The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are among the world’s top honors for contact center, customer service, business development, and sales professionals. This year’s competition included more than 2,100 nominations from organizations of all sizes across 41 nations and territories. Winners were determined by the average scores of 150 professionals worldwide serving on eight specialized judging committees.

Warren Robbins, Sales Representative at Policygenius, received a Silver Stevie Award for Sales Representative of the Year in recognition of his exceptional sales performance, integrity, and client-first approach. In 2025, Robbins placed the largest policy in company history. One judge praised his work, writing that Robbins demonstrated “impressive accomplishments in his organization and field. Helping [this many individuals] to secure coverage is no small feat and highly commendable.”

Policygenius’s Customer Engagement (CE) team earned a Silver Stevie Award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year. CE agents support clients through the final stages of the life insurance journey, providing guidance with patience, care, and deep expertise. In 2025, the team achieved an average Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 78 — well above the life insurance industry average of 39. Judges described the CE team as “an inspirational story of business success.”

In addition, Policygenius’s CRM, SDR, and Inforce Sales teams received a Bronze Stevie Award for Cross-Functional Sales Collaboration Team of the Year for their work on the Inforce Sales Project. The initiative focuses on unlocking new growth opportunities within Policygenius’s existing customer base. Judges called the project “innovative” and highlighted the “true grit” demonstrated by the teams’ ability to collaborate effectively across functions.

“These awards reflect the dedication, talent, and customer-first mindset of our teams,” said Nicole Buckenmeyer, CLU, Head of Policygenius Agency. “From delivering outstanding service to driving meaningful growth, this recognition underscores our commitment to helping more people get the insurance coverage they need with confidence.”

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are part of the Stevie Awards organization, which hosts nine of the world’s leading business awards programs each year.

About Policygenius

Policygenius is America’s leading online insurance marketplace, helping people compare and buy insurance — including life, homeowners, auto, disability, renters, pet, and umbrella — all in one place. Since launching in 2014, Policygenius has helped millions of Americans get the coverage they need and feel confident in their insurance decisions.

For more information about Policygenius, visit www.policygenius.com.

Media Contact:

Sara Erickson

Associate Director, CRM

Policygenius

press@policygenius.com

Will the trend continue into 2024? Different factors could play a role, says Itzhak Ben-David, professor of finance and academic director of the Ohio State University Center for Real Estate. 

Economic factors like inflation led to higher repair and replacement costs, which impact rates. If inflation returns to normal levels, that may help control insurance rates. On the other hand, state insurance regulations can intervene to cap rates. And insurance markets can also be a factor — when insurance companies stop offering insurance in some areas, that can lead to less competition and higher markets. 

Finally, climate change will continue to put upward pressure on prices, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. 

“The increased frequency and severity of natural disasters due to climate change can raise rates, particularly in high-risk areas,” says Ben-David.

How climate extremes impacted rates in 2023

Florida is experiencing one of the worst home insurance crises in the country. Citizens Property Insurance, the state-run insurance group for Florida residents and businesses that have been denied coverage on the private market, warned in September that the company was only one bad storm away from being forced to assess a “hurricane tax” on its policyholders.

The number of Citizens policyholders has swelled in recent years as private insurance companies limited their coverage or left the state altogether. Insurance companies in Florida have faced massive losses from litigation related to questionable roof repair claims and a string of weather disasters, including the second-costliest disaster ever in Hurricane Ian. 

Similarly, insurance companies are limiting coverage or leaving California, largely because of record losses due to wildfires. California insurers paid a record $15.4 billion in losses in 2017 and $13.6 billion in 2018, setting off a series of steep premium increases in the subsequent years.

Climate-related risks aren’t going away. Warmer temperatures fuel more powerful storms and wildfires alike. Combined with continued development in high-risk areas, future disasters could become even more costly for insurance companies and homeowners. 

“Nationally, property insurers have raised rates and/or withdrawn from offering coverage altogether in areas where they predict continuing large losses, principally due to extreme weather,” says Donald Hornstein, professor of law at the University of North Carolina.

What can regulators do to control rates?

In many states, regulators must approve rate increases. This can help moderate prices, says Ben-David.

On the other hand, letting insurance rates rise to reflect the high risk of a given area could be better in the long run. Otherwise, insurance companies end up subsidizing housing in dangerous areas. In addition, if insurance companies can’t charge high enough rates to make up for losses, they may opt to stop selling in that market.

Regulators can also incentivize consumers to lower their risk.

“Encouraging or mandating measures to reduce risk (like fire-resistant materials in construction) can influence rates,” says Ben-David.

Regulators in California are allowing insurance companies to incorporate new factors into their pricing models, namely the cost of reinsurance, as well as future climate risks. This will allow insurance companies to more accurately price risk. For many customers, that will mean higher prices, but in volatile markets like California, it could also mean more stability for insurance companies. 

Image: Bloomberg Creative / Getty Images

1. Health insurance premiums keep rising

On paper, total compensation for workers increased by 20% from 2000 to 2021. But when you subtract employee contributions to health insurance, family household income increased by only 7%, adjusting for inflation, meaning most of the raises workers have received over the past 20 years has gone toward health insurance, according to an opinion piece published in JAMA Health Forum in March.

Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a co-author of the JAMA piece with Adita Narayan, expects these trends to continue into 2024.

“If anything, we’re likely to see a continued acceleration of health insurance premiums,” he says. “Hospitals have consolidated in most markets, and are now facing higher labor costs.”

Hospitals are passing these costs onto commercial insurance companies. Premiums increased by 7% in 2023.

2. Many families can’t afford deductibles

Even among Americans with health insurance, health care is still unaffordable. The Policygenius 2023 Health Insurance Survey found that 28% of Americans with health insurance wouldn’t be able to pay their deductible immediately, while another 16% said they’d have to borrow money or use credit. These families would have to choose between going into debt or paying for medical care.

“After we pay so much for commercial health insurance, the value of the benefit continues to decline,” Schulman says. “For lower-income employees, (or for mid-level employees), high premiums, deductibles, and cost-sharing price health care services out of reach.”

3. Access to mental health care remains a struggle

Self-reported mental health reached a new low in the wake of the pandemic. In response, the Biden administration has proposed a rule aimed at lowering barriers to getting mental health and substance abuse treatment by requiring health insurers to demonstrate that they’re providing equal access to medical and mental health care.

Comments on the proposed rule closed in October.

“But it typically takes many months — sometimes years — for government agencies to review and respond to public comments, and to finalize proposed rules,” says Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. “That may happen at some point in 2024.”

But, Appelbaum says, whether the rules actually improve access depends on how assertively they’re enforced.

“No enforcement, no change,” he says.

4. Consumers face aggressive sales for junk health insurance

Millions of people lost their Medicaid coverage this year, and a secret shopper study conducted by researchers at Georgetown University finds that many of them may be sold “limited benefit” health plans, or what President Joe Biden calls “junk insurance.”

These plans cover fewer services than traditional Obamacare plans, and have more restrictions.

As with mental health care, the Biden administration is finalizing a rule to address the issue. It would limit short-term plans to a maximum duration of four months and require clearer disclosure that they aren’t the same as comprehensive health plans.

5. The definition of ‘medically necessary’ is getting more strict

Research published in the Iowa Law Review documented how many health insurers are adopting more black-and-white, technical rules for what they’ll cover, with the end result being that your coverage is less generous. 

ProPublica in 2023 documented other ways health insurance companies have made it easier for themselves to say no to patients, sometimes breaking the law to do so.

Image: Catherine Falls Commercial / Getty Images

Sometimes drivers — and regulators — don’t like how insurers use these variables. California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania ban the use of gender in setting car insurance rates. But these bans can have unintended consequences.

The consequences of banning pricing variables

Car insurance rates are 6% higher on average for male drivers than female drivers of the same age, according to Policygenius data. 

Cost of full-coverage car insurance.

Women pay less because men tend to get into more car accidents and make more insurance claims. If regulators ban insurance companies from pricing based on gender, as they did in the six states mentioned above, the result is that women essentially get a price hike because they’ve been lumped in with a riskier group of drivers (men), even though they’re less likely to get into an accident. 

Dave Cather, clinical professor at Penn State and author of a new paper published in Risk Management and Insurance Review that explains how banning forms of price discrimination to protect some customers can lead to unfair outcomes for other customers, says young women face potentially the biggest price increases.

“That’s where the data indicates there’s the biggest difference between high-risk male and low-risk (female drivers),” Cather says.

As a result, young women may end up reducing their coverage or going without car insurance altogether because of the cost. 

Is there a fair way to price auto insurance?

Insurance companies have a difficult balance to achieve: One one hand, they want to charge the right price for each customer, and all those variables, including gender, help them determine how risky each person is. 

On the other hand, they don’t want to be accused of unfairly discriminating against protected classes. One way they can determine risk based purely on driving behavior is through telematics programs, which track your driving data, like how fast you go and how hard you brake. These programs, branded under company-specific names like Drivewise or Snapshot, can save drivers money — about $332 a year — but only if you actually drive safely. 

“Telematics gives you the ability to measure the true causes of auto accidents in a cost-effective way,” Cather says.

Most leading insurance companies offer a telematics product, and they’ve become increasingly popular, with customer participation doubling since 2016. Still, that amounts to only 17% of auto insurance customers. Cather attributes the slow takeup to privacy concerns.

“I also think there’s a lot of people who are interested in it but they’re not so dissatisfied with what they’re paying now,” he says.

But that may change with many drivers facing steep rate hikes thanks to inflation and supply chain disruptions. 

Reducing discrimination in life insurance

Unlike auto insurance, there’s no “silver bullet” solution to weeding out factors like gender in life insurance. 

“If you take a look at what gender is being used to measure in life insurance, it’s a bunch of stuff that’s really hard to measure,” Cather says.

Women tend to live longer than men, and men are at greater risk for factors like work stress, substance abuse, and lack of exercise. Some life insurance companies have tried encouraging tracking similar to that used in car insurance, for example by having customers share how many miles they run each week, but these programs haven’t caught on.

Genetic testing may allow life insurance companies to accurately measure mortality risk without relying on factors like gender, but some states have banned its use in insurance underwriting. 

Even with bans on certain factors, insurance companies can find other ways to price risk and still make money.

“It’s not like their hands are tied behind their backs,” Cather says, though he acknowledged that finding other ways to price risk could be costly. “They just have to develop other types of pricing data or rely on their models to change the weighting of how important the remaining pricing variables are if you take out gender.”

Image: Ryan McVay / Getty Images

How a long-term care information campaign affected insurance coverage

The study, published in the Journal of Health Economics, looked at the effects of the “Own Your Future” campaign, which encouraged Americans to plan for their long-term care needs.

A partnership of federal and local governments ran the campaign in three to seven states each year from 2005 to 2010 in a total of 26 states. The campaign highlighted the fact that Medicare does not cover extended long-term care and suggested alternatives, like:

• Modifying your home so you can say in it longer when you age

• Making plans with family and friends for future caregiving

• Eating healthy and exercising to prevent disability

• Purchasing long-term care insurance

The campaign’s effect was to increase the long-term care insurance coverage rate in the targeted states from 13% to 14% among individuals 50 or older. Long-term care insurance is most beneficial for people with more assets to protect. Among the top 20% by wealth, coverage increased by four percentage points, up from a 24% coverage rate.

The study estimates that this increase in private long-term care insurance coverage will lead to a $483 million savings for Medicaid, which, unlike Medicare, does cover long-term care — but only if you spend down your assets.

