Hi John, the insurance industry must be in bad shape these days... The industry as a whole, is rewriting their contracts and the like.
We received a letter from Chubb indicating our general liability premium is being "Cancelled -or- Premium Change." Unfortunately they neglected to say which one (they didn't check a box) and none of the Chubb agents have been able to figure out what's going on. We've never filed any claim, so my wild guess is they're probably having confusion due to layoffs at their company, assuming they're having layoffs. Meanwhile, we received another letter from them talking about new contract terms. (Our original contract was drawn before 9/11, so it didn't have certain exclusions for biochemical agents.) This new contract implies to me that if we have an Anthrax attack, our business is covered by about 1/500 of the cost - my guess on interpreting the terms. There were many new exclusions, so many that it came in a booklet. After reading the book of exclusions, we're wondering what coverage remains.
It's amazing to see how 9/11 has rewritten the insurance industry. If a company were to have a Anthrax attack, I think it would be way more concerned about people's lives than some General Liability on a bunch of computers and desk.
On another note, since the high-tech industry is so depressed the cost of PCs have dropped so much, meanwhile, the insurance premiums have sky rocketed due to 9/11.
In fact, there's a silver lining in this: nowadays, the cost of an annual General Liability & Umbrella insurance contract is approaching the cost of buying bargain-basement PCs, so why even bother having a policy when you can almost buy new PCs for the same cost? If it weren't for the lab, cubes, desks & chairs, product liability protection, we'd definitely cancel the policy.
We received a letter from Unuum saying they are canceling our long-term disability insurance (this pays income to employees if they ever become disabled). No one at our company has ever been ill and our credit history is very clean, so not sure what's up here. The premium on Unuum is incredibly low. A fraction of the General Liability policy.
Our health care insurance company (LifeGuard) is going out of business. If you have an employee who is in their 50's, their premium cost was $195 for LifeGuard's HMO, but would be $550 for Blue Shield HMO. (Ouch).
Good Samaritan Hospital is having financial troubles to say the least. During one of their strikes awhile ago, an Intel guy went to the hospital with his wife who was ready to deliver and was told to go home because there weren't enough doctors. He argued with them and told them something was wrong with his wife. They told him and her to go. He said there was something wrong again and they told him and her to go. Finally he started shouting at them and he demanded them to check the oxygen level. Finally, they checked the unborn baby. Was getting less than 30% of required oxygen. They did an immediate c-section and said the baby might be brain damaged due to the lack of oxygen. Time would tell, they said. Baby turned out okay, but talk about a close call. The health care in Calif is sub-par.
Another Intel guy (during the boom) was told to go away for a few hours and come back later when he went to the urgent care that's located closest to Intel's headquarters for a broken or dislocated shoulder/collar bone. Oooo, the pain to wait 3 hours. Ouch. He went back to the field where the Intel people were playing on a weekend and just waited there and tried to keep himself distracted. It's painful to watch someone in pain.
The insurance industry is sharing their pain with the high-tech industry.
Regards,
Amy J |
