100th Cavalcade of Risk!

Introduction to the Cavalcade of Risk

Today's cavalcade is brought to you all the way from Auckland, New Zealand. It's been a day of brilliant sunshine and light winds. We look forward to seeing you hanging around the blog for my rantings on NZ life insurance risk issues, other risks, regulation, and the occasional paroxysm of complaint about daily life. Keep coming back!

Disability Insurance - Why you Need It

The Wall Street Journal (via a tip from FreeMoneyFinance) has a good piece on why you need disability insurance. It applies as much here as it does there folks - and the point is this, it's more likely to happen than dying before age 65. So buy some.

US HealthCare Special:

There are risks, and there are certain bets... - Bob Vineyard makes this point well when he refers to historical cases of State governments meddling with insurance eligibility and finding - shock horror - that premium rates rose, steeply. Next up, it will be mandated that you can buy car insurance up to 14 days after you've had it stolen. A lack of appreciation for what risk is is missing from much of the US healthcare debate.

Does lack of healthcare increase your risk of death? - Henry Stern at Insureblog (and patron of the Cavalcade of Risk) tackles the BS that a lack of health insurance causes higher mortality. It would be an unusual reversal of the principle of selection for this to be so - translated for the non-insurance savvy, people that choose not to buy cover are usually healthier than those that do.

Jason Shafrin, the Healthcare Economist, wonders whether hospital ambience affects patient health. I bet it does, but he's done some talking with people that should know. Link. 

Jeff Rose, at GoodFinancialCents, has a solidly practical post on how to get good health insurance when you are self employed.

Jaan Sidorov has a truly great post on the issue of incentivising hospitals on how to reduce avoidable readmission rates, and problems with the approach that was taken. 

David Williams of the health business blog, has a post on a malpractice complaint - complete with graphics to put off the squeamish. 

Workers Compensation

When insurance carriers and claims administrators downsize and claims demands escalate, your adjusters may be overwhelmed by their caseloads. What minimum service standards you should expect from your workers' compensation carrier? Here are a few of the key claims-handling components to successfully investigate and manage injury claims. An excellent risk-focused post by Nancy Germond. 

What do baseball, wild pitches and physician pay have to do with each other, and why should you care? Tom Lynch or Workers’ Comp Insider explains.

General Insurance

Junior Boomer at Consumer Boomer has a great post on whether you have enough homeowners insurance. I'd back up his comments about insufficient cover and in the Kiwi context always opt for a replacement cost plan for the structure, and go large when thinking about contents. A couple of general brokers I know say that $50,000 was common for contents and even for a 3 bedroom home it should be closer to $80,000.

This news report I dug up covers the cost of the Chilean earthquake. Different scale - but here in NZ we had a little earthquake ourselves and 223 claims have already been lodged with our EQC.

This piece from Tom at Canadian Finance blog is about windshield insurance (windscreens to those of us who speak English). I was shocked to read Tom's post on this - here windscreen cover is often 'thrown in'. I know one broker in Taupo (google Taupo, it's lovely), who added it to all his clients policies for nothing and used to just pay for replacement windscreens from his own pocket as a marketing giveaway.

Reinsurance can be Fun!

Also from Nancy, this excellent post on the way Warren Buffet talks about risk in his annual report - his firm is a major investor in reinsurance businesses.

Life Insurance

This is about hiking - and - just - risk management - it's not a long piece but it tickled me to have the image of risk management as planning what emergency gear to take on a hike. Thanks to Tom at Canadian Finance Blog.

Phishing under the Guise of Insurance

This isn't strictly speaking about risk - but the risk of loss, I suppose - as it is about a warning. My thanks to Erin Schmidt who warns us that some people are phishing under the guise of an insurer. Nasty creatures. It caught my eye because I've been sent a fair few phishing emails in my time (a consequence of having a public email address).

The Posts we Didn't Carry

Risk, especially as I defined it for this Cavalcade, is a broad church, but some people are outside it.

I have left out posts on mortgage foreclosure, how to become a millionaire, making payments, what happens if the US defaults on its debt, how medical bills lower credit scores, help with payments in Florida, lending clubs, how to save money on groceries, or many, many more just like them. I even got one submission on 'urban wear' - WTF? Sorry.

Get Involved

Thanks for dropping by to view the 100th Cavalcade. Do poke your nose around some of the blogs and other posts from submitters on their sites. Also, check out the Cavalcade of Risk page here to keep an eye out for future Cav's (they are fortnightly) and how you can de-lurk and get involved by hosting one.

Comments

[hgstern]

Wow - What a GREAT way to celebrate the 100th Cav!

Thanks for hosting, and for doing such a bangup job!!

[Wenchypoo]

I even got one submission on 'urban wear' - WTF? Sorry.
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It's a sign of the times. There's a girl over at Amazon who thinks EXTREME FRUGALITY means to get your books on Kindle, then download them to your computer.

I corrected her and said if she was "poor" enough to need this book, she should've gotten it from the library for free, and sold her computer and Kindle on Ebay.