Questions To Ask About Boat Insurance

Summer's almost here and millions of Americans will be taking to the nation's waterways in boats. However, before they back down ramps at lakes, rivers and at coastal communities, boaters should be aware of an additional concern other than seals, fuel systems, GPS units, live wells, fishing tackle and engines. That would be insurance. There's boat insurance and then there's better boat insurance.

The Boat Owners Association of America lists five questions boaters need to ask before purchasing an insurance policy. Making sure a policy covers these basic questions could save a boat owner thousands of dollars and lots of worry. The answers also could reveal whether or nor a current policy has much value.

The first question to ask a boat insurance agent is does his company pay salvage costs or does the policy put that burden on the policy-holder's shoulders? Most people purchase insurance to cover big-ticket items, such as the total loss of an automobile or home because of a wreck or natural disaster. In these days, with tornadoes flying around the South like pinballs, nothing could be more important.

In the case of boats, the most common catastrophic insurance claims involve sinkings or devastating wind storms such as hurricanes or tornadoes. They can destroy a boat, sink it or lift it into the next county and leave it in small pieces. In any of these cases, a policy's "salvage" coverage should pay to hoist the boat from the bottom of a body of water or from a neighbor's property. An effective policy should have separate and full salvage coverage up to the policy limits for the costs to remove the boat that isn't less than or limited to a percentage of its hull value (the part of the policy that reimburses for actual loss of the boat).

A less-than-adequate policy could reimburse for the loss of the boat but could make a boat owner pay some salvage fees out of his own pocket. Another question to ask an insurance agent is how much help will his company provide when a claim is filed?

In other words, insurance companies have two schools of thought when it comes to handling claims. One is a hands-off approach that makes the claimant do all the work. With a large claim, one type of insurance could make the boat's owner responsible for finding a salvage company, a crane company or barge and trucking company. The policy then would reimburse the policy holder for submitted expenses.

On the other hand, a hands-on company - usually a specialty marine insurer - has access to these services and knows how to negotiate pricing, hires and pays contractors, and can arrange for and guarantee repairs. A third question to ask is does a boat insurance policy contain consequential damage coverage? In the boat insurance universe, catastrophic losses such as fire, explosion, sinking, de-masting, collision and stranding are classified as a consequence. For instance, if a boat sinks because its hull fittings are rusted and break off, that's a consequence of the broken-through hull. Good boat insurance policies include consequential damage clauses that cover such specific catastrophes. More simply, if consequential damage isn't covered in a policy, expenses caused by a sinking or fire could be excluded totally because of a finding of wear and tear.

A fourth question involves how much involvement a boat owner needs to supply after an incident occurs. A good insurance policy offers immediate emergency claims response that can step in with resources needed to prevent further damage.

In the case of boat owners living in a hurricane-prone area, such as the North Carolina coast, the policy should share the cost of a haul-out to move a boat to high ground or pay a captain to move it to a safe place.

The last question to consider is what an insurance company does over time for a boat owner who doesn't have any claims and regularly makes premium payments. A good insurance policy should give such an owner credit for not having claims and offer diminishing deductibles for each year the boat owner files no claims. A boat owner who isn't satisfied with his agent's answers to these questions should start shopping for a better policy.

BOATUS offers more information on-line at http://www.BoatUS.com/insurance.

Filing Bankruptcy? Don't Worry About What You Lose But What You Gain

Now that we are once again heading into a holiday season most Americans put a high priority on materialism. As consumer debt continues to rise many Americans will be considering filing bankruptcy once again for their New Year's resolution. Most people take on the attitude that they will have one more outrageous Christmas on their credit cards and then start working on becoming debt-free even if it means filing for bankruptcy. But instead of taking care of business now, the pain is pushed off to 2013.

The good news is a bankruptcy filing can break the bondage of debt and free your soul. When we look at how materialistic and superficial the world has gotten we need to look at what the Bible says about it. In Matthew 16:26 Jesus made a strong statement regarding this, "For what willit profit a manif he gainsthe whole world and forfeits his soul? Basically, he is saying that you can't take the stuff with you, so you need to get your priorities in check. The last time I checked, you never see a hearse towing a U-Haul trailer. Basically, Americans are putting themselves in debt so they can have everything they want. What they give up is the debt ends up owning them. Many families end up breaking up as the debt becomes overwhelming that was created so they could have the big house, the fancy cars and give their kids everything they asked for. We see this scenario played out over and over again in American culture where it ends up in divorce, a foreclosure and a bankruptcy filing.

People especially today should be aware of what's going on economically nationwide and take the steps to put their personal financial future in check. For some people, filing bankruptcy might be the best way for them to put their debt behind them and get a second chance at becoming debt-free in the future. Since the housing market blew up back in 2007, many Americans have been scraping along hoping that things will turn around. While hope is good, there becomes a point in time where common sense has to come into the picture. People really need to take a hard look in what is in the future for the industry they are in and how it will affect their finances. The way it looks now for the economy is this is the new normal. Thinking any differently is utter foolishness.

