Florida Insurance Companies | Florida Insurance Groups

Florida Insurance Rates
Florida Insurance Quote

Florida Insurance Company
Florida insurance auto quotes
Florida Insurance homeowners
Florida Insurance health plans

Click on Face to: Pause/Play/Replay

Zip

Policy
Name
Email
Phone
Contact

If you have already used our online quote comparison services and enjoyed the benefits of saving money on your insurance policies, then why not refer us to your friends so that they can start saving money as well.

Let's face it, everyone LOVES to save money! Especially when it only takes just a few minutes to fill out our simple forms to save between 10% to 35% on the cost of insurance.

See our Florida Insurance Industry related news article at the bottom of this page. Our website is updated often to provide you with the latest updated industry news articles from major news sources.

Florida Insurance can offer you, the individual insurance buyer, the most competitive insurance rates available for your car, home, health and life insurance needs. We can offer you the one-on-one personal attention and personal service you deserve when you have any Florida Insurance quote questions.

Florida Insurance will let you get free quotes from major providers servicing Florida. Our service is unbiased. We do not sell insurance personally as we are not a part of any insurance company. We only search for referrals from licensed carriers and licensed agents that operate within your state of residence. Quotes can usually be obtained within minutes of submitting your completed questionnaire over our secure servers. We have been providing the best possible service to our customers for over 8 years.

The Florida Insurance website has been ESTABLISH SINCE 2002. If you find shopping for insurance quotes a bit overwhelming, you’re not alone. Fortunately, we make it easy to get the insurance quotes you need anytime, from the comfort of your own home. Consumers only need to fill out our simple and secure online application, then we match your application with the proper local insurance agents, and within minutes you receive multiple insurance quotes direct from the companies competing for your business.

FLORIDA INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS AND RELATED ARTICLES

