A group of 18 Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurers is helping to create a nonprofit drug company to make certain generic drugs itself. The insurers are targeting medicines where there is a lack of competition and a need to bring down prices.
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The president suggested he would be willing to consider cuts to programs such as Medicare to reduce the federal deficit if he wins a second term. Spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is expected to cost the federal government more than $30 trillion through 2029, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Employers play a role in increasing their employees’ financial confidence, particularly when it comes to offering insurance products that can contribute to an employees’ bottom line, and ultimately help them feel prepared for whatever life brings them.
Some finance pros are suggesting that clients consider protecting some of the gains they earned during the market surge of the past year by moving them into a safer product – an insurance product.
The real gross domestic product looks good three years out with a 2- to 2.2-% growth rate for 2020. Unemployment is expected to stay below 4% for the next three years. The Federal Reserve has been unable to get the 2% inflation rate they have sought, one expert says, but maybe 1.5% is the new target.
The NAIC Executive Committee and Plenary will hold a joint meeting on Thursday, Feb. 13 and could vote to adopt new annuity sales rules. The model articulates a best-interest standard through the following four obligations: care, disclosure, conflict of interest and documentation.
A federal appeals court recently ordered the United States to make good on a structured annuity the former Executive Life Insurance Company of New York (ELNY) was paying to a burn victim. The decision calls attention to the security of long-term annuity promises when an insurance company goes out of business.
The American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians want to see everyone get coverage but have differing ideas on how to get there.
The California Consumer Protection Act took effect Jan. 1 and sets a high bar for data privacy — and has potentially significant impacts for insurers and policyholders. For instance, it could make it harder to legally defend lawsuits, a San Francisco lawyer said.
LIMRA is realigning in response to a rapidly changing insurance environment. The association found that its members needed more tools to be efficient in their services and better informed in their product development. LIMRA has already introduced new platforms to help companies in this challenging market.
After marrying into a family of doctors and founding a physician-focused financial practice, I had the opportunity to work day in and day out with dedicated, selfless caregivers. Witnessing their generosity, I was posed with a nagging question: Am I taking more than I am giving?
A collection of conservative groups is mobilizing to oppose a measure that would ban “surprise” medical bills patients sometimes receive from hospitals and providers when their services aren’t covered by insurance.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined today to put the legal challenge to Obamacare on a fast track, meaning the court will not hear the case prior to the November election. The decision reduces pressure on Republicans to produce a replacement plan prior to the election.
A June court order directed the department to take control of four life insurance companies, which Greg Lindberg acquired in recent years and then operated as Global Bankers Insurance Group. Lindberg and several associates are accused of trying to bribe state insurance commissioner Mike Causey.
President Donald Trump is tweeting about how he saved the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people who have pre-existing conditions, even as he is backing a court challenge to the law that would overturn the ACA and eliminate those protections.
Who can and should provide financial literacy education is unclear, but a pair of academic experts say it should not be state insurance regulators. They spoke during a conference call last week for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Retirement Security Working Group.
Most people put lots of effort into organizing holidays. It’s been said people spend more time planning a two-week vacation than they do planning for their own retirement. It’s your job to help people like that. That’s why you need to stay healthy during the winter.
The good news is that the experts were unanimous in their assessment that the U.S. economy would not slip into a recession this year. The bad news is that the experts were unanimous in their assessment that the U.S. economy would not slip into a recession this year.
Between 2013 and 2018, compound annual growth rate in life insurance premium growth has been 1.7%, the EY report said. Gross written premium grew from $661 billion in 2013 to $718 billion in 2018.
The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act was included in the massive $1.4 trillion spending bill signed by President Donald Trump at the end of the year. Getting the rules loosened for annuities in plans is “a big win for the insurance industry,” says one industry expert.
Closed blocks of business can be a thorn in the side of life insurers. Whether a result of discontinued products or included in a merger or acquisition, these policies remain active and must be serviced, but over the long haul, they may have become very unprofitable.