The results suggest that people weren’t making optimal decisions around long-term care before the campaign, says Jessica H. Brown, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business.

“The fact that they were more likely to purchase LTCI suggests that there are people out there now who would purchase insurance if they knew more about LTCI and their other LTC planning options,” she says.

Jeff Brown, a professor and dean of Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says the study is “consistent with my prior work that the effect would be concentrated in the upper part of the income distribution, as this is the one group for whom buying LTCI makes good financial sense, even after accounting for the impact on Medicaid.”

What people get wrong about long-term care insurance

A survey conducted before the “Own Your Future” campaign found that 80% of individuals believed Medicare would cover at least some of their long-term care expenses. But Medicare only covers nursing home stays for 100 days or less.

Medicaid covers long-term care, but qualifying can be difficult — in most states adults can only make up to 138% of the federal poverty level in income and many states also apply strict asset limits, meaning you’d have to spend down your savings to be eligible .  

Navigating long-term care is complicated and can be unpleasant to think about, which may put some people off from planning for their future needs. 

“You don’t want to think about it, so you just pretend it’s not there, it won’t happen,” Brown says.

But the study shows that once people are forced to think about their long-term health, they’re more likely to plan ahead. The consequences of failing to do so go beyond finances. Research shows that nursing homes that have more Medicaid recipients tend to have lower quality of care.

Could this campaign work today? 

Long-term care has changed since 2010, and one recent report described the long-term care insurance market as a “crisis” because insurance plans offered policies at rates that were too low to recoup their eventual costs.

As a result, many companies stopped selling policies altogether, while others have raised rates significantly. Some states have considered launching their own long-term care insurance programs in response, but Brown says the study suggests a lighter touch can also get more people to plan for their future needs. 

The study found that the “Own Your Future” campaign also led to an increase in life insurance coverage, a sign that the campaign encouraged people to plan for the future in general, not just for their long-term care needs. In July, Washington became the first state to launch its own long-term care insurance program, but it received opposition from residents, businesses, and Republicans. In comparison, Brown found the information campaign led to big Medicaid savings for relatively little cost.

“Looking at the campaign and how it was run and what aspects made it successful could be really useful for policymakers today,” she says.

Image: The Good Brigade / Getty Images

“Immigrants who enter this country should not further saddle our health care system, and subsequently American taxpayers, with higher costs,” he said.type: embedded-entry-inline id: VWriOb1yvOI4AQwb0ioYm 

But a new study published in JAMA Network Open in September finds that when immigrants receive public health insurance, their medical spending is less than half that of similar U.S.-born adults. 

How Medicaid expansion affected immigrants

The authors of the study used data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which includes  individuals’ total medical care expenses, including out-of-pocket costs. They looked at data from the years 2011 to 2019, during which the Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand Medicaid to all residents making below 138% of the federal poverty level.

The study specifically looked at those who would have been eligible for Medicaid. (Because of this, it doesn’t include undocumented immigrants.) While both U.S.-born and immigrant adults saw similar increases in insurance coverage, health care spending and use increased significantly for the U.S.-born, while the increase for immigrants was negligible. 

One explanation may be that immigrants are healthier than the native-born population. In the study sample of 44,482 individuals, 44% of the U.S.-born adults had a pre-existing chronic condition, compared to 26% of the immigrant sample. Past research shows that healthier people are more likely to immigrate.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 57mu29bRuZLre0Goh1EFeV 

Another reason immigrants spend less is that they may avoid traditional health care, says Neeraj Kaushal, a professor of social policy at Columbia University, and a co-author of the study with Felix Muchomba, an assistant professor of social work at Rutgers University. 

“Especially for our study, which was conducted during the Trump years, that could be a factor, the fear that if they use health insurance, their visa could be jeopardized or their immigration status could be jeopardized,” Kaushal says.

Instead, immigrants may seek cheaper alternate forms of care, which may include unlicensed “underground doctors” or homeopathic cures, Kaushal says. 

Whatever the reason, the study contradicts Trump’s claim that immigrants saddle the health care system with higher costs, Kaushal says. Instead, it shows that impediments to immigrants’ access to health care should be minimized or removed.

“We know that the cost of health care to them is less and they underutilize health care,” Kaushal says.

Leighton Ku, a professor and director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, says the study is consistent with other research that finds that immigrants use less health care and have lower health care expenditures than similar people who are native-born citizens. Because of this, the cost of expanding coverage to them is relatively low.

“This appears to be true for both undocumented and lawfully admitted immigrants, although data about legal status can be problematic,” Ku says.

Why immigrants avoid health care

Immigrants have had to navigate shifting policies when it comes to health insurance. President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s immigrant health policies shortly after taking office, but researchers have found many immigrants are still reluctant to sign up for Medicaid.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 6ruwECeKWhMX2IbpYTK9Gy 

Immigrants may be fearful that using health care will jeopardize their immigration status. If the federal government determines you’re dependent on the state — also known as being a “public charge” — it can keep you from becoming a lawful permanent resident.type: embedded-entry-inline id: n3EhCcyrTqxtkD0KiRC2a 

States have also gone back and forth: After launching a state-funded health insurance program for immigrants in 2020, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker this year paused enrollment, citing high costs.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 3MDTjeYCQMC1XalsimJdvg

The mix of laws creates confusion.

“Covering more immigrants is relatively low-cost, which is why some states like California or others have opted to provide coverage,” Ku says. “But there are still legal barriers because of complicated policy issues that concern how the U.S. views and treats immigrants, including many with lawful status as well as those who are undocumented.”

The government and civil rights organizations have a role to play in creating awareness that the use of Medicaid is no longer included in public-charge considerations, as it was under Trump, Kaushal says. Immigrants shouldn’t be afraid of seeking health care, she says.

“If you have an accident or are unhealthy or get sick, you need health care,” Kaushal says. “If immigrants are underutilizing it even if they have health insurance, that’s a serious thing.”

Image: Maskot / Getty Images

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which measures single-family home prices, rose 2.6% from the previous year in August, reaching the highest level since the index began in 1987.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 31hGqNmdRZIVtfsjajITzL Rising mortgage rates have reduced demand for homes.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2MzXtCmCvC5pkEbHLY1mWg They’ve also sidelined sellers, who don’t want to lose their current low mortgage rates. 

Purchases by first-time buyers made up just 26% of sales in 2022, the lowest share on record.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 25TT9PIPOpCeJVIT0O3J7v The state of the market has made home ownership increasingly unattainable for all but the most privileged.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 7k0txTtuSFd7Owytck8NHH With home insurance prices continuing to go up, so too are homeownership costs.

Why home insurance prices are rising

Home insurance policy premiums rose by an average of 21% at renewal from May 2022 to May 2023 according to the Policygenius Home Insurance Pricing Report. Insurers paid out $99 billion in claims to homeowners in 2022, and since 2017 have faced four of the 10 most expensive years for losses ever amid an uptick in costly disasters. To make up financial ground, insurers now seem to be passing a large chunk of these losses onto their customers. 

These increases are expected to continue due to growing risk from wildfire, wind, and flood damage. More than 39 million properties — 27% of the total properties in the continental U.S. — are at risk of higher insurance premiums or losing their coverage due to climate risk.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 6CncNyTgTL0bhkSBtCBrmN 

“This has been an ongoing set of horrible years, especially because of disaster risk,” says Benjamin Collier, associate professor of risk management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. 

Home insurance prices reflect the cost of repairing damaged homes. Those costs are rising in many areas, causing home insurers to re-evaluate their risks and increase prices. 

Insurance companies have raised prices or reduced their presence most prominently in states with the most homes at risk of damage from natural disasters, like California, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. But disaster risk is increasing all over the U.S.

“We shouldn’t be thinking of a small set of states being prone to disasters and other states being free of that risk,” Collier says.

When a housing crisis and an insurance crisis meet

Mortgage lenders require borrowers to pay for home insurance throughout the life of the loan. This protects both borrower and lender from major financial loss in the event the house is destroyed by a disaster. 

That means if someone can’t get home insurance coverage, they won’t be able to get a mortgage either. And if they lose home insurance coverage and can’t secure a replacement policy within the specified timeframe, their lender could purchase costly “forced-place” insurance on their behalf and require the borrower to pay it for it as part of their monthly mortgage payment. If the borrower isn’t able to afford these higher payments, they could default on their mortgage. This could put homeownership out of reach for even more people, especially if mortgage lenders look at whether borrowers can afford insurance.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 3iJAyqoVMmgwqS2GujXlLI 

“Historically mortgage lenders would evaluate your monthly debt payments like your auto loans and whatever else relative to income,” Collier says. “Now insurance is playing an increasingly important role.”

High insurance costs may also keep developers from building new affordable housing. In Louisiana, developers have said the high cost of premiums has made affordable housing projects less viable. type: embedded-entry-inline id: B3Oa3ogll9XK0J5EnMJuF

Builders of affordable housing get federal or local subsidies, often in the form of tax credits, in exchange for a guarantee that they’ll rent out apartments at below-market rates. But if their costs go up and they can’t raise rents to make up for it, building affordable housing becomes less attractive unless the government provides bigger subsidies, says Gary Painter, academic director of the Real Estate Center at the University of Cincinnati. 

In the housing market at large, higher insurance costs could cause the number of new builds to decline, at least in the short term. 

“It is a blip that will reduce housing starts, just like if you had an increase in construction costs,” Painter says, though he expects the market to adjust over time.

What can policymakers do about the insurance crisis?

In the long run, it may actually be worthwhile to let insurance companies charge more. In many states, insurance regulators control how high rates can rise from one year to the next.

If insurance companies don’t feel they can make enough money from premiums to make up for their expected losses, they may decide to leave the market altogether, as seen in California. When homeowners can’t get insurance from the private market, they end up with state-backed insurance coverage, like California’s FAIR plan. 

Eventually, only the riskiest properties end up covered by the state plan, so it ends up being really expensive. That can cause problems: The state ends up insuring properties in places where there probably shouldn’t be any development at all because the risk is so high, and if there is a disaster, the state and its taxpayers may end up bearing the cost. 

“It’s subsidizing development in areas that are at high risk of disaster,” Painter says.

Letting insurance prices rise to reflect rising risks may help encourage development in safer areas in the long run. This is the approach the Federal Emergency Management Agency is taking with its updated method for calculating flood insurance rates, which is ultimately raising prices for many policies.

In the future, rather than subsidizing households based purely on their risk, it may make more sense to target the most economically vulnerable people. After a disaster, higher-income households tend to be more resilient, Collier says.

“The high income people are more likely to have insurance, they’re more likely to have access to credit if they need it, they’re more likely to receive federal disaster loans, they’re more likely to get a FEMA grant,” he says.

If policymakers want to help people struggling with housing costs and disaster risks, thinking about who has the ability to pay, Collier says, “can make some really meaningful improvement on recovery outcomes for a big set of Americans.” 

Image: Westend61 / Getty Images

“The impact on risk perception goes beyond the destruction of property, but also toward health,” says Swarup Joshi, an assistant professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University and one of the authors of the study.

The study adds to the evidence that when people experience natural disasters, they’re more aware of risk — not just to their homes and property, but to their own health — and that they’re more likely to act to protect themselves.

How natural disasters affect how you think about risk

The new study, co-authored by Stephen Barnes and Dek Terrell, shows that when a disaster happens, people don’t just change how they feel about the risk to their property — their perception of health risks also changes, Joshi says.

