covid vaccine death in France was ruled to be “a suicide” by a judge, due to the experimental nature of the “vaccine.” The insurance company refused to pay. No death benefit. The article reads:

A wealthy elderly man with a high value Life Insurance policy to the amount of millions of euros… dies from the covid jab. His death as a consequence of being jabbed is not disputed by the doctors, nor his life insurers. The Insurance company refused to pay the policy, citing that the taking of experimental drugs, treatments, etc., is excluded from the policy. The family takes the insurance company to court and they have just lost the case. 

The judge stated, “the experimental vaccine side effects are publicised and the deceased could not claim not to have known about them when he voluntarily took the jab. There is no law or mandate in France which forced him to be jabbed. Therefore, his death is essentially suicide”.

Suicide is explicitly excluded from this particular policy and in fact from all life insurance policies in general.

This has been the finding of a major western world court system and there is zero doubt that insurance companies world wide will cite this case as legal fact.

Therefore, if anyone ever challenges you on whether these jabs are experimental or not, and that neither the pharma companies, nor govts, nor anyone else but YOU are responsible for accepting them and if you die, legally you have committed suicide.

No insurance, no payouts, no refunds. You are on your own!

Link to original French article. 

Listen to Dr. Pierre describe the same story and explain the view of the American Council of Life Insurers; that insurance companies may deny payment of death benefit if death results from the experimental COVID injection.

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