Insurance

Philadelphia lawyer Randy Maniloff is on a mission to make insurance interesting. Funny, even. And maybe get paid even when he doesn't go to court. The underwriters' lawyer and Oxford University-published textbook author has stepped down from his partnership at White & Williams L.L.P. (though he's still a full-time lawyer "representing dozens of insurance companies" there) to start a cartoon-fronted biweekly online magazine, Coverage Opinions. Maniloff has been giving it away, since the fall, to a subscriber list that has grown past 10,000, which he says is double his target to date.

Question: My wife and I traveled to Las Vegas for a trade show. I decided to use my credit card points to cover my car rental through Dollar Rent a Car. At the car rental desk, I was pressured to take the optional insurance, but I told them I had checked with my insurance agent and that I was covered. After 10 minutes of saying "no," she insisted on making a copy of my credit card. I let her and went on my way. I rented the car for five days, drove a total of 83 miles, and returned the car with a full tank.

Q: If I open a brokerage account and the brokerage goes bankrupt or closes, what happens to my account? - M.W., Lafayette, Ind.   A: Most brokerages carry Securities Investor Protection Corporation insurance, protecting your account for up to $500,000, including up to $250,000 in cash claims. (Many carry additional insurance, too.) This doesn't protect you against a loss in value of your holdings. Instead, it protects against the financial failure of broker-dealers. To ensure that a brokerage is SIPC-protected, check its website for assurance or call it up and ask. Learn more about the SIPC at sipc.org.

Question: A lot of backstory and angst go along with this story, but I'll keep it short: I'm in my 20s, and I got in a car accident in my dad and stepmom's car. I did not borrow the car for fun; I was visiting them from my home a few hours away and needed to pick up prescriptions. Car accident happens - totally my fault, although luckily no one was hurt. I find out the car doesn't have the relevant insurance and no damage is covered. In the heat of the moment I offer to pay, not realizing how expensive the repairs would be. Stepmom wants to hold me to this promise.

A Bucks County chiropractor was found not guilty Friday on charges that he submitted more than $116,000 in fraudulent claims to two insurers. Howard Aaron Bloom, owner and operator of Weathervane Chiropractic, a rehab facility with locations in Ivyland and Southampton, had been charged by state Attorney General Linda Kelly with theft by deception and related offenses for submitting claims under a billing code interpreted by Kelly as requiring one-on-one...

THE FIRE DEPARTMENT sends emergency responders to nearly every 9-1-1 call - without asking whether callers can afford the services. So who pays for that costly ambulance ride and that timely medical attention? If you have insurance - and paramedics correctly record your information - your insurance company does. If you are enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid, the federal government pays a certain amount, but city taxpayers cover the rest. And if you don't have any coverage, you get the bill - but taxpayers sometimes end up paying it. City Controller Alan Butkovitz released a report in March detailing inefficiencies with how the city collects payments for emergency medical services.

D EAR HARRY: I have been a client of one of our large life-insurance companies for as long as I can remember. My husband died in 2005, and I collected the benefit. No one from the company contacted me at that time, even though I was the only breadwinner for myself and my daughter. I finally was contacted in September and signed applications for $25,000 on me with a $10,000 coverage for my daughter. When I got the signed info from the company, I noticed that it had things reversed.

Two federal judges on Friday gave a Mennonite-owned Lancaster County cabinet manufacturer a two-week reprieve from new health-care mandates that the company's owners say would unconstitutionally force them to cover contraceptive services for female workers. After teleconferences with the case lawyers, U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg imposed a temporary restraining order sparing Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. from complying with the women's preventive health-care regulations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Goldberg is presiding over the case and wrote the ruling, but it was signed by District Judge Berle M. Schiller.

A matter of willingness We don't have the willingness to set aside differences and resolve the country's problems for the common good. We don't have the willingness to house the homeless or feed the hungry. We don't have the willingness to set aside bias and accept our neighbors of any ilk. We don't have the willingness to confront racism or hatred when we see it. We don't have the willingness to confront politicians who fail to carry out our wishes. We don't have the willingness to express the most basic courtesies to neighbors and strangers alike.

D EAR HARRY: My father passed away in 2006. At the time of his death, we went over all his papers looking for every possible asset. My mother had vague recollections of a life-insurance policy, but we were unable to find any evidence of it - no policy, no checks to insurance companies, no bills. I even wrote to you about it, but even the sources you cited got us nowhere. This week, a major life-insurance company contacted us saying they had a record of a paid-up policy on his life with my mother as beneficiary.