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Affordable Insurance Under Regulatory Microscope

New York and Florida are polar opposites when it comes to winter weather. But the two states are forming a combined massive cold front when it comes to finding, buying and selling affordable insurance just ahead of an expected blizzard of Congressional reforms.

The Empire State --- under the watchful eye of one of the nation’s toughest former consumer protection advocates, Governor Eliot Spitzer --- is often considered by its statehood peers as the Gold Standard for most types of industry reform. Legislators in other states model bills after New York’s and applaud heavy lifting Governor Spitzer conducts on their behalf to introduce law-making templates governing everything from consumer Lemon Laws to banking and insurance regulation.

Florida owes yet another legislative nod to New York this week, as the Sunshine State’s Department of Insurance flexed its muscles over the usually quiet holiday season. Over the course of Christmas week, officials there clamped down on one brokerage it gave a bunch business to; loosened its grip on State Farm, allowing the company to resume writing homeowner’s policies after a two-year stalemate over hurricane losses; and finally, gave another fledgling brokerage some 23,000 policies to service.

State Farm will remain in Florida under a negotiated agreement that allows it to cancel about 15 percent of its policies and raise rates 14.8 percent. The deal also allows its contract agents to place the business State Farm non-renews with other private insurance companies.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty announced the deal. This comes after two unsuccessful attempts to raise its rates by more than 40 percent for home owners currently covered by the Good Neighbor and announcing its intentions to leave the state entirely.

Concluding the deal is a win-win for both the state and State Farm, Florida insurance officials said the agreement is better than State Farm cancelling all of its 810,000 home and condo policies and having many of them end up in the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which was a concern with the insurer's original exit plan.

In another move, regulators have restricted Magnolia Insurance, a Coconut Grove-based brokerage, from writing any new business until May, under a 120-day moratorium

Magnolia will be restricted in the writing and renewing of business under the consent order with the Office of Insurance Regulation. It will also need OIR approval for any major transaction, asset transfer, reinsurance agreement, investment or management change.

The company has agreed to work with OIR to develop a “corrective plan of action” that could include being acquired. The state action comes a few weeks after the insurer lost its rating from an actuarial firm, Demotech, for failure to submit current financials and proof of implementation of promised management changes.

Magnolia is bound by the Florida statutes to appropriately notify insureds of any non-renewals. Policies that are slated to renew now and in the first few weeks of January 2010 could not be properly noticed for non-renewal by Magnolia. Magnolia will renew these policies if the policyholders or agents request renewal. However, the company noted, policyholders and agents should be aware that renewal with Magnolia is at their own risk.

Officials said agents should seek to place any policy slated for renewal with another admitted carrier prior to the policy expiration date. If that fails, agents may try to place the business with the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Co.

State-run Citizens will be unloading about 23,000 homeowner’s policies to Clearwater-based Homeowner’s Choice Property and Casualty. The firm, solely funded as a cooperative between state homeowner policyholders and its management team, has built up its portfolio since its founding in 2006 with former Citizens policies the state considers too risky to service any longer.

Florida OIR will nearly double the company’s business, which already manages some $100 million in premiums, according to its web site.

With increased scrutiny over the relatively stable homeowner’s insurance market, we can only expect that once affordable healthcare reform becomes law, regulators in Florida, New York and other states carrying considerable financial risk will take a look at health insurance policies with as much bravado.

About the Author

To most people, health insurance is a plastic card with numbers that lets you into the doctor’s office and a little booklet of paper that lives in your filing cabinet, closet or some dusty corner of your home. To Michael, affordable health insurance and the historical reforms that go along with the inequality of healthcare in America are topics of healthy discussion, worthy of further study and catalysts for education and action. Michael lives in Miami.

How is polarized light obtained?

In optical mineraly, geologist use polarized light microscope. How is the light polarized at that?

Polarization (Brit. polarisation) is a property of waves that describes the orientation of their oscillations. For transverse waves such as many electromagnetic waves, it describes the orientation of the oscillations in the plane perpendicular to the wave's direction of travel. The oscillations may be oriented in a single direction (linear polarization), or the oscillation direction may rotate as the wave travels (circular or elliptical polarization). For longitudinal waves such as sound waves in fluids the direction of oscillation is by definition along the direction of travel. Guided modes in waveguides and optical fibers can carry waves with both transverse and longitudinal oscillations. Such waves do have polarization.

Polarization is used in areas of science and technology dealing with wave propagation, such as optics, seismology, and telecommunications. For electromagnetic waves such as light, the polarization is described by specifying the direction of the wave's electric field. According to the Maxwell equations, the direction of the magnetic field is uniquely determined for a specific electric field distribution and polarization. For transverse sound waves in a solid, the polarization is associated with the direction of the shear stress in the plane perpendicular to the propagation direction.

(wiki)

Any light beam shining in a particular direction vibrates in all directions around the axis of travel. Light beams whose vibration has been restricted to a single plane, or to a few planes is known as polarized light.
( http://www.life.umd.edu/CBMG/faculty/wolniak/wolniakmicro.html)

The real thing - plane polarised light
Light is also made up of vibrations - this time, electromagnetic ones. Some materials have the ability to screen out all the vibrations apart from those in one plane and so produce plane polarised light.

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/basicorg/isomerism/polarised.html

2010 ABC PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT GUIDE - COMEDY SERIES
ABC details its 12 comedy pilots under consideration for next season.

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