rtf

Penn Treaty Insurance: Death at Last

Well let's be clear. This is a surplus issuse that the PA DOI says PTYA has out in 2025 b/c they refuse yo go out to the various other states and request the proper rate increases to support the book of business.

Now you tell me, should insureds be allowed to under pay for their Long Term Care insurance for how many years, and then the PA DOI throw their hands up and say "well it seems we have a problem that the rate increases we now need seem too high. Let's just liquidate the company and distribute the 1.2 billion in claim reserves to the state guarantee funds and make it their probem."

To me that looks like gross mis-conduct on the PA DOI's part for not regulating the rates better to begin with and more importantly for not going to the other Department's of Ins. now and demanding rate action to protect policyholder benefits. The PA DOI is harming the Policyholder and agent in the failure to act.

Policyholders will end up in the state guarantee funds which in some cases will cap their benefits at 100k. While they may be forced to give up substanially better coverage. Many of whom have poor health and will be unable to re-qaulify elsewhere. They would gladly pay the additional premium if given a chance, but the PA DOI has not done so with the other states. And if they have and have been rejected then it raises a serious question as to wether the other state DOI's believe that the surplus hole exisit at all?

The agents loose as well since their vested compensation is wiped out as a result of moving the policyholder to the guarantee fund.

Finally it places the risk on the individuals of the states who had no proir risk, not the policyholders who purchased. Let's just charge the correct premium. They should be fine that. If they don't want to kepp their policy after the rate increase then fine. These plans do not come with a rate guarantee.

U.S. Credit Card Performance Deteriorates - Again

exactly. all of MA's and V's revenues are transactional. If the article was talking about how the recession was impacting charging patterns and not payment patterns then that would mean something...

4 Reasons Why the Visa IPO Excites

interesting comment eviltwin? I didn't know that allocations had been offered yet? I'm a schwab account holder and you can't even put in an expression of interest until the 17th & 18th. What I've gleaned so far is that from reading other articles, and posts is that the offer price is $39.50 and it will probably not be over subscribed based on the size of the offering, but I'm just piecing that together from articles such as this:

biz.yahoo.com/ibd/0803...

Thoughts?