The authors used survey data from 2007 and 2009, which came in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Gustav in 2008. The surveys asked whether people had health insurance coverage and whether they were affected by the disasters. 

The study shows that exposure to hurricanes increased health insurance take-up rates by almost 3%. The impact mainly came from people getting employer-sponsored health insurance. There was also a drop in Medicaid coverage, but it was eclipsed by the number of people getting insurance overall.

This could just be a sign that the labor market improves after a natural disaster, but even comparing places with similar job market conditions, more people got health insurance in the areas affected by a hurricane.

The increase was especially high among Black people, who were 5% more likely to get health insurance after a hurricane. In general, disadvantaged groups increased health insurance coverage more than average after a natural disaster. 

What this means for disaster response

Government-provided aid after a disaster is strongly correlated with an increase in health insurance government-provided aid after a disaster, Joshi says, showing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has a big role to play in helping people get back on their feet.

In addition, if policymakers want to sign more people up for health insurance, people seem more open to getting coverage after a disaster. In a world where the federal government spends billions of dollars incentivizing people to sign up for health insurance, it could be an opportunity.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 3Yl5xgFAmczgMVOvFNLnf6

“Here we have found a situation where people’s risk perception has changed,” Joshi says.

Image: Bloomberg Creative / Getty Images

Natural disasters have put pressure on homeowners insurance companies across the country. Home insurance premiums increased by an average of 21% at renewal from May 2022 to May 2023, according to the 2023 Policygenius Home Insurance Pricing Report. Over that period, they rose 19% in North Carolina, but within each state, areas that face more extreme weather conditions are at greater risk of higher increases. Brenda Wells, a professor and director of the risk management and insurance program at East Carolina University, says her premium increased by almost 50% when her homeowners insurance renewed in February.

“That hurt,” she says. “The homeowners market in North Carolina is definitely changing, and it is not changing in a way that most consumers are going to like. Rates are only going to go up from here.”

Why home insurance companies are pulling back

Extreme weather is becoming more frequent. There were almost twice as many climate or weather events from 2010 to 2019 (131) that exceeded $1 billion in damage as there were in the previous decade (67), and the pace of these events continues to increase.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 3pLaCuhAy6HE2tyBq0hc1U Insurance companies have raised rates in response, and in the most disaster-prone states, like Florida and California, they have stopped taking on new customers or gone out of business. They have also raised premiums in response to economic factors like inflation, supply chain issues, and labor shortages, which have raised home rebuilding costs.

“We may ultimately have a severe homeowners insurance market crisis on our hands,” Wells says. “I hope we don’t, but I’m bracing for the worst.”

What homeowners can do

Unlike in California and Florida, states like North Carolina still have plenty of options for coverage. Wells advises homeowners to shop around if they’ve been dropped from their policy. Using your declarations page, a quick summary of your policy coverages and amounts, is an effective way to compare what other carriers might charge for the same amount of coverage. But be prepared for higher rates and higher deductibles than you had before, especially related to wind and hail damage, Wells says. 

“The days of a $1,000 deductible on a $500,000 house are history,” she says. “You’re looking at a minimum 1% of the total policy limit. So if you have a house insured for $300,000, your deductible will be a minimum of $3,000, and 2% to 5% is becoming more common every day.”

Homeowners insurance companies also offer discounts if you bundle your home and auto insurance through the same company or if you install protective devices in your home. If you can’t find an insurance company on your own, try a marketplace like Policygenius or a local independent insurance agent who knows what options are available where you live. If all else fails, consider surplus lines insurance, which is offered by carriers that specialize in covering high-risk properties, or a Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan, a type of last-resort coverage offered by certain states.

Image: Bloomberg Creative / Getty Images

But going without insurance is a serious gamble; not only are you leaving your property unprotected, you’re leaving yourself on the hook for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars if you are found liable for damage to someone else or their property. 

So why are people going without insurance?

According to Robert Hartwig, a professor of risk management and insurance at the University of South Carolina, insurance costs are going up for a reason — actually a few. 

Inflation is a driving factor for both home and auto coverage, but homeowners are being impacted by the increased frequency and severity of catastrophic events like wildfires and hurricanes (which are only going to get more frequent as the effects of climate change worse).type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2rctqe36lJO14oWhfHE5z6 He also states that many homeowners are choosing to move to areas that are especially vulnerable to natural disaster risks, which can increase the cost of home insurance. 

For auto insurance, price increases are also caused by expensive vehicle technologies driving vehicle repair costs and an increase in the number of claims. But expensive insurance rates are leading some people to skip coverage altogether.

“Lower income homeowners [may] not be compelled to purchase homeowners insurance coverage because they own their home outright and they may feel that the family’s limited resources are better spent on necessities.” says Hartwig. 

But that isn’t the only reason people might choose to go without insurance. In fact, for some people, it’s the opposite. According to Hartwig, “Others may simply not have an accurate understanding of the risks they face. Higher income households may feel they have the resources to retain any repair and rebuilding costs they may incur.” 

How bad are the insurance price increases?

Like everything else, the cost of home and auto insurance has increased over the last few years. However, insurance rate increases have significantly outpaced inflation.

NPR reports that auto insurance costs jumped more than 19% in the last year, while overall inflation was only 3.7%.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2Kt56RV1b9nlLSDu7WwTa9 The increase in home insurance costs is even worse; according to CNN, dwelling rebuilding and replacement costs went up 55% between 2019 and 2022, and reinsurance rates have gone up between 30% and 40% due to higher than average losses several years in a row.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 4B6XLfL17pjFZMmimIS4CF 

These price increases are being passed along to the customer, driving up prices at a time when few people can afford the additional cost, which is pushing many people to go without insurance altogether.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 4OXkfmXAhOUDPVzCnc2R0c

The risks of driving without auto insurance

Auto insurance is required by law in almost every state but even still, one out of every eight drivers chose to go without insurance, a 2019 Policygenius survey found. This was true even before the current levels of inflation, with upwards of 25% of drivers in some states choosing to go without auto insurance. 

And as the cost of insurance continues to climb, the percentage of people driving without insurance is likely to keep going up, too. A 2023 Policygenius survey of nearly 3,000 drivers found that 17% of drivers under the age of 34 had gone without auto insurance in the past year, while another 28% have seriously considered it as a possibility. 

Additionally, 43% of U.S. drivers reported paying more for car insurance in April of 2023 than at the same time the previous year, which isn’t surprising since the cost of cars and car parts rose significantly from 2020 to 2022 and the average inflation rate was 8%.type: embedded-entry-inline id: FBdH64lUx3KQjyMp2bTuP 

What happens if you leave your home uninsured

It isn’t just drivers going without insurance; 12% of homeowners are also uninsured, according to the Insurance Information Institute.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 4TiR2sSpUPZOW39J2cNFWk 

For some people, the increased cost of home insurance is enough for them to take the risk of paying for damages out of pocket, especially if they no longer have a mortgage. Others may have had their coverage canceled by their insurer and simply decided not to go looking for a new policy yet.

The increase in natural disasters in many areas has led some insurers to stop writing new home insurance policies in certain states, or even pull out of some insurance markets completely. For example, Farmers Insurance, Bankers Insurance, Centauri Insurance, and Lexington Insurance have all withdrawn from the homeowners insurance market in Florida, while more than a dozen property and casualty insurance companies have gone insolvent or pulled out of the Louisiana insurance market.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 3KNto3mUYdfJgMPyTsbtNrtype: embedded-entry-inline id: 3zZ3sMmx8lsv83B4TFLI16 

And it’s not just Gulf Coast states that are losing insurance companies due to natural disasters. The increase in California wildfires has contributed to both State Farm and Allstate pausing all new homeowners insurance business in the state.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 5VztweF1mODCGZEnNSncpz

Where you live matters

Both home and auto insurance rates are based on a number of factors, including where you live. Insurance rates take your location into consideration because claims are impacted by things like crime statistics, property value, and weather-related damages. 

Because of this, residents of states that have more natural disasters, like hurricanes and wildfires, pay higher rates for home and auto insurance.

For example, hurricane-ravaged states like Florida and Louisiana have the highest auto insurance rates in the country, while Oklahoma and Nebraska have the highest rates for homeowners coverage, due in large part to their location in tornado alley.

How to save money on home and auto insurance

Most people don’t want to be uninsured, but the increased costs have pushed property insurance out of reach for many Americans. For people who want to insure their home and their vehicles but don’t think they can afford it, there are still ways to keep insurance costs low.

For people who have both home and auto insurance, bundling those insurance policies together can provide a discount and raising deductibles on one or both policies can also help reduce insurance rates. And no matter what type of coverage you have, comparing quotes from multiple companies is the best way to make sure you get the best possible rate.

Image: Boy Anupong / Getty Images

The problem is that Citizens isn’t financially equipped to take on that much risk. If a bad storm hits the state and Citizens doesn’t have enough money to pay out claims, the state requires them to charge an assessment that could potentially hit every home or auto insurance policyholder in the state — even those without Citizens policies. Here’s what to expect from a possible assessment, which critics are calling a hurricane tax.

What it would take to trigger a ‘hurricane tax’

Citizens policies fall into three buckets: coastal, personal lines, and commercial lines. The lines are each financially independent of one another. If any line experiences a deficit, Citizens is required to charge an assessment.

Personal lines are responsible for most of the growth Citizens has experienced the past few years, says Charles Nyce, a professor of risk management and insurance at Florida State University. After the 2022 hurricane season drained almost $1.2 billion from the personal lines account surplus, Citizens started this year with just a $420 million surplus. 

“When that balance hits zero, they will need to do an assessment,” Nyce says.

While the damage from Hurricane Idalia was relatively limited because it made landfall in a less populated area, Nyce believes the next “halfway decent-sized storm” will trigger an assessment. There’s still time for that storm this year — the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season runs until Nov. 30.

How much will it cost?

If the personal lines account has a deficit, Citizens policyholders could be charged up to 15% of their total premium ($150 on annual premium of $1,000). If that doesn’t cover the deficit, Citizens can assess a fee of up to 2% of premium on every property and casualty policy sold in Florida, except for workers’ compensation and medical malpractice policies. If an assessment is necessary, it’s likely that Citizens will use bonds to pay off the deficit and then use assessments to repay them over time, Nyce says.

The assessment may come as a shock to many Florida residents.

“I don’t believe most Floridians understand that these assessments can be done,” Nyce says. 

The previous, and only other, assessment charged to policyholders came after the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005. 

What Florida policyholders can do

No one has more at stake here than Citizens policyholders. To hedge against a possible assessment, Nyce suggests looking for coverage in the private market. 

Citizens is required to try to find private coverage for its policyholders. But the private insurance market in Florida is in the midst of an affordability and availability crisis, with premiums rising faster than in any other state according to the Policygenius Home Insurance Pricing Report, and many insurers becoming insolvent or pulling out of the state. If finding private coverage isn’t an option, Nyce says, start saving money for an assessment, which will likely come over the next year.

“It is likely to be less than 15% of your premium, unless it is a big storm,” he says. “A large storm could trigger a full 15% assessment.”

Nyce expects recent legislation to address fraud in the property insurance market to stabilize the private market, but it will likely take time. 

Image: Bloomberg Creative / Getty Images

Life insurance companies evaluate your health information when determining your overall risk and deciding how much you’ll pay for coverage. This underwriting process typically includes a medical exam and a review of your medical records, which can include genetic tests.

What laws govern the use of genetic information?

The federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, passed in 2008, restricts the use of genetic information, but only for health insurance, not for life insurance underwriting.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 6cgvuhGIqSLyYBblXe6Tav In the absence of a federal regulation, some state legislatures have written their own laws to prohibit life insurers from using genetic information in underwriting.

The restrictions vary based on the state, says Patricia Born, a professor of risk management and insurance at Florida State University who's researched how genetic tests are used in life insurance underwriting. Many of them apply only to direct-to-consumer tests, like those you’d get from AncestryDNA or 23andMe. However, insurers are permitted to underwrite treatment for a medical condition that was unearthed by genetic testing. For example, if your doctor orders a genetic test to determine your risk of breast cancer and you receive treatment as a result, your life insurance company can use that information.

Genetic testing & adverse selection

Genetic tests create what’s known as an adverse selection problem for life insurance companies. The idea here is that  people who are likely to cost the life insurance company more money because of health or lifestyle risks — risks the life insurance company isn’t privy to —  are also the most likely people to buy life insurance. Imagine you take a genetic test that tells you you’re going to die in five years. If you buy life insurance and the insurance company can’t see the results of your test, they’re going to lose money on your policy. 

“If an applicant knows they have a likelihood of dying prematurely and they don’t have to disclose that to the insurance company, it creates a situation called adverse selection, where the insurance companies may accept people for life insurance at a rate that’s not adequate, because the individual is going to die sooner than they expected,” Born says.

If this scenario becomes more common, it would be natural for insurance companies to raise their prices to make up for their losses from all the people applying who know they’re going to die soon, she says. Insurance companies try to collect information on their customers’ health and other factors to get a better idea of that likelihood.

How genetic testing affects life insurance customers

So is it risky for consumers to take genetic tests? When it comes to direct-to-consumer tests, there is a chance that the results could end up in the hands of a life insurance underwriter, especially if you don’t live in a state that restricts how life insurance companies can use information from DNA tests. But if a doctor orders a genetic test, both you and your life insurance company could benefit.

“If people are taking these tests and getting treated, maybe they’ll live as long as they should or longer because they’re getting appropriate treatment,” Born says.

Genetic tests represent only a fraction of the factors that life insurance companies are likely to consider. When it comes to how much you pay for life insurance, things like your gender, age, and whether or not you smoke will probably have the same if not more weight than, say, a genetic test that says you have a 10% chance of contracting breast cancer. Life insurance companies have plenty of other ways of predicting mortality — it’s their whole business.

Image: Getty Images

Medicaid enrollment grew by more than 20 million people from February 2020 through March 2023 because of an emergency measure that kept states from dropping people from the government-run health insurance plan. The measure ended this year.

With millions of people shopping for new coverage, a secret shopper study conducted by researchers at Georgetown University finds that many of them may be sold “limited benefit” health plans, or, as President Joe Biden refers to them, “junk insurance.” These plans, which include short-term health plans, and health care sharing ministries, are often marketed as a cheaper alternative to full-fledged health insurance. But they’re not subject to the same regulations, don’t cover as many services, can charge higher premiums based on pre-existing conditions, and can impose limits on how much they cover. 

A concerning situation for consumers

The researchers posed as one of two hypothetical health insurance shoppers: Terri, a healthy 22-year-old, and Lorraine, a 36-year-old with high cholesterol. Both women live in Texas, are due to lose Medicaid, earn $25,000 a year, and have a 2-year-old daughter who is still eligible for Medicaid.

Terri and Lorraine are eligible for subsidies that would allow them to buy comprehensive plans from the federal health insurance marketplace with $0 premiums that cover 94% of the cost of covered benefits, including plans with no deductibles. The researchers used Google to search for terms that someone losing Medicaid might use, like “cheap health insurance,” “Obamacare plans,” “ACA enroll,” and “HealthCare.gov.” 

They picked the top three results for each search, including advertisements, and entered the information for Terri and Lorraine. Finally, the researchers had 20 conversations with representatives from the websites — 10 in which they posed as Terri and 10 in which they posed as Lorraine.

The study found that the top search results were for websites that connected shoppers with sales representatives selling limited benefit products, rather than the Affordable Care Act marketplace. They encountered aggressive sales tactics — one researcher received 100 voicemails in a week, Schwab says. None of the 20 representatives mentioned that Terri or Lorraine qualified for marketplace plans with $0 premium silver plans, including $0 premium plans with no deductible, and they frequently downplayed the shortcomings of the limited benefit products they were selling.

This is a concern, since consumers could lose out on big savings on comprehensive health insurance, says Rachel Schwab, a senior research associate at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University who has served as consultant for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and a co-author of the study. Insurance on the marketplace is as cheap as ever, thanks to expanded subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act.

“If you have that option available and instead you’re being sold a more expensive and worse plan and not being told about this much better option, that’s very concerning from a consumer perspective,” Schwab says.

Regulating ‘junk insurance’

President Biden has vowed to crack down on “junk insurance” by limiting short-term health plans to a maximum of four months (the Trump administration allowed them to last for up to three years) and requiring clearer disclosure that they aren’t the same as comprehensive health insurance plans. The government was accepting public comments on these proposed rules through Sept. 11, but has yet to adopt them. 

Short-term plans are only one kind of limited benefit plan. The Georgetown researchers were offered fixed-indemnity health plans, which pay a predetermined amount for a service, regardless of how much it actually costs. These plans don’t cover the same essential health benefits as comprehensive health insurance, and can exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions. 

Regulators can go further by cracking down on deceptive marketing practices for a wider array of limited benefit plans, and restricting them from being sold during open enrollment periods, Schwab says. Search engines have a role to play too, in ensuring that consumers are led to reputable websites when they’re looking for health insurance.

Limited benefit plans have existed for years, but the opportunity for harm is especially large with so many people losing Medicaid this year, Schwab says. Instead of finding a neutral source of information for where to get coverage, the study shows that many people are being sold plans that won’t provide much financial protection. Good information is vital since health insurance is so complicated. 

“It’s difficult to triangulate through all of the various cost factors,” Schwab says. “You have premiums, you have cost sharing,” which can include deductibles, copays, and coinsurance — plus you have to pick a plan with a network that covers your doctors.

The concerns raised by this study are that consumers may end up with products that don’t offer financial protection, or go without insurance altogether, at a time when enhanced subsidies have made millions of people eligible for free Affordable Care Act plans. 

“We would hope that people would be able to take advantage of that,” Schwab says.

Image: jacobia dahm / Getty Images

Expect higher premiums

“Policyholders whose homes are in these increasingly risky areas can reasonably expect their rates to rise over the coming years,” says W. Ben McCartney, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce.

When setting insurance premiums after a costly storm or wildfire, insurance companies not only have to account for their losses, but they also have to factor in how likely they are to face future losses. As climate change increases the odds of extreme weather, policyholders may have to brace for higher costs, McCartney says.

That’s not welcome news in Florida, which is already in the midst of a home insurance crisis, with many insurance companies opting to limit coverage or leave the state altogether. Premiums there are the highest in the country, and are rising faster than in any other state according to the Policygenius Home Insurance Pricing Report.

Can the government help?

Florida lawmakers have increased financial assistance and passed new laws to protect insurance companies from frivolous lawsuits.type: embedded-entry-inline id: DKaTFIdbjl6PKhN4RfhL9 McCartney says policymakers can help homeowners directly by subsidizing their insurance, giving them relocation assistance, or helping them improve the structural integrity of their homes. 

The government can also find ways to reduce damage from future storms.

“Governments can do this by, for instance, correctly managing floodplains, having infrastructure to give residents advance notice of impending storms, and helping coordinate recovery efforts,” McCartney says.

How climate change will affect hurricane risk

Hurricane Idalia was likely strengthened by the warm waters surrounding the coast of Florida, says Venkataraman Lakshmi, professor of engineering at the University of Virginia. Water temperatures off the tip of Florida reached over 100 degrees during the summer. type: embedded-entry-inline id: 7EKWnMSWoNsKhpu5ZnLMzK

“Very warm water increases the strength of a storm because evaporation from the ocean’s surface into the hurricane system increases the strength of the hurricane,” Lakshmi says. “Evaporating water is fuel for the hurricane.” 

As climate change causes ocean water temperatures to rise, there will be even more fuel on hand for powerful storms. Climate change will cause an increase in more extreme weather in general — not just hurricanes, but also droughts and wildfires.

“Climate change should be looked upon as something that increases the magnitude and frequency of these extreme events,” Lakshmi says.

But human behavior is also increasing the impact of extreme weather, as more people decide to live in risky areas like Florida.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 71POTfM7oL8tDIWLDDIFO Hurricane Idalia was powerful — reaching max wind speeds of 125 mph — but it made landfall in a less populated area, limiting the amount of damage it could have caused. While stronger than Idalia, 2022’s Hurricane Ian caused exponentially more death and destruction because it struck highly populated areas.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 7Eiq49znYwNJtdCKoSfQrp Florida is the country’s fastest-growing state.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 46gcbxAtvgcJ3TpRN5V53V The combination of more intense storms and the influx of people living in the most high-risk areas may have dangerous and costly consequences in the future.

Image: Warren Faidley / Getty

In a report from KGO-TV, an ABC affiliate in San Francisco, several homeowners said their insurance companies were dropping their policies based on aerial photography that found things like a cluttered yard and a drained swimming pool. The nonrenewals were all from the same insurance company, CSAA Insurance Group, which said in a statement that it “evaluates many sources of information to assess the condition of properties we insure, including third-party proprietary aerial imagery captured by fixed-wing aircraft and satellites.”

Can insurance companies drop you based on aerial photography?

Homeowners insurance companies can decide not to renew your policy for a number of reasons. Probably the most common is that you filed too many claims. But your homeowners insurance company can also cancel or not renew your policy because it stops offering coverage where you live, you’re late on payments, you experience an increase in natural disasters in your area, you added a high-risk item to your home like a trampoline or pool, or your credit score dropped. 

All these factors can signal to your home insurance company that your risk of filing a claim has gone up. Aerial photography is one way of evaluating that risk. But is it an invasion of privacy?

The California civil code says a person can be held responsible for invading someone's privacy by physically entering their property or the airspace above it without permission. This invasion is done with the intention of capturing pictures, recordings, or any physical evidence of the person engaging in private, personal, or family-related activities. The invasion is considered offensive if it would upset a reasonable person.

So where does an insurance company’s use of aerial photography fall on that scale?

“Although the law in this area is evolving along with the technology, insurers have been able to obtain information from public sources that view the insured’s property from above without the insured’s permission,” says Joseph Lavitt, who teaches torts and insurance law at Berkeley Law. “As long as the effort to obtain this information doesn’t invade a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy, or work in a way that a reasonable person would find offensive, it would be difficult to conclude, at present, that such efforts are forbidden. This conclusion may change, however, as standards of offensiveness can and do evolve.”

At least in the area of storm damage claims, many homeowners say they’re uncomfortable with the idea of a drone evaluating their property rather than a human during a home insurance storm damage claim, even if it led to a faster payout.

California’s evolving insurance landscape

These canceled policies are part of a broader withdrawal from California by home insurance companies. Many have decided to no longer insure homes in certain parts of the state, or have left the market altogether, leaving many residents with few options for coverage. It’s not because of drone footage — it’s because of wildfires, which have destroyed 39,000 homes in California over the past five years. 

