At present, every state has a Department of Insurance to regulate the insurance companies licensed to sell policies. This is a reasonably effective system for consumer protection. But if regional or national insurers could sell policies into many states, it would break the regulatory system. It would no longer be local supervision of local companies. Insurers would decide where to establish and would, of course, choose the states which had the weakest consumer protection regulations, i.e. where they could make the most profit. Think banks and finance companies. These companies broke the US economy and produced the recession because their sales of subprime mortgages and associated derivatives were unregulated. Now apply the same thing to interstate insurance. As a final thought on this issue, remember all US states have different laws and one state cannot enforce another’s laws. That is sovereignty for you. So the state where an insurer is based cannot protect consumers under another state’s laws.

Secondly, opening the market across state lines allows insurers to cherry pick the best people to insure. Without regulations to limit the right to discriminate against people for pre-existing conditions and to increase premiums as people get older and fall ill more often, insurers will just take their profit from all the healthy people and forget about the rest. Thus, instead of increasing consumer choice, it would have the reverse effect. Most insurance companies would close their branches in individual states. Those that remained would keep all the aging and less healthy people. As their claims rise, the companies will make a loss and close. Without a law to mandate regional or national companies to offer some health coverage, it is likely the number of uninsured people would rise.

When you add all this up, it is a good thing the GOP’s proposal was rejected. Health insurance plans are complicated enough without having to change a whole mass of federal and state laws to allow interstate sales. This is not to say that consumers might benefit if there was more competition in the insurance market generally. With a real free market, properly regulated, consumers would get a better deal both in the terms of coverage and in the premium rates they pay. As it is, you must get multiple health insurance quotes. Anticipating their profits will take a hit following this reform, insurers have been raising their premium rates. You must shop around to find the most affordable policy.

Your options

Individual health policies – it is the most obvious option for most people, especially when not provided with healthcare coverage through their employers. You can find many insurance companies providing individual health plans. There are different regulations in every state regarding individual health coverage so make sure to learn more about your state before actually getting the policy. The best source for this information is your state’s insurance department.

High risk pools – these specific pools are the best solution in case you have been denied ordinary individual insurance due to a pre-existing condition. Not all states have high risk pools, but if your state allows them you will want to look better into this option. They typically have higher rates if compared to usual individual coverage, but it’s far better than having no healthcare coverage at all.

HIPAA coverage – in case you have recently been canceled of a job-base group plan and all COBRA coverage does not apply to you anymore, there’s a thing called HIPAA coverage that may be useful to you. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) coverage is available in all states and can be of a use for people who can’t get individual coverage due to pre-existing conditions. This way HIPAA coverage is a good option in states where high risk pools do not exist. But even if there are high risk polls in your state you should consider both possibilities. Consult with your insurance agent to see what’s more appropriate in your case.

Whom to address

Insurance agents – an insurance agent is the person that will connect you with the insurance company, so it’s better to ask him or her about your options. But before you ask questions, make sure the agent is licensed for providing health insurance in your state. To do so, you can address your state insurance department and check the status of the agent you’ve been talking too. If the person is licensed, their experience in the domain can help you find good health coverage.

Department of insurance – besides giving information about state regulation and agents’ license, your state insurance department can also be a very valuable source of information on the whole health insurance market in your state. Don’t expect any recommendations to be made, though, as the workers are restricted from making any commercial claims. Use the department as your info source to know what companies are working in your area and then contact them directly.

Websites – there are many websites dedicated to health insurance out there and they can be a very good source of information to use. Many sites also provide free online quotes and state-specific data so you won’t have any problems with finding the right deal from a local provider.

The market for health plans is divided in a slightly complicated way. It’s really to ensure the insurance companies make a profit as the cost of treatment keeps on rising way faster than inflation. So it reflects a balancing act between allowing the patients some say, and denying them any real control, over access to treatment. The plan most popular with the insurance industry is Managed Care. This requires you to get the insurer’s permission before you attempt to access treatment. The first contact doctor must be from an approved list, and he or she must refer you on for further diagnostic tests or treatment. Failure to get this referral usually means the insurer will refuse to pay. The second option is a Fee For Service Plan where you pay a lump sum at the beginning of each year, followed by monthly instalments. This covers you for the medical services listed in your policy. Basic plans only cover consults with your doctor and a simple set of tests. More expensive plans have a better range of coverage but there are usually co-payments.

Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) are networks of healthcare professions. If you stay within the network, your medical needs are covered although, in most plans, co-payments will be required. The next step up is a Point of Service Plan (POS). This is a variation on the HMO and allows a networked doctor to refer you to an outside expert. Finally, there are Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs) which offer more choice than an HMO or POS both in the doctors you can access and the treatments you can have, e.g. usually include preventative medicine.

