Posted by
Stephanie Castro
on
11/18/2009 at 3:01 PM
Appropriate parenting and monitoring of your teenager’s driving behavior can avert him/her from becoming a statistic. A recent study by researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia revealed that “Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, killing more than 5,000 each year”.
With more kids owning cars and having free access to use cars, a sense of entitlement that they can take a car on their own makes them less cautious and more susceptible to dangerous driving and accidents. The study found that “70 percent of teenagers said they had their own cars or were the main drivers of cars they used” – a clear indication in the rise of teenagers driving and the impending risks on road.
“Among these "main'' drivers, 25 percent had been involved in crashes, versus just 10 percent of teens who shared driving access with family members” – emphasizing that better parental control on access to vehicles has positive results.
Plus, the habit of using cell phones while driving means less focus on traffic and more chances for careless accidents. Requiring teenagers to abide by a clear set of rules, including no talking on cell phones or texting while driving, as well as restricting access to the car, can have a big impact on reducing the number of suffering parents.
"With teen drivers, you have to recognize that it's a public health issue,'' said Dr. Jeffrey Weiss, a physician in Phoenix who co-wrote the report.
This trend may attract the insurance industry to tailor new insurance models. In a previous article, “Ground-breaking Incentives: Start-up Health Plan Rewards Members for Prevention”, we mentioned how SeeChange offers people taking preventative measures with innovative insurance benefits. It wouldn’t be surprising to see health plans coming up with similar products based on the results of the above mentioned study.
Check this National News article in the Insurance Journal for better details on the study.
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Posted by
Stephanie Castro
on
11/11/2009 at 5:31 PM
With our challenging times and evolving customer needs, the time is right for health insurers to offer more innovative benefits. That’s the goal of SeeChange, a startup health insurer which offers new insurance plans designed to incentivize behavior change for both healthy and chronically ill members.
This ground-breaking incentive model was featured as “The Next Big Thing” in the health insurance segment by AIS’s Health Plan Week. This new plan model encourages insureds to anticipate and prevent illness rather than wait until they have fallen ill to get care. Instead of penalizing insureds for pre-existing conditions, SeeChange will reward patients with better coverage for the preventative measures needed to quell the escalation of the disease.
For example, Martin Watson, CEO of SeeChange Health explains, “If you have elevated glucose levels, if your cholesterol is high and it looks like you are pre-diabetic, we’ll give you richer benefits to prevent you from even getting into stage 1.”
This plan not only helps people take care of their personal health but also rewards them for preventing existing chronic diseases from becoming more serious. SeeChange is indirectly encouraging people to pay closer attention to their health and to lead healthier lives. If this trend of preventing illness continues into the future, it could be a boon to the good health of America.
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Posted by
Joseph Westlake
on
11/6/2009 at 5:12 PM
As per a recent Report on Agent Insight Tour conducted by AgencyPort, web based solutions are the need of the hour for carriers wishing to maintain a healthy relationship with their agents. The first decisive factor for an agent to choose a carrier is still quality of product. However, it is now also a widely accepted fact that agents prefer working with carriers that are easy to work with, provide technology tools and follow processes that simplify the onerous tasks of inquiry, quoting, issuance, endorsement, renewal transactions and so on.
The top 3 criteria according to the report are
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Quality of product
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Pricing
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Ease of doing business
It follows that a solid product at a good price is not enough to win over agents. For ease of doing business, possession of all the required data from web based agent portals place agents in a strategic position to process proposals in near real time. If this freedom and ease of access is not possible, agents won’t think twice to switch to a different carrier.
Carriers would do well to embrace automated web based solutions that will ensure agent satisfaction and higher agent performance rates. We are already seeing a surge in demand for producer portals in the industry, with much success. When the trends and facts hint at a positive impact on business objectives with technology, the most sensible choice is to tread that path rather than maintain the status quo.
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