 If your policy is canceled or nonrenewed, contact your insurance company to see if there are any property upgrades or other steps you can take to keep your policy. If not, you will need to shop for a new policy. In a state like California where coverage may be hard to get, you may have to work with a local insurance agent who can connect you with a company willing to cover your home. If all else fails, some states, including California, have last-resort insurance programs that provide coverage to homeowners who can’t find coverage on the private market. 

Image: Andrew Merry / Getty

Amid a mental health crisis that’s gotten worse since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration has proposed a rule aimed at lowering barriers to getting mental health and substance abuse treatment. It would require health insurers to show data demonstrating that they’re providing equal access to medical and mental health care. 

Why mental health parity has been a challenge

Health insurance companies have long been reluctant to cover mental health treatment, says Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. There was a perception that psychiatric disorders are more difficult to objectively verify and that treatments were vague and susceptible to abuse. 

Those arguments largely lost out, and Congress passed the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act to put mental health care on equal footing with medical health care. Among its protections:

• If a health insurance plan has deductibles or copays or limits on treatment for mental health benefits, those requirements must be no more restrictive than those for medical or surgical benefits.

• If a health insurance plan includes out-of-network benefits for medical or surgical services, it must also provide out-of-network benefits for mental health services.

• Insurance companies must disclose standards for medical necessity and reasons for any denial of benefits for mental health benefits upon request. 

But a 2023 report to Congress on the law showed that many people still face difficulty getting access, because of a lack of in-network providers, high cost, and other barriers. While the 2008 law banned easy-to-measure ways of limiting coverage, insurance companies have come up with “non-quantitative” restrictions, Appelbaum says.

For example, companies may be more likely to require advanced approval or more extensive documentation for treatments for psychiatric conditions compared to general medical conditions. 

“They can be highly effective at restricting access to equivalent care for psychiatric disorders, thus undermining the intent of the legislation,” Appelbaum says.

Insurance isn’t the only problem with accessing mental health care. In many places, there aren’t enough providers, especially for children, Appelbaum says.

But insurance has a role to play in the shortage of providers as well — many providers can make more money if they stop taking insurance and only see patients privately.

“Because of the relatively poor reimbursement, many psychiatrists and psychologists who can opt out of the insurance system and see only that small proportion of the patient population who can pay out of pocket, do that,” Appelbaum says.

How to solve the mental health parity problem

The rule proposed by the Biden administration would help reinforce the provisions of the mental health parity act. It would require health insurance companies to collect data evaluating their mental health provider networks, how much they pay out-of-network providers, how often prior authorization is required, and how often prior authorization requests are denied. It would also require health plans to use the same criteria for setting out-of-network payment rates for mental health providers as they do for medical providers. 

“Our plans would require health insurance plans to identify the gaps in the mental health care they provide,” President Joe Biden said in remarks announcing the rule.

The administration is accepting public comment on the proposed rule through Oct. 2.

For any rule regarding mental health parity to work, it needs to be enforced. That’s one reason the mental health parity act hasn’t guaranteed parity thus far.

“It’s going to take resources,” Appelbaum says. “Bodies need to be devoted to this kind of monitoring, and it’s going to take aggressive enforcement, because the insurers have every reason to try to continue to undermine the presumption in favor of parity.”

If you’re struggling to find an affordable mental health care provider in your insurance network, you don’t have to wait for the Biden administration to act. There may be alternatives. Your state, county, or municipality may have a community mental health agency that can provide free or low-cost mental health care. Check with your local department of health. 

You may also be able to get low-cost care at a nearby academic medical center, from psychiatrists or psychologists in training.

If those options are unavailable, you can also try to negotiate with your therapist of choice. If they don’t take insurance, they may accept payment on a sliding scale. Be sure to also take advantage of any employee benefits that have to do with mental health. Common benefits include virtual coaching and therapy, as well as treatment for sleep disorders and stress.

By the end of the century, extreme precipitation days — those with about 1.5 inches or more of precipitation — will become increasingly common in the Northeast, a study published in Climatic Change finds. Projections show extreme precipitation days will increase by almost 50% by the end of the century.

How climate change will affect precipitation

Christopher Picard, a lead author of the study who recently graduated from Dartmouth College, says the climate models used in the study assume that the atmosphere will get warmer due to an increase in greenhouse gas.

“A warmer atmosphere can hold more water and it can fuel these extreme precipitation events,” Picard says — this is why the warm summer months tend to have more rainfall and humidity than the dry and cold winter months. As a result, the heavy rainfall we’ve seen in the Northeast this summer will become “the new reality,” says Picard, who is pursuing a master’s degree in geography at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The study analyzed multiple simulations from a climate model that was specifically calibrated for the Northeast and compared extreme precipitation from 1976 to 2005 with projections from 2070 to 2099. It found that the level of extreme precipitation each year will increase by 51.6% by the end of the century, and the number of extreme precipitation days will rise from 1.48 days a year to 2.2 days a year.

This increase continues an already existing trend of more precipitation. If you charted the change in precipitation over the 20th century, it would look like an upward sloping curve, Picard says.

“As we’ve approached the 21st century, there’s been a marked increase in these extreme precipitation events,” he says.

As part of the study, the authors compared their projections against other forecasts of extreme precipitation. “The models we ran that we were most comfortable with and we looked at in most detail, they were saying (a) 50% (increase),” says Jonathan Winter, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College and co-author of the study, but these ended up on the more conservative end of the spectrum — the majority of models projected a 75% increase, with some as high as 100%. 

And all of these models may understate the impact of climate change. While they account for increases in greenhouse gas, they don’t include possible increases in development, which may put more people and property in the path of increased precipitation.

The impact of extreme precipitation

While the study didn’t explicitly analyze the relationship between precipitation and flooding, it’s safe to say more of the former will lead to more of the latter, Picard says. As a result, more people will likely need to consider protecting their homes with flood insurance (a standard home insurance policy won’t cover flood damage). Many people already underestimate their flood risk, in part due to outdated flood maps. 

When people think of flood risks, they often think of big events like hurricanes rather than regular rain or snowstorms, but the July storms in Vermont dropped more rain in a few days than seen in Hurricane Irene in 2011. 

Extreme precipitation won’t just impact people’s homes — the study notes that as many as 5,000 bridges in New England are vulnerable to bridge scour, a leading cause of bridge failure that occurs when fast-moving water washes away sand and gravel from around bridge foundations. Winter says he hopes their work informs how people adapt to climate change.

“There are some things we can do right away, especially when it comes to replacing infrastructure,” he says.

The heavy rain and flooding in the Northeast this summer was devastating. But as the study shows, it could end up being a harbinger. Hopefully, it also ends up being a wakeup call.

Image: Roberto Westbrook / Getty

A new bill in New Jersey would go even further, prohibiting auto insurance companies from using education, occupation, homeownership status, or marital status to set rates, in addition to credit score. Assemblywoman Annette Quijano, a sponsor of the bill, says basing premiums on these factors “create(s) a two-tiered system that punishes poor and working-class New Jerseyans.” Consumer advocates say using these factors disproportionately affect people with lower incomes and people of color.

So why do auto insurance companies use data that seemingly has nothing to do with driving to determine how much to charge for car insurance?

The data helps predict accidents

You buy auto insurance to reduce the financial impact of a car accident, and auto insurance companies set your rates, or premiums, based on how likely they think it is that you’ll get into a car accident. People pay different prices based on their different risks of getting into an accident.

Auto insurance companies have found that all kinds of data, including the data that states like New Jersey are looking to ban them from using, can help predict how likely someone is to file a claim, says David Marlett, a professor at Appalachian State University and director of the Brantley Risk & Insurance Center.

“You have tons of historical data points for decades that show things like age, or experience, or gender, or type of car, or moving violations, or where you live, or credit score, are all very good predictors of whether drivers are going to have an accident or not,” he says.

Auto insurance companies have few ways to set themselves apart from one other. The product is “pretty much the same” from company to company, Marlett says. Aside from funny commercials, individual insurance companies try to gain advantages by creating more accurate formulas for predicting losses and setting prices. Companies create these formulas by gathering various data points about their customers and use them to calculate how likely you are to file a claim. 

How insurance companies respond to laws banning ‘non-driving factors’

If car insurance companies can’t use certain factors to determine premiums, they’ll have to weigh other factors, like your location and driving history, more heavily. They’ll still charge different customers different prices based on their perceived risk. Some drivers will pay less, and some drivers will pay more — it’s safe to say the insurance companies will keep charging enough to stay in business, Marlett says.

It’s not clear how laws banning the use of “non-driving” factors, like those in California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts, affect prices. Car insurance prices are on the rise in general because of inflation, supply chain disruptions, and the increased value of used cars, and Marlett says he hasn’t seen any studies isolating the impact of car insurance legislation. 

What to do if you’re paying too much for car insurance

If you think your educational level or marital status are affecting how much you pay for car insurance, it’s probably not going to be possible to change those factors to get a better deal. But because different insurance companies weigh these factors differently, you may get a better price if you compare rates and switch.

“The best thing you can do as a consumer is shop around,” Marlett says.

You can also lower your auto insurance premiums by raising your deductible, though you’ll pay more out of pocket in the event of an accident. You can also complete a defensive driving course or add a safety device to your vehicle. Many insurance companies have introduced usage-based insurance programs, which base premiums on your driving behavior — usually by tracking you through your phone. This can mean serious savings for safe drivers, based solely on how you drive — not whether you’re married.

Image: Thomas Barwick / Getty

Financial advisers say most people should buy term life insurance. It’s simple and affordable and you’re better off just spending less on life insurance and investing the money you save in the stock market.

“Over the long term, you make more money in the stock market with a diversified portfolio,” says Angela Dorsey, a certified financial planner and founder of Dorsey Wealth Management.

Still, the numbers don’t lie: More people buy permanent life insurance. Here are three reasons so many people opt for permanent life insurance.

1. People want insurance for life

Financial planners view life insurance as a short-term need, says Randy Dumm, director of the Baldwin Risk Partners School of Risk Management and Insurance at the University of South Florida. As you get older, other people become less dependent on your income, so your need for life insurance goes down. For example, you might buy life insurance in your 30s, when your income helps feed your young children and pay your mortgage. By the time you’re 60, those kids are grown and the mortgage is paid off, so there’s less of a need to insure your income.

“It’s viewed as a shorter-term solution by the financial planner,” Dumm says. 

On the other hand, many people like the peace of mind of knowing that their whole life policy will cover them no matter when they die.

“Extremely security-conscious people still gravitate toward whole life insurance,” Dorsey says. “This is because of the certainty and predictability whole life insurance offers.”

2. Whole life insurance provides guaranteed returns

Because term life insurance is affordable (a healthy 30-year-old can expect to spend $30 a month or less for a policy with a 20-year term and $500,000 death benefit), planners often recommend a strategy of buying term and investing the savings in the stock market for maximum returns. They don’t see whole life insurance as the best way to earn big returns, Dumm says. 

On the other hand, stocks can lose money, so more risk-averse investors may prefer the cash value component of whole life insurance, which guarantees returns to an extent.

“Knowing that they will have guaranteed cash value growth that is not subject to the ups and downs of the stock market gives them peace of mind,” Dorsey says. “Security-conscious people feel more anxiety with the short-term market volatility and are willing to pay extra to help them sleep at night.”

In general, people who opt for whole life insurance are willing to pay more for less risk.

3. ‘Life insurance is sold, not bought’

Life insurance isn’t something people are motivated to run out and buy on a whim, like pizza. Often, people get interested in life insurance when life insurance agents reach out to them. And selling whole life insurance is more lucrative for agents than selling term life insurance.

