Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Wednesday LinkFest: Dead Parrots and Deer Strikes

Assurant's Jeremy Fink tips us to the latest news from the Council for Disability Awareness (CDA), which recently released the results of its annual Long-Term Disability Claims Review. The review includes data from 17 member companies which participated in the 2011 survey. It's important to note that these 17 carriers represent about 75% of the private DI industry (giving cred to the results).

Some nuggets:

■ As a group, the carriers paid out over $9 billion in long-term disability claims (about 2% more than in 2010)


Over 95% of the claims were *not* work-related

This is troubling: for the third straight year, the number of covered lives decreased by a half of a percent, meaning fewer people were insured. I'm sure double-digit unemployment had nothing to do with that, of course.

You can read the whole report here.

FoIB Michael Cannon (who's also the Cato Institute's Director of Health Care Policy) continues his beat-down of the ObamaTax Exchanges, pointing out what he considers a fatal flaw:

"[T]he Democrats had no choice but to accept the Senate version. And that version is structured in such a way that individual states can decide to opt out of those state health insurance exchanges that are central to Obamacare."

And what's so insidious about that? For one thing, think of a dead parrot. And more taxes.

Finally, the Insurance Information Institute (III) reports that deer-vehicle mash-ups are increasing:

"An increase in urban sprawl and more roads being built through wildlife habitats have displaced deer from their natural habitat, leading to a rise in deer-vehicle collisions ... An estimated 1.23 million deer-vehicle collisions occurred in the U.S. between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012, costing more than $4 billion in vehicle damage"

And it's not just cars that get wrecked - these can be extremely dangerous for drivers and passengers, as well, killing some 200 people every year. So watch out for Bambi.

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