A House health-care panel approved legislation that would prohibit life-insurance, long-term care insurance and disability-insurance companies from using customers’ genetic information in changing, denying or canceling policies.
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he intends to nominate two people to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, an institution he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting rates deeply enough.
Health insurance premiums for plans purchased through Affordable Care Act marketplaces for 2020 decreased in 31 states, a new analysis shows.
While the majority of Americans age 40 and over claim to have a well-defined retirement strategy, almost the same number would give themselves a‘ C’ grade or lower on their retirement savings, according to a new survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of TD Ameritrade.
A survey by the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) finds that millennials’ expectations are not well aligned with the retirement planning steps they have taken thus far. Although nearly eight in ten millennials say that they have saved some money for retirement, nearly half – 46 percent – have saved less than $10,000.
Using social media to promote retirement income planning seminars and workshops has become the next big thing for insurance and financial professionals.
Advisors want to have the freedom and flexibility to provide the best possible client experience as true fiduciaries and differentiate themselves in order to compete for more wallet share. With overall wealth increasing in the U.S., there will be continued demand for the services that independent advisors deliver.
Health insurance CEO pay is outpacing the growth of revenue and growth of other top executives’ pay according to a report. The most recent survey showed that total direct compensation (the sum of base salary plus annual incentives and long-term incentives) for health insurance CEOs increased 12% from 2018 to 2019.
The National Financial Educators Council conducted a survey with a single question: “When you have a financial question, who do you turn to for trusted financial guidance?” The most popular answer to the question depended on the age of the respondent.
The nine most-brazen insurance fraudsters of 2019 were chosen by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. The convicted extreme schemers were inducted into the Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame.
LIMRA is now offering My Products, a dashboard that filters data from its Life Compass tool, to allow companies to “compare individual life insurance products with similar competitors’ products, boosting their ability to track their own performance and adapt to evolving market conditions.”
A National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ task force will collect data from several insurers over the coming weeks as part of its effort to establish a uniform long-term care rate review process.
New research offers the strongest cue yet for battling political parties to call a truce and cooperate with one another. Kiplinger Personal Finance now reveals that typical Americans now consider “political deadlock” to be the greatest threat to the U.S economy.
Annuities provide guaranteed lifetime income, something that should be attractive to those who fear running out of money in retirement. So why aren’t more Americans buying annuities?
The latest of the very closely watched purchasing managers index readings just confirmed what we’ve been hearing for a while, that American manufacturing went south pretty much all of last year.
Until 2017, most financial criminal activity targeted banking institutions and credit cards. But the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute reported in its analysis of a federal consumer survey that with more than $42 trillion in investible assets in the U.S., criminals have turned their attention to life insurance and retirement accounts.
According to financial services firm Edward Jones’ survey, Relationship with Money, while 81% of Americans say they feel in control over their current financial situation, they admit a mix of emotions when it comes to their money. When asked what they would do if someone gave them $1,000, 72% of respondents said they would allocate it to short-term goals.
Insurance companies would be barred in Florida from using genetic information now widely available through such popular services as23andMe and Ancestry, under legislation filed Thursday by a leading House Republican. Insurers oppose the legislation, though, as another regulation that could disrupt the insurance market in Florida.
Insurers are facing pressure to digitally re-engineer their own internal operations and embrace emerging technologies in order to attract new digital consumers.
On Jan. 1, the 2017 Principle-Based Reserving and Commissioners Standard Ordinary Table both took effect. Insurers had three years to meet the new standards, but some were certainly more prepared than others, one actuarial expert said.
The SECURE Act includes three significant provisions relating to lifetime income. These new provisions have the potential to both fundamentally reframe how participants view their accumulated 401(k) plan savings, and to generate an increasing level of participant interest in gaining “in-plan” access to lifetime income products.
There are myriad objections to buying DI, but the No. 1 reason people don’t buy it is they were never asked to buy. Here are the common objections to buying disability insurance, and some methods for getting past those objections.