Because the service offered by this site is free, you can get as many health insurance quotes as you like for each of the main types of plan. This gives you more information on which to make your decision. But it’s fair to say the decision is not an easy one unless you read the detail of each plan with some care. With all the health insurance quotes available, you are often forced to balance coverage against cost, i.e. you buy the amount of coverage you can afford. This makes the choices something of a gamble. Do you pick emergency care in the event of an accident or focus on a list of the most common diseases or disorders? Do you include long-term care against the possibility you might be more permanently disabled by whatever happens? There is no right or wrong answer to these questions. In the end, it all comes down to what you can afford and what helps you to sleep best at night.

Obviously, it’s better to drive safely and within the law. It’s just as important to protect your reputation. Every few years, spend a few bucks at your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to ensure your driving record is accurate. If there’s a mistake, have it corrected. This could save you big dollars on the premium rates overnight. Now, let’s face the worst. You get pulled over. Remember never to admit guilt to the officer. Just be polite. Upsetting the officer could result in the addition of “ND” to the citation. That’s a note to the prosecutor not to do a deal, but to push for the maximum penalty. OK, so now you are in the system. What should you do? Don’t ignore the ticket. In many states, the police issue an arrest warrant. The first step is talking to your local DMV. Many states have programs in place to help drivers. For example, some will defer judgment and, if there are no violations in the next six months, the ticket is dismissed. Other states have driver safety courses. For minor offenses, attending a course on driving wipes the conviction from your record. You still have to pay the fine and the tuition fees, but this is less than the premium rate increases.

If you cannot prevent this from coming to court, go to court. Often challenging a ticket persuades the court to reduce the ticket to a moving violation which is not penalized by the insurers. If you show but the officer does not, this can persuade some courts to dismiss the ticket – check your local state’s rules. In the end, politely raising any kind of reasonable objection to the ticket is usually rewarded by the court – getting angry in a courtroom is not recommended. Of course, all this takes time and effort. Should this be too expensive, remember you can be saving several thousand dollars on premium instalments, so paying an attorney up to one thousand can be good value. All of this should encourage you to drive safely. It’s better not to get caught. Your car insurance quotes will come in lower and lower the longer you keep your record clean. If defensive driving fails to keep you safe, fight to avoid the conviction. It’s going to show up in the car insurance quotes over the years to come unless you get the ticket dismissed or reduced to a moving violation.

The first question is where you live. Although some states like California have outlawed setting rates according to your zip code, the majority of companies focus on your home address. If there’s a high accident or theft rate among people living in your area, you will all pay a higher premium. The only choice, if you can afford it, is to live some place where the crime and accidents rates are lower. You look for the middle ground between the worst inner city crime hot spot and a house on the prairie where you never see another vehicle from one day’s end to the next. All the discounts favor drivers who only drive off-peak during the day, and restrict their annual mileage. No more late night and early morning driving when the majority of other drivers may be tired or affected by alcohol and/or drugs. This raises the question of monitoring. It’s easy to answer the questionnaire and claim the maximum discounts. But the trend among insurers is to ask people to drop their vehicle in for a regular inspection of the recorded mileage. The maximum discounts are given to the drivers who agree to devices being installed which collect all the data on driving and transmit it to the insurers. These devices have a GPS element that records where you drive, the time and, in some cases, some measurement of the quality of your driving, e.g. how often you brake. The reward for accepting this invasion of your privacy can be discounts of up to 25% on top of the usual discounts. Obviously, it’s not a good idea to use your own vehicle to rob a bank since the insurance company will know you were there.

This set of discounts is somewhat frustrating. In the larger cities with well-developed public transport, it’s usually not too much trouble to get where you want on time without using your own vehicle. Assuming your vehicle is safely in a garage to reduce the risk of theft, you should break even or better, i.e. what you save on the insurance pays for your use of buses and trains. But the most of the US has poor public transport, so there’s little choice. Remember the car insurance quotes are not the final word. Call the company, explain your circumstances and discuss how you might qualify for discounts. In discussion, you often discover options not included in the website. So, treat the car insurance quotes as the opening offer and start negotiating. Investing a little time often saves you money.

So, if you agree not to drive at the most dangerous times, you get a discount. For the same reason, agreeing to restrict your mileage also earns a discount. If you only drive a few miles every now and again, the chances of you being involved in an accident are small. The lower the mileage you accept, the better the discount. For the same reasoning, where you drive affects the premium. Although the practice is outlawed in some states, your zip code sets the tone for the premium rate. Some areas of the cities and larger towns are statistically more accident-prone. Equally, if you live in a wilderness area or in a remote part of the prairies, you can go miles without ever seeing another vehicle. Collisions are therefore rare, although some trees are known to throw caution to the wind when crossing the road. Be honest with yourself. Do you have to use the vehicle? Yes, it may be slightly inconvenient to use public transport but, if you are saving money on your insurance, you can be safer and better off financially.

