Health Insurance

Part Two in an Ongoing Series on Home Winterization

This morning I woke to find a layer of ice on the inside of every window in my house. I opened the front door to find a thoroughly frosted storm door. Again, the frozen water was on the inside. The thermometer read 8 degrees.

While no house is totally impervious to cold weather, mine isn’t even putting up a good fight. The thin, single-pane windows may as well be open. Cracks under doors welcome cold air and let warm air escape. The house is hemorrhaging heat.

Needless to say, I’ve got home winterization on the brain (and some work ahead of me). What about you? Is your house ready for winter?

Winterization is important on a number of levels. The two most basic reasons to fortify your house against cold temps and frozen water are to prevent damage and save money.

According to a figure from the Earthworks Group quoted in MSN Real Estate, “the average American home has leaks that amount to a nine-square-foot hole in the wall.”

Not only does this mean we’re paying to heat the outdoors (a costly effort), we’re also exposing pipes to freezing cold air and letting in moisture.

What to do? The answer is simple...kind of:

Plug leaks

1. Add insulation to thin areas
2. Replace or add storm windows and doors
3. Caulk or spray foam into outside cracks and openings
4. Install gaskets on outside outlets
5. Add weather stripping
6. Remove your AC unit
7. Make sure your dryer vent is free of lint and able to close
8. Seal heating ducts
9. Close curtains and shades at night
10. Clean south-facing windows to maximize solar gain

This list looks overwhelming, I know. If there is one thing, however, that will go the farthest in preventing cold air from infiltrating your abode, it’s storm windows and doors. They will reduce the heat loss from these sources by half.

These sources were crucial in putting together the leak list and offer other helpful winterization tips:

The Home Depot
MSN
About.com

Stay tuned for more tips. Next up: gutters and ducts.

Cutting health-care costs has become something of a national obsession. And rightly so, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the United States spent almost 1.7 trillion on health care in 2003, accounting for 15.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.

Government agencies and insurance companies have concocted several strategies to stall rising costs—HSAs, consumer-driven health care and Medicaid cuts—which is why recent efforts by some states to widen insurance coverage is receiving push back from businesses and insurance companies.

Recently, the mental health insurance bill or mental health parity has been the unlikely star in the Ohio and New Jersey senates. The measure would provide equal health-care coverage for some mental illnesses, which goes against the trend of cutting health-insurance benefits in an effort to cut costs. But it seems the pendulum is swinging away from cost-costing maneuvers, at least on this particular point, as more people are speaking out for the issue.

A little off-the-beaten-path insurance news today:

According to an AP story (made available today on InsuranceJournal.com), a national company that insured Montana's jockeys (and no, I'm not talking about underpants) has dropped coverage on all four of the state's race tracks. The Montana tracks were just four of 19 tracks in the U.S. that lost jockey coverage, said Scot Meader who is the director of the Missoula County Fairgrounds in Montana.

The news has been made especially bittersweet as Montana's governor recently included $350,000 in the state's two-year budget for horse racing.

Even if another insurer stepped in to insure the jockeys, chances are the policy premiums would be much too steep. According to the AP, Meader received one quote from a California insurer who put premiums as high as $8,000 to $10,000 per day, compared with $2,000 per race day for this year. Accident deductibles have also jumped, which hits the Missoula track in a soft spot as they've had "quite a few jockey injuries and claims in the past five years."

Horse racing has been approved for 2006 reports the AP, but the state has yet to make a formal decision about the 2007 racing season; the Missoula County Fair Commission has asked Meader to try and secure another jockey insurance provider.

For now, the four Montana tracks will work together to find a jockey insurance provider. In the meantime, the future of Montana horse racing will hang in the balance. Buck Smith, who is chairman of the fair commission, told the AP that come January, "If we've exhausted every possibility for jockey insurance and there is none, there is no decision to be made."

Race lovers can check out the full story courtesy of IJ, here. (And yes, our statistician Peter D. moonlights as a jockey.)