“There is an incentive difference you have to recognize,” Dumm says.

That’s why you see TikTok influencers hawking whole life insurance as a way of “infinite banking” — alluding to the way you can borrow against the policy’s cash value. They don’t tell you it’s not an effective strategy for most people, and these videos still garner millions of views.

Even though there are plenty of ways for people to learn about life insurance and other financial products on their own online, people still like talking to other humans about these decisions.

“We’ll see where consumer preferences go,” Dumm says. “Right now you can get a lot of information via the web, and they can buy some products via the web, but there still seems to be a preference by consumers to have this human interaction.”

Image: Ippei Naoi / Getty

Among long-term care policies issued from 1992 to 1996, 25.9% lapsed after 5 years, and 41.1% lapsed after 15 years. Current lapse rates are lower, but are still substantial: Men and women who purchase a policy at age 65 have a 27% and 29% of lapsing their policies before death, respectively. The study finds that lapse rates are especially high among people who are cognitively impaired — meaning that people who are especially likely to need long term care are also especially likely to lose it.

Why do people let their long-term care insurance policies lapse?

The study identified three major reasons people might stop paying their premiums. The first is strategic: People let their policies lapse because they think they won’t end up needing long-term care. The second is a change in financial status, which makes it harder to pay premiums. The third is unintended lapsing.

The study analyzed lapses from 2002 to 2006 using data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, a long-running survey of more than 20,000 Americans over the age of 50, allowing researchers to track participants over time. It found that lapse rates are “significantly and substantially higher among people with lower cognitive scores.” The study estimates that if everyone with low cognitive scores during the study period had median cognitive scores, lapsing would be 17% less common. 

“These are the people who are quite likely to need their policies in the near term,” says Leora Friedberg, an associate professor of economics at the University of Virginia and a co-author of the study.

The cost of losing your long-term care insurance

The consequences of lapsing on a long-term care insurance policy are significant. First, you’re not covered anymore, no matter how much you paid in premiums before you lapsed. Second, you’ll have to pay much more if you want to buy coverage again. You’ll have to go through underwriting all over again, and because you’ll be older and likely less healthy, you’ll almost certainly pay higher premiums.

“It’s going to be way more expensive, especially if you’re that person who’s experiencing cognitive decline,” Friedberg says.

How to prevent lapsing on your long-term care insurance policy

Long-term care insurance is a difficult product to buy. It’s costly and it often only pays off years after you first buy it. As the study shows, it can be a challenge for older people to keep up with the premiums. If you opt to buy it, Friedberg says to loop someone in to help you manage the payments.

“You want to have a structure in place to keep track of the payments and make sure someone else is going to be on top of it if you start to lose track,” she says.

The insurance industry has also struggled with the cost of long-term care insurance. One report says the industry is in “crisis” after companies charged premium rates that were too low in the 1980s. One way to provide more certainty could be to allow policyholders to pay more of their premiums upfront. Friedberg acknowledges that this is a limited solution — only some wealthy households could afford it.

Some people may opt to add a long-term care rider to their life insurance policy so they can get two forms of coverage for one payment, but these hybrid policies are often more expensive than buying long-term care insurance on its own.

Friedberg and her fellow researchers are studying a product offered in the United Kingdom called an immediate needs annuity. As with regular annuities, you pay a lump sum and receive a regular income in exchange, only the money is used for long-term care. In the United States, some states are stepping in to address the cost of long-term care. But as of now, there’s more research to be done in solving the long-term care crisis and making sure Americans can afford the care they need as they age. 

“We don’t have a good set of policy options in this market,” Friedberg says.

Image: Ron Levine / Getty

What is medical loss ratio?

Medical loss ratio is the proportion of premium revenues insurance companies spend on clinical services and quality improvement, as opposed to administrative costs and profits. Insurance companies must spend either 80% or 85% of premiums on medical care under the Affordable Care Act, depending on the size of the market they serve. Insurance companies have to pay rebates if they don’t meet this standard in a given year. 

How is medical loss ratio calculated?

For health insurance companies in the individual and small group markets, the medical loss ratio requirement is 80%. For the large group market, which are plans that cover 51 or more employees (though in a few states you need to have 101 or more employees), the requirement is 85%. The ratio doesn’t apply to employers who self-fund their health insurance — most of which are large companies.

Costs that don’t count as “medical care” include executive salaries, overhead, and marketing. Another way of thinking about medical loss ratio is that if spending on these non-medical costs exceeds 20% (or 15% for large group plans), insurance companies will have to pay a rebate. The average medical loss ratio has fluctuated since the Affordable Care Act passed, from as high as 103% in 2015, to as low as 72% in 2020, likely because few people used medical care during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 20iNdlHdt3uCKjGykgpvaM

The intention of the requirement is “to encourage health plans to provide value to enrollees.”type: embedded-entry-inline id: 5CHY0smqw4RHyUw0qvkUnA But are there better ways of doing it? 

What’s the point of medical loss ratio?

Dr. Caroline Plott, a resident at Johns Hopkins Medicine (she says her opinion doesn’t reflect that of her employer) says some of the money should instead go toward public health efforts. 

In an article published in JAMA in 2020 that she co-authored, Plott argues that insurance companies could support underfunded state public health departments. Funding for these agencies is set to be slashed after the recent debt ceiling negotiations.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 4cEMNO3qNfZIbFvm5LwYYs Public health agencies are responsible for contact tracing, screening, health education, and helping people get treatment — especially crucial during a pandemic. Plott also suggests that insurance companies can fund public health efforts directly.

This spending could pay off for the companies over time.

“These interventions would ultimately be helping the health of the community and the people the health insurance company is insuring, and that would hopefully lower the cost over time,” Plott says.

It may be difficult to convince people this is the best use of the money, especially when the alternative is a check sent directly to them. The average rebate per person in 2022 was $205 in the individual market, $169 in the small group market, and $110 in the large group market (these amounts can sometimes be split between you and your employer).type: embedded-entry-inline id: 6QA14dCRo7GsxG6tdIHJDQ But if you think of it as money you’ve budgeted for health care, conglomerating it together may be more impactful for the community than having people spend it on their own.

“If someone had a $30 rebate back, perhaps they could buy a gym membership for a month and work out and that would help their help,” Plott says, but if you collected $30 from a bunch of people, you can do bigger things like set up health screening programs and catch disease early or even prevent it.

While the worst part of the pandemic is over and the size of medical loss ratio rebates has since decreased, there’s still opportunity to use this money in a smarter way, Plott says, perhaps even to prepare for future pandemics. 

“It’s a way to use the traumas and challenges of that time and take the good ideas that came out of it so we can work toward a better future,” Plott says.

Image: GrapeImages / Getty

Seventeen percent of auto insurance customers now participate in a usage-based insurance program, whether through a traditional car insurance company like Allstate’s Drivewise, or a standalone UBI company like Root. This rate has doubled since 2016, according to the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Auto Insurance Study. Many of these customers are new to usage-based insurance. Given the savings — $113 per year on average — and the rising cost of auto insurance, it’s surprising that even more people haven’t tried usage-based insurance. The study points to one reason why. One-third of participants in a UBI program have only used it for a year and so far, not everyone is convinced it’s worth it: Only 38% of customers say the information collected is “always accurate.”

Privacy concerns about usage-based insurance

UBI works by tracking your driving habits, based on factors like how often you brake suddenly, how fast you drive, when you drive, and whether you use your phone. Drivers install either a device that plugs into their car or a mobile app that sends driving data to the insurance company. A majority of Americans (68%) said they value their privacy more than any savings offered by an app that collects driving behavior or location data for an insurance discount, the Policygenius Home & Auto Insurance Technology Survey found.

Because of these concerns, it’s likely that only the most tech-savvy drivers are opting for usage-based insurance in response to higher car insurance premiums, says Richard Peter, an associate professor of finance at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, especially since there are other ways to save on auto insurance premiums, like raising your deductible, reducing your coverage, or bundling your auto and home insurance. Some people might also avoid UBI because they’re bad drivers and wouldn’t benefit from having their data tracked.

Peter’s research argues that UBI might be more popular if consumers were convinced of its accuracy. Based on the J.D. Power study, this isn’t the case so far. 

“The monitoring devices themselves are fairly accurate from a technical standpoint, but insurers (or third-party providers) use complex algorithms to turn driving data into driving scores, which then determine premium discounts,” Peter says.

Consumers who worry about how these algorithms score their driving might avoid UBI contracts, Peter says. For example, let’s say you brake hard, a habit that can lead to lower scores: Does the tracking device know whether you did it to avoid an accident or because you were tailgating the car in front of you? 

More transparency could get more people to try UBI

Despite rising premiums, most people say privacy concerns are holding them back from trying UBI. What can insurance companies do to assuage these concerns? Insurance companies can always do more to tell consumers how they keep their data private. Peter’s research suggests greater transparency regarding the algorithms employed by usage-based insurance products could also help.

“For example, maybe there could be a few ‘freebies’ each month that are dropped from the data that determine driving scores,” Peter says. In other words, insurance companies could let drivers know they’re letting a few instances of hard breaking or fast turning slide. “Or maybe a simple web interface that gives consumers who are concerned about misclassification an opportunity to clarify the circumstances. Our theory predicts that a reduction in the rate of misclassifications leads to more take-up of UBI contracts.”

While there needs to be more research on the effects of UBI, Peter says there is some evidence that these policies help people drive more safely. When people know their driving is being recorded, they tend to drive better over time, making roads safer for everyone. But people need to trust the technology first.

Image: Negatina / Getty

One way some Americans have tried to plan for these costs is long-term care insurance. But the market for long-term care insurance is in “crisis” according to a recent report from the New York State department of Financial Services. The crisis stems from “pricing errors” made when the long-term care insurance markets first launched in the 80s.

“Simply stated, LTC insurance plans across the country were initially offered at premium rates that were far lower than they should have been,” the report says.

As a result, when people started filing claims, insurance companies took big losses. Many stopped selling policies altogether, while others raised prices.

“Uncertainty regarding longevity is making it increasingly difficult to determine how to price the product,” says Olivia Mitchell, a professor and executive director of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Basically, insurance companies have a hard time predicting how much people end up sending on things like home health attendants or assisted living over the course of their lives, making it tough to charge the right amount in premiums.

Demand for long-term care insurance is dampened by a lack of information, Mitchell says.

“Many people erroneously believe that Medicare will cover nursing home costs,” she says. “And some simply don’t understand the risk of needing relatively long periods of care in a nursing home.”

America faces a dilemma in how to provide long-term care for an aging population, but as of now, long-term care insurance is far from an end-all solution — it’s expensive, poorly understood, and many people underestimate their need for long-term care.

“Most of us are not planners,” says Jesse Slome, director of the American Association for Long-term Care Insurance, a trade association for long-term care insurance agents and brokers. “It’s hard enough to get people to plan for retirement let alone plan for the end of their life. We all think ‘it’s not going to happen to me.’”

What are states doing to solve the long-term care insurance crisis?

The federal government has done little to address the crisis, Slome says. One reason is that long-term care costs generally fall on Medicaid, which is partially funded by the states, and not Medicare, which is funded by the federal government. Unlike the federal government, states aren’t allowed to run a deficit, so they can only manage their finances by raising taxes or cutting benefits. 

The 2010 Affordable Care Act initially included a public long-term care insurance program for employees, but it was withdrawn after critics questioned whether it was financially workable.type: embedded-entry-inline id: j1K4ztFDR2Bs2ZXbehPe7 There’s been little appetite for a renewed effort in Congress, leaving states to tackle what should be a national issue on their own, Slome says. 

