Insurance

Amid the many messages you will hear about screening for prostate cancer in the coming days, I hope these stand out: There is at best a small potential benefit from prostate cancer screening, and there are substantial known harms. We need a better test, and we need better treatment options. The panel I chair, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has just issued a recommendation against screening men of any age for prostate cancer using the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, blood test.

No one knows what tomorrow holds. But if biology is destiny, or even a major piece of it, Michael and Linda Dzuba had good reason to ponder a long future as they neared their 60th birthdays. And perhaps reason to worry just a bit. Each of their fathers had lived to nearly 90, and Michael's mother was still going strong in her late 80s. Linda's mother died after giving birth to her, but she was raised largely by an aunt who lived to 102. It wasn't basic finances that worried them.

Just downstream from an industrial recycling operation and a stone's throw from a sewage treatment plant, a fisherman casts his line toward the passing barge traffic and watches it drop into the Delaware River. A couple eating lunch watch curiously. "No way would I ever eat anything from there," the woman says. The fishers who frequent the pier in Camden's Waterfront South neighborhood have heard it all before. That they're crazy, that they're going to grow an extra head or get sick from eating what they catch.

Peter P. King, 68, of Ambler, owner of King Surety, died of pancreatic cancer Thursday, June 17, at home. Mr. King graduated from Abington High School and attended St. Joseph's University. During the Vietnam War, he served in the Army Security Agency, then the Army's signal intelligence branch, in Chitose, Japan. After his discharge, he studied business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and worked for an insurance agency. In 1974, he established the King Co., an insurance and bond agency located in Fort Washington and later in Jenkintown.

Q. MY HUSBAND has had problems with his heart since he was a young man. He never got any life insurance because he was afraid that he'd be rejected or given such a high premium that it would not be worthwhile. Last week, his doctor told him he'd probably need heart surgery in the near future. I'm not quite self-supporting, but we do have savings of about $150,000 in CDs and United States I Bonds. It would make things a lot easier for me today and tomorrow if he had some substantial life insurance.

Back in town from two-day owners summit in West Palm Beach, Phillies president and general partner Bill Giles sounded less optimistic about signing Curt Schilling in time for the pitcher's Monday midnight deadline. The problem? "I'm not sure we can get the right insurance," he said, watching the Phillies win their 17th spring training game last night against Toronto at Jack Russell Stadium. Giles would like 100 percent insurance on Schilling's right arm. American Specialty, the insurance company he is dealing with, might be unwilling to do that.

For all President Obama's tough talk about insurance companies Wednesday night, health-economics experts said his overhaul plan held little obvious pain for insurers. Requiring everyone to buy coverage - with government subsidies when necessary - would bring in millions of new customers, lower selling costs, and reduce the hidden tax that all privately insured people pay for those without insurance, experts said. Insurance companies would have to give up some of their most egregious practices - refusing to sell insurance to the people most likely to need it, for example, or dropping customers who get sick - but they would all be in the same boat.

Services were to be held this morning for Marie Franchetti, vice president of an insurance brokerage firm and a nationally recognized specialist in aviation insurance, who died Friday. She was 44 and lived in South Philadelphia. Franchetti had worked for Rollins Burdick Hunter, an insurance brokerage service with offices in the Ledger Building, since 1984. Previously, she had worked for Corroon and Black, an insurance agency. "Marie was an aviation insurance specialist," said Gil White, a vice president of Rollins Burdick Hunter and a close friend.

The New Jersey Attorney General's Office has launched a review of Camden County's practices for awarding its insurance business, according to Deputy Attorney General Daniel P. Reynolds. In a letter to Freeholder Michael J. DiPiero, Reynolds said that his office was examining whether the county complied with the state public contracts law when it awarded its no-bid insurance business, worth more than $3.7 million since the start of 1987. DiPiero, a Republican, asked the state Department of Community Affairs last month to examine the county's procedure for giving that insurance business to Democratic Party leaders, including the party treasurer, John Gallagher, and the treasurer of the current freeholder campaign, Peter DiGiambattista.