Insurance Article - written by By: Sue Schick April 1, 2010 Five Myths About HSAs Don�t let your clients� misconceptions about HSAs prevent them from taking advantage of these valuable plans. The poster child for inaccurate perceptions in the health-care industry is, perhaps, the health savings account found in consumer-directed health plans. It has now been seven years since Congress created health-care reform in the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act in 2003 by allowing employers and individuals to adopt HSAs, but many myths still stifle its growth as a low-cost option for quality health care. Several of the myths that exist about HSAs are built on inaccuracies or misconceptions. Here is the real scoop on this rapidly growing health insurance model: Myth #1. HSA health plans are more expensive. Both employers and employees saved money with HSAs, a recent UnitedHealthcare study showed. The cost per member in the HSA plan decreased 7 percent in 2006 and 9 percent in 2007. Another UnitedHealthcare study showed that plan participants had 22 percent fewer hospital admissions and 14 percent fewer emergency room visits. Myth #2. Only a few people who open HSAs contribute funds to them. Some have criticized the HSA on the conceptual level, postulating that employees will take the high-deductible insurance and then never make contributions to the HSA. But UnitedHealthcare data shows that a majority of individuals, including those at low-income levels, enrolled in an HSA-eligible plan through UnitedHealthcare, contributed their own funds to their accounts and carried over balances the following year. This type of usage shows that people understand how their benefits work and realize the advantages of saving early for future health-care expenses. Employers can facilitate the opening of HSAs by employees by giving them either a one-time or a systematic contribution. In fact, UnitedHealthcare found that when employers contribute to the HSAs, the percentage of employees who actually open accounts improved to 86 percent of those eligible, from a mere 27 percent when no contribution was made. The survey found that about two-thirds of all employers provide funding to employee HSAs. High-deductible plans with an HSA help people not only become more engaged in their health-care decisions but also become more active participants in managing their health-care dollars. Myth #3. People with HSAs are less likely to seek preventive care. The opposite is true. A study by UnitedHealthcare shows that 5 percent more HSA members sought preventive care than a peer group of traditional PPO members. The study found that members with an HSA receive preventive and evidence-based care at rates equivalent to, or higher than, members in non-HSA plans. It also showed that HSA members were 16 percent more likely to get cervical or prostate cancer screenings. Myth #4. Customers in HSAs don�t pay attention to their health. In fact, HSAs help people develop a higher awareness of the cost of care and their ability to participate in health decisions among fellow enrollees. HSA participants are more likely than traditional plan participants to research the cost of prescription drug options, hospitals and physicians. Our studies show that people in HSA plans are: �16 percent more likely to get cervical or prostate cancer screening �20 percent to 40 percent more likely to get important tests for their condition if they are heart patients �15 percent more likely to have important diabetes tests, if they have diabetes. Myth #5: All HSAs are alike. Not all HSA plans are alike. The key difference in HSA high-deductible plans is whether or not the health-care plan has preventive health care, such as annual checkups, pap smears and mammograms as part of the deductible. These routine exams help detect and prevent serious illness, but if they are part of the deductible, employees in the high-deductible plan have to pay for them, up to the high-deductible limit. If they are not part of the deductible, they are covered 100 percent by the health plan. This means that employees are more likely to go to the doctor for these important exams and thus more likely to remain healthy. High-deductible plans with an HSA help people not only become more engaged in their health-care decisions but also become more active participants in managing their health-care dollars. Continuing innovation by health insurers within these types of plans will only drive more interest and savings for employers and their employees. And hopefully, these myths will become a thing of the past. Sue Schick is CEO of UnitedHealthcare�s Pennsylvania region. She can be reached at sue_schick@uhc.com. You can read her blog at www.sueschick.blogspot.com. ******************************************************************************** Insurance Article - written by By: Matt Koppenheffer March 24, 2010 3 Lowlights of Health-Care Reform With health-care reform barreling forward into the law books, many Americans (including yours truly) who wanted to ignore this very important but oh-so-convoluted piece of legislation now have no choice but to take notice. There actually is a lot to like about the bill. There are certainly feel-good elements, like extending coverage to lower-income Americans and prohibiting excluding participants based on pre-existing conditions. And as a buyer of individual coverage, I do like the idea of a national insurance exchange (even if it doesn't come online for a while). But it ain't perfect. Earlier in the week, my fellow Fool Brian Orelli urged investors to look for investment opportunities rather than moan about the bill. That's probably smart advice, but I'm going to complain anyway. Here are three areas where I think this hefty and historic bill falls short: 1. Bye-bye to medical underwriting Whether we're talking about Allstate writing auto insurance or UnitedHealth (NYSE: UNH) pricing health-care policies, the basic process is the same. Insurers gather pertinent information on the party to be insured, and, based on actuarial number-crunching, determine the premiums they're going to charge for the policy. Thanks to the new health bill, insurers are now hamstrung as far as what information they can use to set premiums. Specifically, they're limited to whether the plan covers an individual or family, what state rating area the insured is in, age, and tobacco use. And for the last two, insurers are limited in terms of how much they can increase premiums -- for tobacco, for example, they can't exceed a ratio of 1.5 to 1. Medical underwriting -- that is, underwriting based on medical history and other important health facts -- will be a thing of the past. Why does this matter? It matters because it makes everyone look very similar in the eyes of insurers. It means that two people who are similar in the categories listed above will end up paying similar premiums -- even if one person has been very reckless with their health in other ways. Without the use of medical underwriting, the reckless person will pay less than they should for insurance, while the not-so-reckless person will pay more. Nice use of incentives. While creating stronger incentives for people to keep themselves healthy could hurt companies like Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), and Diageo -- all of their products aren't exactly good for your health -- it's exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing if we want to actually bring down medical costs (more on that below). 