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"Westhill Consulting - Car Insurance Tips to Help You Buy Smarter Car Insurance Tips to Help You Buy Smarter  It doesn't have to be intimidating; buying auto insurance doesn't have to be stressful. There are many options to customize your policy needs base on your budget. If you are knowledgeable with some basic information you can make smarter insurance decisions. These car insurance tips can help you trim down choices and save time and money. * Make sure you're legally covered From state to state, requirements of car insurance vary but one thing is the same virtually everywhere in the U.S. and it is if you drive a car, you're required to have some form of car insurance or proof of financial responsibility. There are more than few factors such as your driving record and insurance history, may affect your policy rates. You may begin here to find the minimum requirements for your state. * Understand your insurance options Car insurance can sometimes be a bit confusing sometimes; it can be complicated to look at because of many choices available to protect you and your car. For you to understand basics, there are nationwide offers such as the following the difference between collision and comprehensive, before you call an agent or get a quote online. * Get at least three quotes It will help if you get quotes from at least three insurance companies you compare price and service options. It is necessary that you request the same coverage from each to get an apples-to-apples comparison. Rates may differ from one company to another. Remember that not because it is the lowest it is the best because the lowest priced insurance may not give you all the coverage you need. Check for every detail, look at price, amount of coverage, benefits and claims services before you make your decision. * Take advantage of discounts This may surprise you, a number of discounts available to lower you for auto insurance rates. An example is if you insure multiple vehicles

How to Find Affordable Family Health Insurance http://www.westhillinsuranceconsulting.com/blog/how-to-find-affordable-family-health-insurance/ Take advantage of free quotes: Who doesn't like free, it a great price! There are many health insurance websites where you can find lot of sites with free family insurance quotes. You must take advantage of these. Not every policy is going to fit for everyone because every family is different. To know the best one for you and your family, use these quoting tools to gather prices and service offerings. And do not think about it as a waste of time, after all it is a free look into the company. It is free yet well worth the time it takes to fill out the questionnaire or quoting application. Know your priorities: You should know and you must be well aware of all your priorities regarding your health care. Are you satisfied with your current doctor or are you open to find new ones? If you are unsure, sit down and take some time listing of your top five most important things when looking for a new policy or health insurance company. This will help you narrow down exactly what you only need and what your looking for. Ask for help if you need it: It is all known to us that understanding the ins and outs of health insurance policies and coverage could sometimes be very frustrating. This is more common to those who are just new to it. Do not hesitate to ask questions if you need to ask questions, ask your questions to the health insurance company representatives. You can even ask your husband, your wife, your dad, your mom, or even your friends. But if you feel that you are not satisfied with the answers you got, don't be frightened to enlist the help of an insurance broker. They can help you find the best rates available, can explain the inner workings of the policy, and know what places are reputab

The typical cost of health care for a family of four with employer-based insurance this year is $23,215, according to a new report from the Milliman actuarial firm. The bad news first: That amount has more than doubled in the past 10 years. The goodish news: That cost grew just 5.4 percent between 2013 and 2014, the slowest growth rate since Milliman started keeping track in 2002. That $23,215 figure isn't what the employee pays, though. Employers pay about 60 percent of those costs ($13,520), while workers pay the rest through payroll deductions ($5,908) and out-of-pocket costs ($3,787). The employee share of the costs have been rising faster - increasing 73 percent since 2007 - than the employer contribution, which has grown 52 percent over the same period. The Milliman numbers are for family coverage under preferred provider plans, so it excludes the increasing prevalence of consumer-driven health plans, in which employees handle a higher share of the costs. Don't blame the four-year-old Affordable Care Act for these changes, though. Milliman says Obamacare has barely had any impact so far on these large employer plans, but that's about to change. The actuarial firm cites Obamacare's impending excise tax on "Cadillac" plans - valued at at least $27,500 for family coverage starting in 2018 - as a factor that will force employers to scale back health plans. Milliman points to other factors that will push down cost increases. Higher out-of-pocket costs are fueling efforts around health-care price transparency, and that's making consumers become better health-care shoppers. Conversely, an improving economy and an increase in expensive specialty drugs will pressure costs to rise.

Dear Savvy Senior, I just turned 65 and received my Medicare card. I see that the ID number on my card is the same as my Social Security number, and on the back of the card it tells me I need to carry it with me at all times. What can I do to protect myself from identify theft if my purse and Medicare card get stolen? Answer: Many people new to Medicare are surprised to learn that the ID number on their Medicare card is identical to their Social Security number (SSN). After all, we're constantly warned not to carry our SSN around with us, because if it gets lost or stolen, the result could be identity theft. But the Medicare ID is more than an identifier. It's proof of insurance. Beneficiaries need to show their Medicare card at the doctor's office and the hospital in order to have Medicare pay for treatment. Over the years, many consumer advocates, have called for a new form of Medicare identification. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare, also acknowledges the problem, but so far nothing has been done. One of the main reasons is because it would cost an estimated $255 to $317 million to fix it. And that's just the direct cost to the federal government. It doesn't include the expense for physicians and other health care providers to adjust their systems, or the cost to the states. Other government health systems like the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense have already begun using ID numbers that are different from SSNs, but no one knows when Medicare will follow suit. In the meantime, here are some tips offered by various consumer advocate groups that can help keep your Medicare card safe and out of the hands of fraudsters. * For starters, AARP suggests that you simply don't carry your Medicare card at all, because it's not necessary. Most health care providers already have their patients in their electronic systems and know how to bill you.