Being proactive when it comes to financial matters will help alleviate any stress that comes with being behind on bills. When someone gets to the point that they are robbing Peter to pay Paul they should consider seeking the advice of a bankruptcy attorney to see if filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy might have something to offer for their personal situation. It doesn't mean that they have to file bankruptcy immediately, but it might give the individual some information that could prepare them for what is to come whether it be good or bad.

All we need to do is remember that knowledge is power and the more knowledge you have about financial matters including filing bankruptcy will give an individual an upper leg on getting out of debt quickly and get on the road to becoming debt-free. Many famous people have done exactly this and are now successful giants in industry. Instead of waiting around for things to turn around people should be proactive especially in this economy and consult a bankruptcy attorney before it's too late.

Will Malpractice Cases Increase for Connecticut's Home Health Care Industry?

Several forces are coming together which will expand the home health care industry in Connecticut.

Governor Malloy is expanding the MFP ( Money Follows the Person) program. This is a federal reform program that aims to reduce the number of patients on Medicaid in expensive institutional healthcare settings. It focuses on moving people out of long-term care facilities and placing them back into their homes where most elderly people prefer to reside. The Connecticut legislature has approved new regulations for the home health care industry that will allow nurses to delegate medication administration to home health aides that are working with patients in their homes. All of these changes are designed to benefit the elderly and to improve quality of life and expand the elderly population that can reside at home with assistance. These are all positive things for health challenged individuals, providing the proper community support is available. This was not the case when the state decided that mental health patients belonged in the community and not in chronic care facilities. Community support was grossly inadequate in the 1980s when the state deinstitutionalized patients from psychiatric hospitals, producing disastrous results for many communities and individuals. Hopefully this most recent plan to transition people into the community has taken into account the need for expanded home health care services.

A second shift in the state's public health policy that has started to effect the home health care industry is in the area of informed risk. Informed risk is basically a policy stating that a person who may not be deemed safe to stay at home is allowed to remain at home as long as patient and family acknowledge that the patient is at greater risk of injury at home as opposed to a facility. It is an honoring of the patient's wishes as opposed to what the agency may feel is the best plan of care for the individual. Up until recently if a person was deemed unsafe in their home environment the home care agency would not support the person remaining at home. In other words they would refuse to provide services. Now the state is promoting keeping people at risk in their homes, providing that they are mentally sound, and they have acknowledged the fact that they are assuming greater risk by staying at home.

Even with good agency oversight it is inevitable that these shifts regarding informed risk and allowing non nurses to give medications will lead to an increase in injuries, accidental overdoses, misuse of medications as well as negligence and/or abuse. Agency staff will need to carefully document risk assessment and delegation of duties. Careful monitoring and good case management will help minimize errors and limit abuse and neglect in this population however the home care industry is certain to have an increase in liability hence the possibility of increasing nursing malpractice claims.

With the first wave of baby boomers starting to retire, the number of senior citizens in Connecticut continues to expand. The need for experienced home health care experts will continue to grow as well.

The History of Questions and Answers Sites

People will always have questions. It's the nature of the human condition. We love to ask questions and more importantly we love to answer then, maybe it gives us a sense of purpose that we can advise others or maybe we just like to feel a sense of superiority.

Whatever the reason, they have become very popular, and what is Facebook but just a glorified questions and answers site. There are hundreds of such sites that offer expert and amateur solutions to everyday problems. From the mundane like "what can I eat for lunch today?" to life changing questions such as "should I get divorced?".

Some of these sites are well loved by their followers and are used on a daily basis, some of these early examples of question and answer sites are very bizarre.

One of the first was Forum 2000, a very odd site that claimed to be run by artificial intelligence, although in later years it was recognised as a hoax.

The Hateatron became live on January 15, 2002 at a time when lots of other Q&A sites were springing up. The Hateatron ran on software written by its creator Safiire Arrowny and has gone through different incarnations since its launch. The Hateatron's main difference was that aside from just fielding questions with its characters, known as "Haters," it had a forum called the User Owned or UO Forum.

The evolution of this kind of forum was a fluke, and it turned into an extension of the Q&A format. The Haters who answered questions on the front page now sprang to life inside the UO Forum, interacting with the users who had become active in the community. The Hateatron sported a community and readership of over 100 regular users, organized a yearly convention called Hateakon, and answered nearly 5000 questions.

Some time in early 2005, the Q&A portion of the Hateatron was dropped from the front page of the site for unpublicized reasons. The rest of the site has since been decommissioned, although it is still occasionally updated with bizarre messages. Maybe an extreme version of the format but it still cemented the importance of these websites in the public agenda.

One of the largest in the questions and answers sites in the UK is Interestingly or Answerbank covering topics like News, Food, Fashion and Health. Users post as many questions as they like and some posters are posting multiple ties per week. Subscribers are encouraged to answer multiple posts and plenty of the questions on their have more than one answer.