2. Thou shalt buy health insurance Maybe it's because I haven't seen the director's cut of The Ten Commandments, but I don't remember buying health insurance being on one of those tablets. Regardless, if you're a U.S. citizen, you'll soon be required to purchase health insurance and prove it at tax time. If you don't, you'll be hit with a nice thanks-for-not-playing penalty of $750 for not having coverage for the entire year. (That level is reached beginning in 2016, after a two-year phase in.) Particularly after the new legislation's reforms kick in (which for the most part is 2014), it may be a pretty good deal for most Americans to buy health insurance. However, someone who is fit as a fiddle and rarely ends up at the doctor may still be better off paying out of pocket. But for their good health, they'll now have to cough up $750 to Uncle Sam. To me, this seems like a government tip 'o the hat to the health-care industry. Requiring individuals to have insurance is a big benefit to health insurers like WellPoint (NYSE: WLP) and Aetna (NYSE: AET), not to mention drugmakers like GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) and Merck (NYSE: MRK). 3. Cost containment called and it wonders why it's not in the bill Back in 2008, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute put out a report titled "The Price of Excess: Identifying waste in health care spending." The report started by highlighting the high level of health care spending in the U.S., the low comparative results, and the poor perception of the U.S. system. The report suggested that up to an amazing $1.2 trillion per year, or more than 50% of all health-care spending, could be attributed to wasteful spending. It then broke down that wasteful spending into three areas: behavioral (individual behaviors such as obesity and non-adherence to drug regimens), operational (inefficient administrative and other processing costs), and clinical (practitioner issues, largely the practice of defensive medicine). While the bill takes half-hearted stabs at a few of these areas, cost containment is clearly an afterthought rather than the thrust. And in the end, that may be the biggest disappointment of all when it comes to this supposedly huge step forward in health-care legislation. Personally, I do like the idea that more Americans will now be insured (and that actually can help lower costs), but in the coming years, one of the country's biggest challenges will be the unbridled growth of our health-care spending -- particularly if outcomes continue to trail the rest of the world. That's just my opinion. What do you think? Scroll down to the comments section and share your thoughts on the reform. If only there were a Warren Buffett of health care. ... Oh well, at least we have his great investing insights. Love this article? Get our best articles delivered direct to your inbox at no cost. Sign up for Foolwatch Weekly by entering your email below. Coca-Cola, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint are Motley Fool Inside Value recommendations. UnitedHealth Group is a Stock Advisor pick. Diageo and Coca-Cola are Income Investor picks. The Fool owns shares of GlaxoSmithKline and UnitedHealth. Try any of our Foolish newsletters today, free for 30 days. Fool contributor Matt Koppenheffer owns shares of Coca-Cola and McDonald's, but does not own shares of any of the other companies mentioned. You can check out what Matt is keeping an eye on by visiting his Motley Fool CAPS portfolio, or you can follow Matt on Twitter @KoppTheFool or on his RSS feed. The Fool's disclosure policy assures you no Wookiees were harmed in the making of this article. ******************************************************************************** Insurance Article - written by Barbara Kiviat Monday, Apr. 19, 2010 Can Price Shopping Improve Health Care? American consumerism is a force to be reckoned with. Turn a few hundred million of the world's most sophisticated shoppers loose on an industry, and watch companies scramble after their business. In realms from washing machines to stock trades, quality goes up and price comes down as companies look for an edge over the next guy to win customer dollars. Not in health care. Congress has overhauled the industry, but the revolution has largely been about increasing access to health care, not simplifying it. We are left with the same opaque system of perverse incentives--paying providers for more tests and procedures, not necessarily effective ones. And we lack even the most basic element of the free market: price information. I recently went to a doctor and asked how much my office visit and X-ray would cost. Staffers told me that they didn't know and, since I have insurance, I shouldn't care. (See what health care reform means for you.) I should care, though. In fact, I do. There are many reasons health care costs are spiraling out of control, but the simplest one to understand is this: nobody knows what anything costs. Providers get paid through a tangle of insurance-company agreements and billing schedules that change from patient to patient. No wonder a hospital can sneak a $100 box of Kleenex onto your bill and the price of an MRI can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. If you don't know what something costs, you can't know if it costs too much. There is a bill in Congress that would attempt to fill in the blanks. The Transparency in All Health Care Pricing Act of 2010 would require health care providers--including hospitals, physicians, nurses, pharmacies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, dentists and insurers--to post prices, including on the Internet. Discounts and subsidies would be listed too. "The public will discover what people in health care already