SitExpo.Org

You are coming up to the light and it is yellow, you stop, but the person behind you isn’t as quick and tucks his car in right under your bumper. You’re in the parking lot, another driver pulls in parallel to you, and as he gets out the wind gusts and takes the door out of his control and it dents your door. You’re driving behind the gravel truck on the highway when a stone drops out of the back of the truck, bouncing off the street and into your windshield. What do you do?

How many claims you make over time affects how your car insurance company decides what kind of a risk you are, and what your premiums are going to be. If you have a low deductable, it may seem like a good idea to claim every scratch and pit that comes along, especially if you have a new car. But each claim has a chance of raising your premium regardless of whether or not you were at fault.

So what do you do? Read your car insurance policy , or when you are in a renewal process talk to each agent for the companies that you are thinking of accepting the quote. Find out what is their policy is for accidents. Some insurance companies place a clause in the policy allowing them to not renew with your or worse even cancel if they think you are involved in not reporting an accident. Parking lot dents and dings don’t usually need a police report, or need you to file a claim. Weigh your deductable against the cost of the repair and the cost of a possible rise in your premium and see if an out of pocket solution is best.

For pits in the windshield, it might be to your advantage to speak to your agent. Sometimes, even though your insurance does not cover glass, if you have not made a claim, or have been a good driver, the car insurance company will pay to have the windshield repaired at no cost to you.

Remember, anything that is remotely a traffic violation, whether or not you are at fault should be reported to the proper authorities and to your insurance agent. Often times, you should contact the insurance company immediately to insure coverage. Learning when to make a claim and working with your agent can help you keep your car insurance premiums affordable.

The use of coupons has become an important and exciting marketing strategy over the past decade. The idea is simple. A central marketing agency promotes the named businesses by offering discount vouchers. Go to this restaurant, eat a magnificent meal, and enjoy a discount of 50%. This is a great promotion for the restaurant and the statistics show the majority of people who come to try out the meals return and pay the full price later on. Now let the pharmaceutical industry play with this idea. Suppose the drug manufacturers were to offer coupons to their loyal customers, how would the marketing plan work? Well, for a moment, consider the problem of the generic market. When the patent runs out on a brand, others may copy the chemistry and sell a generic version of the drug for a significantly lower price. From the customer’s point of view, this is wonderful news. The same drug is available. It has been approved by the FDA as an exact match for the original branded drug. And it comes at a heavily discounted price. Not surprisingly, this knocks a big hole in the profits of the branded manufacturer, so this manufacturer will search for a way to keep the generic manufacturer out of the market.

This is where the copayment coupons have come into play. The idea of copayments has been central to insurance policies for some years. This requires the patient to pay a proportion of the medical costs. It is actually self-insurance of that part of the costs. The justification advanced by insurance companies is that it reduces moral hazard, i.e. it is an encouragement to people only to seek treatment when it is genuinely necessary. Through the coupons, the manufacturers offer a form of subsidy to the patients if they copay for branded drugs. This makes the branded drugs more affordable and maintains more of their profit margin. Obviously, if the brands were losing too much of their market share, the manufacturers would have to reduce their prices to compete with the generics. In theory, the coupons represent a compromise. The patients pay less for the brand, but more than for the generic. The manufacturers give away a part of their profits, but less than through a price reduction to complete with the generic directly.

A class action has now been launched, which claims that the manufacturers have committed fraud through the use of these coupons. As it stands, the insurance companies pay the manufacturer a fixed price for every branded pill or tablet prescribed. The manufacturers and pharmacists have been forgetting to tell the insurers about the coupons. It is highly relevant that the patients have been paying less at the drugstore counters. Because there are no savings to the insurance companies in paying for the generics, the premium rates stay high. This makes cheap health insurance quotes even less likely to appear. In reality everyone is losing. Customers are still paying more than they should. Both individual and group health insurance plans cost more than they should. All this being purely for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry. The class action describes these coupons as part of a bait and switch scam. In the event that the class action is successful, some consumers may be entitled to compensation and heavy damages could be awarded.