A guide to health insurance and the Affordable Care Act for consumers. This book describes the health reform provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including essential health benefits, the health care exchanges, and premium subsidies available for certain individuals. The book also describes the main features of health insurance plans in the U.S., including characteristics of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and preferred provider organizations (PPOs), and typical cost-sharing mechanisms, including deductibles, coinsurance and copayments. Practical examples of the operation of deductibles, coinsurance and copayments are provided.

Managing Risk: A Guide for Physicians and Practices is one component of Daktori's Financial Fellowship Program and is approved for up to 7.5 hours of Category I Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits in all states for all specialties. The monograph helps physicians avoid liability traps arising from casual events that meet the legal definition of the doctor-patient relationship, contribution to diagnosis, miscommunication with patients and staff, poor layout of the office (especially high risk communication areas), drug therapy dangers, and non-medical liability risks for the practicing physician. Additional sections have been added on HIPAA risks, telemedicine liability and more. Free Daktori newsletter subscription (register at www.daktori.com/contact) and complimentary consultation with one of the authors also included with purchase. If continuing education credit is desired, please see included instructions.

How to Beat Obamacare briefly covers the most important parts of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010 by President Obama. It gives a framework for making smart choices in the new healthcare environment.

How to Save for Retirement and Use Your Savings TODAY Retirement Planning and Rapid Wealth Creation for the Family will teach you and your Family EXACTLY how to save for retirement. Saving for retirement and knowing how to save for retirement can be one of the most valuable skill sets a family has, and lead family members to a more rewarding life today while investing for tomorrow. The book will show you a straight-forward, logical way to save for retirement. It will show you a way to use that same savings money as though you had never touched it. You will learn how to put together a solid retirement, as well as increase your cash flow in the years leading up to retirement. You will literally get your money working in two different directions at once so that you can live better today while saving for tomorrow. Just by picking up this book and implementing the simple strategy outlined, you could easily save $100,000 to $200,000 over your lifetime if you are currently using credit cards or financing major expenses.

Despite the importance of insurance in enabling individual and collective social, economic, and financial activities, discussions about the macro-economic role and risks of insurance markets are surprisingly limited. The core motivation for publishing this book is to bring together academics, regulators, and industry experts to provide a multifaceted array of research and perspectives on insurance, its role and functioning, and the potential systemic risk it could create. The first part discusses the macro-economic role of insurance and how insurance is different from banking and general finance. Understanding the differences between the balance sheets of insurers and other financial intermediaries is essential to understand the potential differences in risk nature and differences in optimal regulation. The second part of the book focuses on the risks of the insurance sector and the potential for systemic risk. The various chapters discuss the risks both on the asset and liability sides of insurers' balance sheets. The third part of the book covers the impact of regulation on insurance companies. Existing regulation is often complex and has a large impact on insurance companies' decision-making and functioning. The chapters also illustrate the unintended consequences of various forms of regulation. The book concludes with a summary of a survey that has been conducted in collaboration with McKinsey, where insurance executives have been asked about the risks and regulation in the insurance sector. The survey provides guidance for future research on insurance markets.

GAO-11-616 - Federal Crisis: Review of Federal Reserve System Financial Assistance to American International Group, Inc. In September 2008, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve Board) approved emergency lending to American International Group, Inc. (AIG)--the first in a series of actions that, together with the Department of the Treasury, authorized $182.3 billion in federal aid to assist the company. Federal Reserve System officials said that their goal was to avert a disorderly failure of AIG, which they believed would have posed systemic risk to the financial system. But these actions were controversial, raising questions about government intervention in the private marketplace. This report discusses (1) key decisions to provide aid to AIG; (2) decisions involving the Maiden Lane III (ML III) special purpose vehicle (SPV), which was a central part of providing assistance to the company; (3) the extent to which actions were consistent with relevant law or policy; and (4) lessons learned from the AIG assistance. To address these issues, GAO focused on the initial assistance to AIG and subsequent creation of ML III. GAO examined a large volume of AIG-related documents, primarily from the Federal Reserve System--the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY)--and conducted a wide range of interviews, including with Federal Reserve System staff, FRBNY advisors, former and current AIG executives, AIG business counterparties, credit rating agencies, potential private financiers, academics, finance experts, state insurance officials, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officials. Although GAO makes no new recommendations in this report, it reiterates previous recommendations aimed at improving the Federal Reserve System's documentation standards and conflict-of-interest policies. While warning signs of the company's difficulties had begun to appear a year before the Federal Reserve System provided assistance, Federal Reserve System officials said they became acutely aware of AIG's deteriorating condition in September 2008. The Federal Reserve System received information through its financial markets monitoring and ultimately intervened as the possibility of bankruptcy became imminent. Efforts by AIG and the Federal Reserve System to secure private financing failed after the extent of AIG's liquidity needs became clearer. Both the Federal Reserve System and AIG considered bankruptcy issues, although no bankruptcy filing was made. Due to AIG's deteriorating condition in September 2008, the Federal Reserve System said it had little opportunity to consider alternatives before its initial assistance. As AIG's troubles persisted, the company and the Federal Reserve System considered a range of options, including guarantees, accelerated asset sales, and nationalization. According to Federal Reserve System officials, AIG's credit ratings were a critical consideration in the assistance, as downgrades would have further strained AIG's liquidity position. After the initial federal assistance, ML III became a key part of the Federal Reserve System's continuing efforts to stabilize AIG. With ML III, FRBNY loaned funds to an SPV established to buy collateralized debt obligations (CDO) from AIG counterparties that had purchased credit default swaps from AIG to protect the value of those assets. In exchange, the counterparties agreed to terminate the credit default swaps, which were a significant source of AIG's liquidity problems. As the value of the CDO assets, or the condition of AIG itself, declined, AIG was required to provide additional collateral to its counterparties.