If you have not already tried out one of these sites, they can be very interesting and informative so why not give one a go?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - An Easy Household Guide - Book Review

I was very excited to review Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - An Easy Household Guide by UK author, Nicky Scott. Because my husband and I wrote Trash Talk, which is a similar guide written for North Americans, I was very interested to learn how individuals in the UK are dealing with reducing waste.

With the 96-page book, the author attempts to provide a guide for people to follow; "in a world of confusing messages" where overwhelming environmental problems weigh down our hearts, Nicky hopes to encourage readers with positive information. Cute little illustrations by Axel Scheffler accompany most of the pages, adding a little touch of humor.

One of the first things Nicky discusses is the importance of refusing to purchase over-packaged items - in fact he states it is the main focus of the book, and it does briefly discusses avoiding disposables, things that cannot be recycled and those that are made from all virgin materials. Whereas the book seems to concentrate on how to reuse or recycle existing trash, it also comments on seeing the reuse, repair or recycle potential for products we are considering buying. He also suggests taking advantage of re-fill retailers (i.e. in Canada: Body Shop, Sampson Soaps, etc) and bulk outlets (grocery stores, bulk products at hair salons, etc). The author mentions that maintenance increases the likely hood of reuse and stressed donations and private sales. Tips are included on ways to make the recycle system run more smoothly and interesting UK statistics.

Chapter three hosts 59 pages of an extensive A-Z guide for items that are commonly found in waste bins. What to do with Fluorescent and CFL bulbs, funeral alternatives to consider, what the various numbers on plastics mean -it's all covered here in this tidy book. I found the information about all the different kinds of batteries, particularly the button-cell variety (watch, camera, calculator, etc), quite interesting. Interestingly, I never considered donating furniture too battered for reuse to upholsterer businesses and classes, where they may wish to reuse the frame to make new furniture.

Readers may find that some of the information is repetitive and Chapter four seems to reiterate what the book is trying to say. I enjoyed chapter five, which discusses the future of zero waste and cleaner waste (less toxic or greenhouse gas producing), very much. The book closes with an excellent resource section that offers roughly two-dozen organizations along with their contact information and lists about thirty books that are certain to make the environmentalist in you drool with anticipation.

Nicky Scott, Chairperson for the National Community Composting Network (CCN) in the UK, is the author of three small books (roughly 4 x 6 inches) dealing with waste reduction and has appeared in two videos about composting. His interest began while working at a compost business as a young man, and the passion grew while he studied at the UK's leading organic research organization, The Henry Doubleday Research Association. As initiator and Secretary of one of the first community composting projects, which continues to created jobs, and the head of the newsletter for the CCN organization - he is a busy man. Between all this, he squeezes in time to run workshops and give lectures. In his spare time, Nicky is a musician and artist.

Author: Nicky Scott Illustrator: Axel Scheffler Publisher: Green books (UK) ISBN: 1-903998-40-9

The Payment Protection Insurance Controversy

Confusion sometimes exists regarding the differences between Payment Protection Insurance and income protection. "PPI" is an insurance based product, which may be designed to provide coverage for a current debt. Income protection is not related to a specific debt but provides cover for any type of income. It is usually connected by banks or other credit providers, as an extension to a loan or overdraft, generally giving cover to borrowers against circumstances that could result in them being unable to honour the debt.

Payment protection is generally offered as insurance in respect of minimum loans or overdraft payments for periods of usually twelve months. On expiry of this term, borrowers are forced to resort to other methods to repay the debt. However, this term is usually sufficient for most borrowers to restore their capabilities to service the debt. This type of insurance differs with others, for example home insurance, by being complex in determining whether it will be beneficial to a borrower.

A discerning assessment is needed, regarding potential consequences should a borrower become unemployed. Considerations would involve for example, determining whether any payments made in lieu of notice, would render such a claim ineligible. This is irrespective of the borrower, genuinely being unemployed. In an instance such as this, the direction taken by a Payment Protection Insurance company is comparable with that taken regarding unemployment benefits.

This type of insurance has been the centre of controversy, being sold with mortgages, loans and credit cards since the nineteen nineties, to the extent of reportedly 6.5 million policies a year. However, further reports show that during 2011, one million complaints were received from consumers relating to their policies. This insurance product was referred to the Financial Ombudsman, under the term "mis-sold, payment protection insurance".

The number of complaints received between October and December 2011 were assessed at 30,301, which is a significant increase of 57% in comparison with the previous three months. These statistics assume even greater significance, by a report that more than two-thirds, or 68% of complaints related to controversial insurance, were resolved by the Financial Ombudsman in favour of the complainant. This was a positive result in comparison to the figure reported for between July and September, of 92%. There is naturally trepidation prevailing in providers of this type of insurance and there is uncertainty as to the number of complaints that will be forthcoming in the future.