In an earlier article, we mentioned the problem of fraud. The biggest discounts are given to those prepared to prove their honesty. Check the auto insurance quotes for those companies offering monitoring, whether face-to-face or through technology. Some companies ask you to call in once a month to prove your mileage is within limits. Others have devices to fit into your vehicles that monitor when, where and how you drive. This information is then routinely transmitted to the insurer. Sure Big Brother is watching but, if this saves you big dollars, its worth searching through the auto insurance quotes to find these offers.

Risk assessment is done by the actuaries. These are the math wonks who collect details of every accident reported in the US. This is not just the data from claims on vehicle insurance. This is every incident reported to the police, attended by the firefighters or ambulance crews, or dealt with through claims on health insurance. Put all this together and the actuaries can tell you the probability of an accident in any make and model of vehicle, given its color, whether it was fitted with any additional features, who it was driven by, the time of day or night, whether the driver and passengers were badly injured, so on. Yes, it’s that detailed. Turning this around, if you drive a vehicle that’s statistically unlikely to be involved in an accident or stolen, your premium will be lower than average. Put a safe driver in a safe car and the chances of the insurer having to pay out are small and the profit is higher. Everyone is happy. So how do you find out which are the safest vehicles with the lowest premium rates? Well, you start with http://www.safercar.gov/, a site run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This allows you to get the safety ratings from all the tests carried out by the NHTSA. There’s a guide published at http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/Vehicle%20Safety/Articles/Associated%20Files/2009_Insurance_Costs_Comparison.pdf which is also helpful. Finally, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety publishes its own list of safe vehicles at http://www.iihs.org/ratings/

The safer the vehicle you drive, the greater the discount on the premium rate. So when you are filling out the questionnaire for those auto insurance quotes, aim to have a safe vehicle. If you vehicle is not safe and you cannot afford to change it, try to upgrade it by fitting safety features. Look at the questions asked in the questionnaire and talk to insurance agents to find out what features save the most money. Similarly, fit better locks and any systems making your vehicle more difficult to steal. Anything you can do to reduce the risk of a claim will be reflected in low rates in the auto insurance quotes you receive.

In the midst of all this chaos, the credit card operators have been cutting back on the borrowing limits. This has forced pain on us for two reasons. Firstly, finding the money to pay down our debts more quickly means redesigning the family budget. Sacrifices have to be made. Secondly, the way the credit score is calculated depends in part on the extent to which we use the credit cards we have. If the limits are reduced, we look like bad risks because the amount borrowed is closer to the limit. We have less money available to borrow and cut down on card usage so we can repay faster. Put the two together and the score falls. This is a direct criticism of the methods used to calculate the scores. It produces a fundamentally unfair result during a recession.

This would not be a problem if the credit score was only used by banks and credit card operators. But it’s also used by companies to help decide whether to employ you, by landlords deciding whether to rent to you and by insurance companies deciding whether you are a responsible person. National figures show more than half all insurance companies use credit scores as a key factor in deciding your premium rate. This is extraordinary. There is only one possible effect of being in debt when it comes to the way in which you drive. If you cannot afford to repair your vehicle, you drive defensively to reduce the risk of an accident.

Some states like California and Massachusetts have banned the use of credit score for this purpose, but they are a minority. They cite discrimination as a reason for the ban. The majority of the population without access to banking services and credit cards fall into minority racial groups. When they do not have a credit score, they are forced to pay a higher premium simply because of who they are, not how they drive. So, when you are looking for affordable cover, get the maximum possible number of car insurance quotes to find the best policies. If you live in a state which refuses the regulation of the car insurance market, contact your local government representatives and tell them how much pain you are suffering because of this unfair use of credit scores.

There are several theories about differences between the sexes. Some say men have better spacial awareness. This allows them better control over moving objects at speed. Some say women do what they are told and so apply the speed limit and the laws on safety. Whatever the reason, three times more men than women are killed on the roads every year. Men aged under 25 are the most likely to die. They are the ones most likely to buy high-powered vehicles and want to show off. They are also likely to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs late at night when it is most dangerous. It’s a sad picture but insurance companies deal with the world as they find it. Premiums are high where the risk of claims is high. That means young male drivers pay the highest premiums of anyone on the road. Their only strategy is to prove they are the exception to the rule. They should buy low-powered family saloons and drive as little as possible. There must be no tickets for speeding or any other moving violation. There must be no claims. The men who prove they are as safe as the women earn the same lower premiums. As for the women, they will always get cheap car insurance premiums. The biggest savings comes from the insurance companies offering special women-only policies. It is worth shopping around to find the really cheap car insurance policies in the age range of 30 to 45. Assuming low mileage at conventional times of the day, the lowest rates will be offered to this group. Then as age increases, the premiums will edge slowly up again, reaching a maximum after the age of 75.