Washington is the state that’s gone the farthest, establishing the Washington Cares Fund, which goes into effect July 1.type: embedded-entry-inline id: p9Re7CPxWsI1o89mU7ohq It allows beneficiaries to access up to $36,500 in lifetime long-term care benefits, paid for by an 0.58% payroll tax on people who work in Washington state. Even this only covers a fraction of the potential costs. A year of nursing home care in Washington can cost nearly $93,000.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 1boD0hjg27ooRSsnRgwPpd And many people won’t benefit at all if they move out of the state when they need long-term care.

“For many people it will not be significantly meaningful,” Slome says.

Legislators in California are considering creating an even larger long-term care insurance program that could be worth up to $144,00 in benefits. Most states operate guaranty associations that protect a limited amount of benefits if a long-term care insurance company fails.

Should you consider long-term care insurance?

Despite the struggles of the long-term care insurance industry and the fledgling status of state efforts, people are still looking for ways to save for future long-term care — most folks don’t want to end up being a burden to their families as they age. Members of the sandwich generation are especially worried about this burden.

Long-term care insurance isn’t for everyone, Slome says. The people who should consider it are between 55 and 65, with some degree of savings and retirement assets — anyone who doesn’t have some wealth will likely have to rely on Medicaid. 

Unlike homeowners insurance or car insurance, you should only shop for long term care insurance once in your life, Slome says. It almost never pays to switch policies because you’d have to go through medical underwriting again, and prices will only rise as you age. It’s best to work with an agent or broker who specializes in long-term care and who represents multiple companies — some people only sell products from one company.

One option is to buy a hybrid long-term care insurance policy, which combines life insurance and long-term care insurance into one policy. But Slome warned that these policies are often more expensive than buying long-term care insurance on its own. In addition, the older you get, the lower your need for life insurance, and the more likely you are to need long-term care, so it doesn’t make much sense to pair them.

Because of the industry’s struggles, premiums are higher than they were in the past. But for the right person, Slome says, long-term care insurance is worth considering. And everyone should have some kind of plan for their future long-term care expenses.

“Everybody hopes to live a long life,” he says, “but we really don’t think about the consequences to ourselves or to our family.”

Image: Klaus Vedfelt / Getty

There are several ways for homeowners to fortify their homes against extreme weather. If your home is in an area with high winds, for example, you could strengthen the connection between your roof, walls, and foundation, or you could install impact-resistant windows, doors, and roofing that are designed to withstand high winds and debris. Known as “home hardening”, these types of fortifications can also make your home both easier and less expensive to insure.

But a study published in Climate Policy in May finds homeowners are only motivated to make these changes if they improve the value of their homes. Avoiding damage and lowering insurance costs aren’t strong enough motivators.

“The messaging we’ve been using about avoiding losses in the future — you do this today and in the future you shall be spared — it doesn’t work,” says Tracy Kijewski-Correa, a professor, director of the Pulte Institute for Global Development at the University of Notre Dame, and a co-author of the study.

The findings are especially stark because of how frequently North Carolina experiences hurricanes. The state also promotes homeowners insurance discounts for homes with features that mitigate severe weather damage. 

“If these people aren’t doing anything, the prospects are probably lower elsewhere,” Kijewsky-Correa says.

These findings show that outside of when they buy their homes, homeowners receive little education about their property’s existing resiliency and which, if any, home hardening upgrades it needs. Instead, homeowners are often focused on aesthetic features like granite countertops, Kijewski-Correa says. She wants to reach a point where Zillow lists these resiliency features as well, which could add to the home’s listed value in the process.

Insurance incentives

Many home insurance companies offer discounts, in some cases after a wind mitigation inspection, for outfitting your home with protections like storm-proof roof shingles, hurricane-resistant windows, and wind-rated garage doors. But, as the study shows, these discounts aren’t compelling many people to make these upgrades. One reason is insurance companies may be reluctant to advertise these discounts, especially in states where their margins are already thin. Home insurance companies are already leaving or going out of business in some states.

Homeowners who participated in the study either weren’t aware of the credits or found it was difficult and time-consuming to get them, Kijewski-Correa says.

What will convince people to upgrade their homes?

Many homeowners are aware of the risk climate change poses to their homes: A Policygenius survey found nearly half of American homeowners expect their homes to be damaged by extreme weather related to climate change in the next 30 years. But the same survey found one in three homeowners either don’t have or aren’t sure if they have enough insurance to rebuild their homes in the event of extreme weather, and 80% of homeowners don’t have any flood insurance.

Kijewski-Correa envisions something like a LEED certification, which denotes sustainable construction standards, but for hurricane adaptations.

“You should feel proud of it and get some credit for that in the value of your home,” she says.

If homeowners act independently to prevent damage to their homes, it could bring insurance companies back to states they’ve left because of climate risks. Unfortunately, many people underestimate the risk they face. Many homes aren’t built to the latest building codes, and even updated standards are designed to protect life, not property.

While it would be politically difficult to legislate home climate-proofing requirements, if the market started rewarding these upgrades with higher home values, that could motivate more homeowners to take action, the study found. This approach has limitations, Kijewski-Correa says — it wouldn’t reach people who don’t plan to sell their homes. But this study shows that a more robust strategy beyond just the existing incentives could pay major dividends. 

Image: Steve Cicero / Getty

Why are older Americans divorcing?

The rising divorce rate among adults 50 and older can largely be credited to the Baby Boomers, who ranged in age from 51 to 69 at the time of the Pew analysis. This group had already experienced high rates of divorce during young adulthood. Many Boomers are living well into their 80s and 90s. Though American life expectancy has stalled in recent years, the average life span increased dramatically over the 20th century, from around 50 in 1900 to nearly 80 today. type: embedded-entry-inline id: 5IlOtL5uKaDIMUvZGnMJfQ

“If you feel at 55 or 60 that you have 30 years left, do you really want to stay with a person that you’ve fallen out of love with, or you’re bored, or one of you is getting sick?” asks Pepper Schwartz, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. 

Baby Boomers in particular have higher expectations of marriage, and have been more willing to get out of relationships that don’t meet them.

“They all had the model of parents who didn’t like each other a whole lot,” Schwartz says.

How divorce affects your finances & vice versa

The Baby Boomers were one of the first generations in which many women earned incomes alongside their husbands. Because of that, many women may have enough resources by the time they reach their 50s to split up while being able to afford life on their own. But if that’s not the case, divorce can have devastating financial consequences, including on your housing and insurance. Many people need two incomes to afford their lifestyles, Schwartz says. “If a marriage breaks up, even for good reasons, it can put people in a tailspin.”

Insurance moves to make after a gray divorce

Divorce can be complicated, and one big reason is that you have to untangle your finances, including your insurance plans, from your former partner. That’s why it’s a good idea to conduct a full comprehensive review during the divorce process.

“Many individuals simply keep their existing policies in place without considering if they still need the coverage or if the existing coverage is enough, given the new set of circumstances,” says Susan Mitcheltree, a certified financial planner, certified divorce financial analyst, and partner with Berman McAleer, a wealth management firm based in Maryland.

Here are the five simple insurance steps gray divorcees should consider.

1. Update your beneficiaries

One of the first steps to take, even before the divorce is finalized, is to change the beneficiaries on your life insurance and any other accounts that previously benefited your partner in the event of your death, like brokerage accounts. Life insurance policies will pay out to the named beneficiary even in the event of a divorce, so if you don’t remove your former spouse, they’ll get the death benefit.

Older divorcees have the option of naming any grown children as beneficiaries, something that’s less advisable with minor children since they won’t have access to the money right away. 

In some cases, a judge will even order you to buy life insurance as part of a divorce settlement, to ensure there’s a level of financial support even after you die. 

“It’s a way of making sure, for example, that alimony would continue to be paid,” says Sara Stolberg Berkowicz, a certified divorce financial analyst, certified financial planner, and chair of the advisor development department at the College of Financial Planning.

Alternatively, you may be able to cancel your life insurance if no one depends on your income after divorce, says Mitchell Kraus, certified financial planner and founder of Capital Intelligence Associates.

You should also drop coverage for any vehicles, homes, or possessions that no longer belong to you, and remove your ex from any active auto insurance policies. “Anything that is no longer owned by you should be removed,” Mitcheltree says.

2. Make sure you’re still covered by health insurance

Health insurance could be another difficult consideration for people who previously got their coverage through a spouse. Many health insurance plans, including those on the individual marketplaces, charge higher premiums to older people. Divorce is a qualifying event for COBRA, which can allow you to stay on your previous health plan. That’s an expensive option, but for older divorcees, you only need to stay covered until you reach Medicare age, says Berkowicz. 

3. Update your health care proxies

An oft-overlooked move is to update your health care proxies (also known as a durable medical power of attorney). Your health care proxy is someone appointed to make health care decisions on your behalf if you’re terminally ill or mentally incapacitated. If you don’t want your ex to make those decisions, you have to update these documents — health care providers won’t be aware of who to turn to otherwise.

“Hospital administrators aren’t going to get involved in somebody’s personal business,” Berkowicz says. “That’s why these documents are really important.”

4. Consider disability or long-term care insurance

It’s even more important to protect your income when you become single — there’s no one else to lean on if you’re unable to work. That’s why disability insurance, which pays out if you’re too sick or injured to work, is worth considering.

“It is also common for spouses to care for one another as they age,” Mitcheltree says. “As a single person, ensuring you have a plan for your own long-term care needs, which can take the form of many options, including long-term care insurance, is smart financial planning.”

5. Make sure your assets last

A divorce, especially later in life, can reshape your finances for better or worse. Some people will end up flush with cash, while others will have to more carefully manage their wealth. Either way, you’ll need a new financial plan for your new financial situation, and it can be useful to get help in the form of a financial advisor.

“It is very important to work with a professional here who can help you make wise decisions in managing this wealth toward your income needs and personal financial goals,” Mitcheltree says.

Image: The Good Brigade / Getty

The road to health insurance coverage

Many people are familiar with mindfulness through apps like Headspace or Calm, which include meditations as short as five minutes. MBSR, is an outpatient therapy developed in 1979 by professor and meditation expert Jon Kabat-Zinn that typically includes eight weekly classes lasting two-and-a-half hours each, and one all-day class each weekend. There’s currently no billing code for this treatment, says Eric Loucks, director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University and an associate professor at the Brown School of Public Health.

Loucks and Blair Johnson, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut, are leading a team of researchers to conduct a study, funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, on the efficacy of MBSR. One focus of the grant is whether the treatment merits coverage from private health insurance, as well as public programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Based on interviews with health insurance companies and policymakers, the team of researchers working on the study aim to see whether MBSR is effective enough to be worth covering.

Health insurance coverage could make MBSR more affordable  — an eight-week course costs $400 to $600, though some programs offer a sliding scale based on income. And it may make it more possible for more practitioners to offer MBSR, increasing access to the treatment, Loucks says. Mindfulness could offer an alternative to the stigma of seeking other forms of mental health treatment as well, like talk therapy or prescription drugs. Health benefits offered through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs already cover a variety of mindfulness treatments.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2ZJMxc02ItSUl1gPTqM6SF

The growing evidence base for mindfulness

The evidence that MBSR can help treat conditions like anxiety, depression, pain, and overall quality of life has mounted over the past few years thanks to what one study called an “explosive growth” in research.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 11uo3ZxYCU3REZADjvc1od

“The evidence base has really exponentially increased,” Loucks says.