understand, that the price of any health care service is whatever they can get," says Representative Steve Kagen, a doctor who ran a practice for 25 years before being elected to Congress. High-deductible health insurance, which shifts greater costs to individuals, already works on the premise that enlisting the price-sensitive American consumer will lead to a more efficient marketplace. When people have skin in the game, they should use health care more prudently. But so far, such efforts have reached only a small portion of the population and have had little measurable impact on health care costs. One reason can be found in New Hampshire, where the government has been posting on a website the cost of 31 common procedures, like ultrasounds and knee surgery, at medical facilities around the state. According to an analysis by New Hampshire's insurance department and the nonpartisan Washington think tank the Center for Studying Health System Change, the range of prices charged by providers hasn't narrowed. But that has less to do with consumer behavior--surgical and imaging centers report an uptick in patients selecting facilities by price--and more to do with the fact that most providers in New Hampshire, a fairly rural state, don't face much competition. There is anecdotal evidence, though, that some high-cost hospitals haven't upped rates as fast because those changes would be quickly and publicly visible. See pictures of Obama signing the Health Care Bill. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1978760,00.html#ixzz0lAqJOdeK ******************************************************************************** Insurance Article - written by By: Anne Rawland Gabriel March 31, 2010 New Policy Admin System Fuels Trust-Based Pay-as-You-Drive Launch Sydney-based Real Insurance is the first to market, worldwide, with trust-based PAYD coverage thanks largely to a new policy admin platform from Exigen Insurance Solutions. Tags: Policy Administration, Pay-as-You-Drive, Real Insurance, Hollard Group, Exigen Insurance Solutions, PAYD, Seeing an opportunity to streamline system modernization, Real Insurance adopted its parent company's policy administration platform. But the P&C carrier quickly realized the error of its ways. "We implemented our corporate parent's legacy solution in early 2006," recalls Markus Strauss, Real's head of IT. "By October it was clear that the solution wouldn't support our long-term needs or our short-term plans." Sydney-based Real, a division of the Hollard Group (Johannesburg; US$2 billion in total assets), wanted to be the first to market, worldwide, with trust-based "pay-as-you-drive" (PAYD) auto insurance, for which customers provided odometer readings rather than relying on a telemetry device, Strauss reports. "Our ability, as a small organization, to develop a next-generation product was a major effort, so we needed a flexible, scalable and proven core systems platform," he explains. By March 2007 37 policy admin options had been winnowed to four finalists. "Only Exigen Insurance Solutions' [San Francisco] Exigen Suite was architected, from the ground up, to be Java-based and to run on open source operating systems," Strauss remarks. "In addition, the philosophical alignment of our two companies cannot be understated. This led to establishing a commercial model of shared risk and reward that is very different from traditional fee-for service." Although Real envisioned all business lines moving onto the new platform, it began with the PAYD product. Ironically, Real's existing hardware-agnostic Microsoft (Redmond, Wash.) Windows Server 2003 and SQL database environment was oversized due to recent investments for its parent's system. "Therefore, we decided to become the [open source] Suite's first Windows/SQL deployment," notes Strauss. "This minimized changes to our infrastructure while giving us the flexibility to move to a Linux/Oracle environment, should we wish to do so in the future." A Global Collaboration The implementation kicked off in October 2007 using the agile development model. Real devoted five employees to the project full time and 10 individuals part-time as well as an outsourced Web development team. The vendor contributed resources from San Francisco, New York, Lithuania and Australia. "With people spread around the world there were issues around keeping the teams aligned," Strauss admits. "However, it was very much a collaborative effort, where we actually helped create our solution rather than just integrate a platform." Trust-based business and regulatory details were fleshed out as the enabling technology was developed. "We had conceptualized the product and incumbent processes, but the [business] specifics were established as we proceeded," says Strauss. "In practice, this meant making compromises to keep the momentum moving forward and then circling back as necessary to address outstanding requirements." Nonetheless, Real accomplished its first-to-market goal, launching PAYD at a critical moment in July 2008. "We introduced PAYD just as the global [financial] crisis hit, when people were looking for ways to minimize expenses," Strauss comments. "As a result, we're running about 15 percent ahead of our original PAYD business plan." There also were unanticipated rewards. "Although electronic document creation and management is bundled with the system, we didn't comprehend the benefit at the beginning," notes Strauss. "But document automation and workflow management have provided unexpected efficiencies that have definitely improved our organizational productivity." Since the initial deployment, Real has added Exigen Insurance Solution's claims module to the installed system and is preparing to migrate the balance of its business lines. "Just the fact that we've adapted a packaged technology solution to our trust-based product, when everything else is telemetry-based, is a testament to the architecture and vision of that solution," emphasizes Strauss. "We're delighted with what the Suite has enabled us to do from a business perspective." CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT Company: Real Insurance (Sydney, Australia), a division of the Hollard Group (Johannesburg; US$2 billion in total assets). Lines of Business: P&C and life. Vendor/Technology: Exigen Insurance Solutions' (San Francisco) Exigen Suite. Challenge: Improve speed to market by replacing legacy system with flexible, modern policy admin platform. ********************************************************************************

		©2002 - 2010 Florida Insurance Quote - All Rights Reserved
		Design by HMJr for Internet Quote Services, LLC