Wal-Mart endorsed ObamaCare in 2009 and helped drag the bill through U.S. Congress, and so far it hasn't recanted. By holding back economic growth and incomes, perhaps the law is expanding the retailer's customer base. Another plus-at least for management-is that Wal-Mart can jettison its employees into the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the largest U.S. private employer is dropping health benefits for some 30,000 workers, or about 5% of its part-time workforce. Earlier health-plan eligibility triage in 2011 had removed tens of thousands of Wal-Mart workers from the balance sheet, so this latest purge was probably inevitable. Wal-Mart cites its inability to manage higher-than-anticipated health expenses. Perhaps- wasn't ObamaCare supposed to bring those costs down? Obviously the company is also responding rationally to ObamaCare's incentives. With a subsidized government alternative now open for business, and since corporations aren't liable for a penalty for not covering people who work fewer than 30 hours a week on average, cost-control logic says to send such coverage ballast over the side. Other retail and grocery chains including Target, Home Depot and Trader Joe's have already done the same. ObamaCare's critics predicted that such insurance dumping was inevitable, and the only question now is how many and how fast other companies partake of the new all-you-caneat entitlement buffet. Get whatever you like, the bill's on taxpayers. The disruptions will be concentrated in industries with large numbers of low-skilled and low-income workers, like restaurants, hospitality and, yes, retail. The irony is that even as Wal-Mart drops insurance because it is too costly, President Barack Obama is claiming credit for lowering health costs. He boasted the other day that the law gave every U.S. family "a $1,800 tax cut" by supposedly reducing the rate of employer-premium growth. Obama

When investigators suspected that Houston's Riverside General Hospital had filed Medicare claims for patients who weren't treated, they moved to block all payments to the facility. Then politics intervened. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, contacted the federal official who oversees Medicare, Marilyn Tavenner, asking her to back down, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In a June 2012 letter to Ms. Tavenner, Rep. Jackson Lee said blocking payments had put the hospital at financial risk and "jeopardized" patients needing Medicare. Weeks later, Ms. Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, instructed deputies to restore most payments to the hospital even as the agency was cooperating in a criminal investigation of the facility, according to former investigators and documents. "These changes are at the direction of the Administrator and have the highest priority," a Medicare official wrote to investigators. About two months after that order, Riverside's top executive was indicted in a $158 million fraud scheme. The hospital was barred from Medicare this May, and the CEO was convicted in October. What happened at Riverside General Hospital shows how political pressure from medical providers and elected officials can collide with efforts to rein in waste and abuse in the nearly $600 billion, taxpayer-funded Medicare system. More than a dozen former investigators and CMS officials said in interviews that they faced questions from members of Congress about policy changes or punitive action affecting providers or individual doctors.

1. It's Smart to Prepare for a Breach How many data breaches from 2014 can you name? The freshest one in your mind is probably the Sony hack, but there were also attacks on Home Depot, Staples, Dairy Queen, P.F. Chang's the list goes on. Credit.com Co-Founder and Chairman Adam Levin recently wrote about the most important lessons you can learn from the Sony hack, encouraging consumers and companies to prioritize data security and behave with the knowledge that your personal information and correspondence could be exposed at any time. Prepare for the possibility of fraud by monitoring your credit, regularly reviewing account activity and knowing what to do if your personal information has been stolen. Do what you can to strengthen your data security, but know that so much of it is beyond your control, so the best thing you can do is know how to react to a breach. 2. Communication Is Crucial to Getting Debt-Free as a Couple We published several success stories about getting out of debt, but some of the most memorable involved couples working together to conquer their finances. The stories had similar themes: Ellie Kay married her husband without knowing about his $40,000 of consumer debt, and Ja'Net Adams was unaware her husband took out student loans to pay for college. Both families eventually hit breaking points where they realized debt was holding them back, and they needed to make drastic changes to get rid of it. Getting out of debt is never easy, and the more people who are involved, the more complicated it can be. At the same time, having someone to work through the challenges with you can be extremely helpful. Adams' and Kay's stories highlight two crucial elements of getting debt free: staying committed to a plan and remaining open and honest about the process' progress and challenges. Those lessons apply to any personal finance goal, whether you're planning with a family or on your own.

Dear Savvy Senior, I just turned 65 and received my Medicare card. I see that the ID number on my card is the same as my Social Security number, and on the back of the card, it tells me I need to carry it with me at all times. What can I do to protect myself from identify theft if my purse and Medicare card get stolen? Conflicted beneficiary Dear Conflicted, Many people new to Medicare are surprised to learn that the ID number on their Medicare card is identical to their Social Security number (SSN). After all, we're constantly warned not to carry our SSN around with us, because if it gets lost or stolen, the result could be identity theft. But the Medicare ID is more than an identifier. It's proof of insurance. Beneficiaries need to show their Medicare card at the doctor's office and the hospital in order to have Medicare pay for treatment. Over the years, many consumer advocates have called for a new form of Medicare identification. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare, also acknowledges the problem, but so far nothing has been done. One of the main reasons is because it would cost an estimated $255 million to $317 million to fix it. And that's just the direct cost to the federal government. It doesn't include the expense for physicians and other health care providers to adjust their systems or the cost to the states. Other government health systems like the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense have already begun using ID numbers that are different from SSNs, but no one knows when Medicare will follow suit. In the meantime, here are some tips offered by various consumer advocate groups that can help keep your Medicare card safe and out of the hands of fraudsters.