In the weeks before the Allegheny health system filed for bankruptcy in July, it quadrupled the value - from $50 million to $200 million - of liability insurance policies covering its board of directors and officers. Allegheny's creditors staked claim to that money yesterday - just in case coverage lapses at year's end today. They informed the health system's directors and officers of their intention to pursue the insurance money. The committee representing Allegheny's 65,000 unsecured creditors wrote to board members and executives viewed as most responsible for Allegheny's financial collapse.

Higher prices for visits to doctors, surgery, and drugs were the main cause of higher health-care costs for privately insured Americans in 2010, when overall utilization of health-care services was down, a report by the Health Care Cost Institute in Washington, said Monday. The report, using data provided by Aetna, Humana, and United Healthcare, analyzed three billion claims for 33 million individuals covered by employer-based health insurance from 2007 through 2010. "For the first time, we have comprehensive data on the privately insured.

This story was updated on May 21, 2012 A politically connected insurance broker pleaded guilty Friday to defrauding the Philadelphia Housing Authority of $2.3 million and is now naming names for federal authorities of public officials and others who allegedly have accepted bribes or kickbacks in return for business. Kobie T. West, 39, who took over West Insurance Group from his father and the firm's founder, Bernard T. West, has admitted to one count of wire fraud.

NEW YORK - Roman Catholic dioceses, schools, and other groups sued the Obama administration Monday in eight states and the District of Columbia over a federal mandate that most employers provide workers free birth control as part of their health insurance. The federal lawsuits represent the largest push against the mandate since President Obama announced the policy in January. Among those suing are the Pennsylvania Dioceses of Pittsburgh and Erie, the University of Notre Dame, and the Catholic University of America.

No one knows what tomorrow holds. But if biology is destiny, or even a major piece of it, Michael and Linda Dzuba had good reason to ponder a long future as they neared their 60th birthdays. And perhaps reason to worry just a bit. Each of their fathers had lived to nearly 90, and Michael's mother was still going strong in her late 80s. Linda's mother died after giving birth to her, but she was raised largely by an aunt who lived to 102. It wasn't basic finances that worried them.

The scenario laid out in federal court Friday as insurance executive Kobie T. West pleaded guilty to fraud against the Philadelphia Housing Authority is similar to one laid out in a lawsuit filed against him by the city's largest municipal union. In both cases, West is accused of exploiting small and legitimate changes in insurance costs to gain hundreds of thousands of dollars in misappropriated funds. West, 39, of Deptford, pleaded guilty in the PHA case and agreed to cooperate with a federal investigation into bribes and kickbacks involving public officials, a federal judge said at his hearing Friday.

The 2011 HomeInsurance.com RateReport showed a considerable increase in average 12-month homeowners insurance premiums for new policies in December 2011, the website reported Wednesday. HomeInsurance.com's data represents about 15,000 policies sold across the United States. HomeInsurance.com's RateReport shows 12-month home insurance premiums in December 2011 were $810 nationwide, a 19 percent increase from January 2011, at $682. RateReport shows that on a nationwide basis, homeowners are paying, on average, $128 more per year for new homeowners insurance policies than they were at the beginning of the year.

Health insurers will gain $1 trillion in new revenue over the next eight years under the 2010 health-care law, assuming it is upheld by the Supreme Court, according to a Bloomberg Government study. The amount is equal to about one-half percent of the nation's estimated gross domestic product from 2013 to 2020. Insurers would keep about $174 billion - $22 billion a year - for profit and administrative costs. The money comes from U.S. subsidies to people purchasing insurance beginning in 2014 and an expansion of Medicaid, the government's health program for the poor.

Question: My wife rented a car at the Orlando airport from Budget recently. Even though she said she did not want or need the extra loss-damage waiver insurance, she was informed that her car insurance was "invalid" and that in order to rent the car she needed Florida insurance. She reluctantly accepted the loss-damage waiver. It was on the flight home that she noticed the paperwork stated she did not need the insurance. I contacted Budget and it sent me a form denial, saying, "We have checked our records carefully and find that the LDW or CDW option was offered to you, and you indeed signed the agreement.