In the United States, providing patient care costs every American man, woman and child an average of $2,497 per year. Across the border in Canada, where a single-payer system has been in place since 1962, the cost of administering health care is $551 per person.
Insurers must figure out how to appeal to Generation Z without alienating consumers of older generations. Members of Gen Z want to buy what they want, when they want and how they want. This group is totally online, mostly mobile.
The passage of the SECURE Act opens new possibilities for your clients and your practice. Here is how to open the discussion with clients.
The repeal of an unpopular fine for people without health insurance has had little impact on “Obamacare” sign-ups or premiums, a gap between the real world and legal arguments from conservatives again challenging the Affordable Care Act.
U.S. consumers slowed their borrowing in November, mainly by piling up less credit card debt. Consumer borrowing is closely watched for signals it can provide about Americans’ willingness to take on debt to finance consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of U.S. economic activity.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker sent a letter Tuesday to Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin urging him to defer action on proposed fiduciary regulation. The proposal creates “confusion,” and ignores other state and national regulatory efforts, Baker wrote.
Uncertainty about the U.S. economic outlook for 2020, no doubt, has edged up after a U.S. drone strike on Jan. 2 took out a top Iranian military commander, Qassem Soleimani. Early Tuesday evening, the White House confirmed that President Donald Trump had been briefed about an attack by Iran against an air base in Iraq housing U.S. troops.
Model Paulina Porizkov and rocker Ric Ocasek were married for 30 years, but allegedly separated when she discovered him dead, in his Manhattan home on September 15, 2019. Ocasek’ s purported Last Will and Testament is dated August 28, 2019 and it leaves no provision for Porizkov or two sons, Christopher and Adam from an earlier marriage.
The study estimated that cutting U.S. administrative costs to Canadian levels would have saved more than $600 billion in 2017.. Health administration costs were more than fourfold higher per capita in the U.S. than in Canada which implemented a single-payer Medicare for All system in 1962. The authors note that in Canada hospitals are financed through…
More than two-thirds of independent RIAs participating in the TD Ameritrade Institutional 2020 RIA Sentiment Survey are optimistic about the U.S. economy, and more than half expect stock prices to continue to increase. Even as RIAs see a relatively smooth road ahead in 2020, they are watching headlines on the U.S. economy, corporate earnings and trade for…
In findings published Monday in the journal Health Affairs, researchers noted that, for some American families, average out-of-pocket healthcare spending for maternity care– including during pregnancy, delivery and three months postpartum– jumped from $3,069 in 2008 to $4,569 in 2015, a nearly 50 percent increase.
Bill Gates started the last decade worth more than $50 billion and with a pledge to donate large parts of his fortune to charity. By the end of the decade, he’d given billions of dollars to fight poverty and improve health care and education. But his fortune also more than doubled during the period, a result of soaring stock markets and favorable tax policies.
The yield curve was relatively flat at the end of 2018 and then inverted in 2019, with the interest rates for the 10- year Treasury lower than the shorter-term maturities such as the 3- month Treasury. An inverted yield curve often proceeds a recession as the Federal Reserve is pushing the target federal funds rate higher.
Could the U.S. economy really avoid a recession in 2020? The longest economic expansion in U.S. history, which kicked off in June 2009, apparently has more gas in the tank, according to one leading economist.
The funded status of the nation’ s largest corporate pension plans edged up slightly in 2019 as historically low interest rate levels mostly offset the strongest investments gains witnessed by plan sponsors since 2003, according to an analysis by Willis Towers Watson.
Three key provisions of the SECURE Act will likely affect the way client’s handle their IRA. These provisions went into effect on Jan. 1 and include 1) eliminating the stretch provision on inherited IRAs, 2) increasing the RMD age from 70½ to 72, and 3) allowing individuals older than 70½ to make contributions to traditional IRAs.
By the end of 2020, the landscape for the Affordable Care Act could look very different. However, a mid-December ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals leaves a lot of questions to be answered about the future of former President Barack Obama’s signature law.