This book is aimed to those professionals in financial and risk industry who would like to get good insight into raising operational risk issue. Research in book describes oprisk maturity of insurance companies in Adriatic region, so readers interested in doing insurance business in this region will benefit of this book most . Besides regional research approach, reader will get good understanding of operational risk and its influence to insurance and financial businesses overall. Reader will also understand the value of ERM (enterprise risk management) and ERM-ORM relation. Book should be carefully read from the beginning to the end so it can lead the reader through the reasons, issues, regulation examples and research results.

If your goal is to pass your insurance test the first time without the hassle of big thick study books, the Credit Insurance, Iowa License Exam Manual is right for you. Every effort has been made to reduce the number of pages necessary to pass the test. The fresh format has smaller bites of information. Each exam topic is followed by multiple choice questions to reinforce your learning. Designed to stand alone or be used as a supplement, this easy to read manual is complete with a table of contents, insurance text, 150 multiple choice practice questions, study tips and test taking tips. You will learn the exam topics needed to successfully pass your credit insurance test: general insurance terms and concepts, types of credit insurance, consumer credit insurance definitions, and Iowa laws, rules and regulations pertinent to credit insurance.

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast region, causing intense winds, high rainfall, waves, and storm surge, as well as economic disruptions in states throughout the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic region. Communities in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut were particularly hard hit. The devastating floods exposed vulnerabilities in the region's public transportation and infrastructure and underscores the nation's growing exposure to coastal hazards. The full economic cost of Sandy will not be known for years, but current preliminary estimates of physical property damage, not including flood losses likely to be paid under the government's National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), range from $30 billion to $55 billion, of which about $16 billion to $22 billion will be privately insured losses. Sandy is expected to require substantial federal disaster recovery assistance, including tens of billions for flood and hurricane protection and coastal restoration. Given the geographic scope of heavily flooded areas and residential take-up rates (number of flood policies divided by total number of households) in affected coastal communities that participate in the NFIP, government payouts under the NFIP are estimated to be from $12 billion to $15 billion in flood claims. This amount exceeds the $4 billion in cash and remaining borrowing authority from the Treasury Department. The Obama Administration has announced it will ask Congress to raise the NFIP borrowing authority to $25 billion, or $4.025 billion over its current borrowing authority. But some experts have suggested a $30 billion borrowing cap would be needed to cover even higher projected losses. Emergency supplemental spending on disaster assistance comes at a time when Congress is considering spending cuts and tax increases to address the nation's fiscal debt. In the wake of disaster clean-up and recovery along much of the East Coast region, policymakers, local officials, and other stakeholder groups have expressed a range of flood management concerns facing the NFIP. These include (1) escalating spending on federal emergency supplemental appropriations for disaster relief assistance; (2) uncertainty surrounding the NFIP's ability to reduce the nation's growing exposure to flood losses; (3) rising population growth and economic development in coastal watershed counties or floodplains areas exposed to hurricane induced coastal floods; (4) persistently low insurance participation (take-up rates) in the NFIP; and (5) financing the cost of rebuilding communities stronger, more resilient. On July 6, 2012, President Obama signed into law the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, P.L. 112-141, that reauthorized the NFIP through September 30, 2017, and made a number of reforms to strengthen the future financial solvency and administrative efficiency of the program by raising historically low premiums and reducing homeowners' incentives for rebuilding in flood risk zones. However, several post-reform issues of contention remain for congressional consideration: revisions in the analysis and mapping of non-accredited levees; actuarial soundness, program solvency, and affordability; debt forgiveness; an integrated watershed flood risk assessment framework; and expansion of the private-sector role in flood risk. This publication provides an analysis of flood risk management, summarizes major challenges facing the NFIP, and outlines key reforms in the recently enacted Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012. The publication also identifies and presents some key remaining flood management issues for congressional considerations, and it concludes with a discussion of relevant policy options for the future financial management of flood hazards in the United States.