Now, the research is focusing on how to implement mindfulness treatments in the real world. One thing health insurance companies are keenly interested in is evidence of the costs and benefits of MBSR, Johnson says. Does the treatment improve physical health as well as reduce stress? Will it keep people out of emergency rooms? What’s the ideal form of MBSR?

“We’re really at the starting blocks right now,” Johnson says.

The evidence for the benefits of mindfulness is growing, but health insurance companies will need to be convinced of the cost-effectiveness if they’re going to cover MBSR.

“This is a moment in history for carefully considering health insurance coverage for evidence-based mindfulness programs,” Loucks says. “Can we hit that tipping point, if the evidence supports it?”

Image: Westend61 / Getty Images

Many people underestimate their flood risk

It’s often difficult to predict whether your home will experience flooding because governments have not done a good job publicizing information about flood risks, says Brett Sanders, professor of civil and environmental engineering, urban planning, and public policy at the University of California, Irvine. The most widely available flood maps are from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and they’ve been shown to “systematically underestimate the areas at risk,” Sanders says.

Sanders co-authored a study on flood exposure in Los Angeles, which found that the number of people living in 100-year floodplains, or high-risk areas with a 1% annual chance of flooding, is 10 to 40 times higher than FEMA flood maps suggest. FEMA flood maps account for flood risk from large bodies of water like rivers and coastal storm surge, but not rainfall. Especially in the West, where dry conditions prevail most of the year, people don’t anticipate flood risk as much as East Coasters who contend with hurricanes regularly.

A more detailed look at flood risk

The flood model Sanders and his fellow researchers designed for LA accounted for every flood hazard: rainfall, river, and coastal.

“Our modeling approach is new and it’s the first to model the entire region at once,” Sanders says.

Historically, FEMA has mapped flood risk one section at a time, which can make them fall out of date as conditions change in between updates. The LA model relied on techniques like aerial laser scanning data and new flood simulations that account for existing infrastructure and up-to-date hydrological data. The researchers combined the flood data with estimates on who lives at each affected parcel of land, including their race, allowing them to see whether flooding was more likely to impact people from specific social groups.

It turned out risks are disproportionately high for Black disadvantaged communities.

“Even though Black people made up something like 9% of the population of Los Angeles County, the fraction of Black people in the flood zone was far greater than 9%,” Sanders says.

Knowing which specific communities and demographics are most affected by flood events can help governments better plan the scale of their recovery efforts. It helps to know, for example, that many people living in a flood-prone area can’t afford flood insurance.

How to identify your flood risk

The Los Angeles flood data is publicly available online. In other parts of the United States, a FEMA flood map may be your best option, despite its flaws. Those are available on the FEMA website. First Street Foundation, a private nonprofit that researches flood risk, also has a nationwide, publicly available flood model, and its website, Risk Factor, also maps the threat of fire, wind, and heat to a given property.

If flood mapping technology improves on a more widespread scale, homeowners everywhere could stand to benefit.

“We have shown what needs to be done for every part of the U.S.,” Sanders says. “We were able to, in a matter of a year or so, build a model and map out the flood risk facing 10 million people. That could be repeated all across the U.S.”

Preparing for flooding

If your home is at risk of flooding, there are steps you can take to protect it, like having it elevated onto a raised foundation. This can cost tens of thousands of dollars, even for small houses.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 3itvYVtBJbeqPokjlfnlo2 FEMA provides financial assistance for home elevation to homeowners who have been affected by floods, but Sanders says, “on the whole, the level of awareness is low.” You can also make smaller moves, like storing your most valuable items on higher levels, making sure your gutters are clean, and replacing carpeting with tiles.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2tenwjjS1P5DLjMKoCpIAu

You should also buy flood insurance, since a typical homeowners insurance policy won’t cover flood damage. Prices have increased recently, but it’s a worthwhile investment if you consider that just a single inch of flooding can cause up to $25,000 in damage.type: embedded-entry-inline id: TFabeWdv9rugba137HbBG 

Your home isn’t the only thing to worry about during a flood, says Elizabeth Kiss, professor and extension specialist in the department of financial planning for Kansas State University. 

“You also need to understand your auto insurance policy and how that might and might not be covered with flood damage,” Kiss says. 

Your auto insurance policy will generally cover water damage from floods if you have comprehensive coverage.

It’s a good idea to review all your insurance policies annually, or at least every two to three years, to see whether they’ve changed how they cover flood or any other damage, Kiss says. You should also have enough emergency savings to cover the deductibles for all your insurance policies.

Image: Erik Von Weber / Getty

Health insurance is a contract. You agree to pay the insurance company, they agree to pay for medical care. But there are limits — health insurance companies generally only cover things they deem “medically necessary.” 

Medical necessity has, historically, been a broad standard. Where there are disputes, patients, doctors, and insurance companies can haggle over whether something should or should not be covered under that standard during the appeals process or in court. There are plenty of examples of this: In one 1990 case, a 51-year-old named John Hyde sued Humana after it initially denied coverage for a liver transplant his doctor recommended to treat cirrhosis.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 7b24jgJWhRFDF1tlz19hSa 

But research published in the Iowa Law Review shows that many health insurers are moving away from using broad standards to make these determinations, and are instead adopting precise, technical, black-and-white rules for what they will or won’t cover. 

It’s a change you probably haven’t noticed if you have health insurance. These rules aren’t always easy to access or even read. But this shift, documented over the past 20 years, may be quietly sapping the value of your health insurance plan and making it harder to win appeals against your health insurance company.

Wait, what’s happening to my health insurance?

The authors of the study found that health insurance companies are increasingly adopting detailed rules of medical necessity. These rules appear in lengthy documents separate from health insurance policies. They may specify, for example, that liver transplants are only covered “for bilateral atresia or certain congenital medical disorders,” or they won't cover gastric bypass unless your body mass index meets a certain threshold or you have a comorbidity.

These rules don’t necessarily appear in your insurance policy, but the study found that the language in policies is increasingly changing to say that certain types of care, or in some cases, all care, are only covered to the extent described in their separate rules of medical necessity guidelines.

Even if you appeal a health insurance denial, these rules make it harder for you or your provider to argue that the denied treatment is medically necessary, says Daniel Schwarcz, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who co-authored the Iowa Law Review article with Amy B. Monahan.

“Insurers have essentially changed their contracts so the ultimate rules are the medical policies,” Schwarcz says. “You don’t have any grounds to argue that your medical policy is wrong or that it doesn’t take into account my medical situation or take into account this new study or it wasn’t updated recently. None of those arguments matter.”

Schwarcz and Monahan examined regulatory filings from health insurers in 45 states, covering 180 policies. Almost all of them included “substantive rules of medical necessity for a discrete number of specific types of care.” “We found a lot of variation across insurers and across states, but we found this is a significant phenomenon and that it appears to be a relatively new phenomenon in the last 10 to 15 years,” he adds.

How this affects your health coverage

Emily Brown is patient education content and project manager for the Patient Advocate Foundation, a Virginia-based nonprofit that helps people with chronic, life-threatening, and debilitating illnesses navigate the health care system. She’s been at the nonprofit for 10 years, and for five of them, she was in the case managing department, helping patients with insurance appeals, so she’s familiar with the rules insurance companies set. 

Insurance company medical guidelines don’t come out of nowhere — they’re created by medical experts, following standards set by medical research. However, Brown says, “I definitely have seen circumstances where insurance companies do make clinical guidelines, and I’m assuming in an effort to be prohibitive for the patient.”

The “rulification” of health insurance adds more complexity to a system people already have a hard time navigating. While medical necessity guidelines are accessible, says Brown, “You have to have to know to ask for them or you have to know how to look for them.” With few people able to define basic insurance terms like “deductible,” is it reasonable to expect them to wade through what Schwarcz says is “incredibly detailed, incredibly technical, frequently changing documentation” to determine what their insurance plan will cover?

‘We need to have a dialogue’

Schwarcz and Monahan aren’t saying to get rid of medical rules of necessity. Schwarcz says insurance companies may be responding to a period in the 90s, when they lost a number of high-profile lawsuits over medical determinations. The most famous involved a treatment for breast cancer called high-dose chemotherapy with autologous bone marrow transplant. Insurance companies only agreed to cover it due to the threat of litigation, but the treatment was later shown to be ineffective compared to other options.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 5MiBdLIYnwxRi7NsOtre63 

“There was this very public set of cases where there was, what I would charitably call, a failure of the legal system,” Schwarcz says.

Writing strict rules about what they’ll cover helps protect insurance companies from the threat of litigation, but it comes with tradeoffs.

“The right solution is a balance,” Schwarcz says. “I think we went from one extreme to another.”

In one extreme, courts and juries had big say over what insurance companies covered. Now, Schwarcz says, insurance companies have a way of avoiding legal and regulatory oversight altogether. 

The result could be that insurance companies deny more claims. You may still be able to appeal those denials, allowing a third-party reviewer to decide whether a treatment should be covered, but consumers rarely go that route — only 0.2% consumers with marketplace health insurance plans appealed denied claims in 2021.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2ijbKfo7X5iJHtWIRQXSzU And even if you do, the study says, “the rules governing an external review generally prohibit a reviewer from ordering coverage of a treatment that is excluded in the insurer’s governing plan documents.” These rules vary by state and are open to interpretation, but, the authors conclude, “When health plans make their rules of medical necessity part of their government legal documents, they can, and often do, fundamentally undermine the capacity of external review to check insurers’ clinical judgements.”

The authors cited the example of gastric bypass surgery:

“If an insurance policy specified that weight loss surgery was only covered for individuals with a BMI above 40 for at least one year, external reviewers would not generally have authority to order coverage for someone who did not meet this requirement, even if they believed that weight loss surgery was indeed medically and scientifically appropriate for that individual.”

If you’re concerned about whether a particular treatment will get covered, it’s possible to search online for the insurance company’s medical guidelines and see what it says, Brown says. Your doctor may be able to help you understand whether the treatment is covered. This is a good idea during open enrollment, especially if you have a chronic condition. 

Remember that you can always appeal health insurance company decisions. While there’s no standardized process, each insurer is required to have one and your health care provider, as well as organizations like the Patient Advocate Foundation, can help you navigate it. 

Even if you don’t have the time to look up your insurance company’s medical guidelines, you should be sure to read your policy, Brown says, and the policies you may be considering during open enrollment. Many people don’t, and get taken by surprise that their insurance doesn’t cover certain treatments, Brown says. Your policy will also outline the denial and appeal process, so you’ll know what to expect if you have a claim rejected.

“The insurance process does feel like a mountain,” Brown says, "but it is not one that cannot be climbed. You just have to know how to do it, what is needed, and how the process works. But it can definitely feel overwhelming.”

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Brent Weiss, Co-Founder and Head of Financial Wellness for Facet, says to think of it like your physical wellness. It’s not just about how much you bench press, how fast you run, or how low your resting heart rate is, “the truth is that it’s a combination of all of these, and the right combination will be different for all of us,” says Weiss, a certified financial planner.

What is financial wellness?

Financial wellness means having a healthy mindset relating to money, having financial security, and being able to make clear and confident financial decisions. It’s not just about financial success, Weiss says. “It answers the much bigger question of, ‘Is my money helping me lead a more fulfilling and enriching life?’”

It’s also a part of your overall wellness, which the Global Wellness Institute defines as “the active pursuit of activities, choices, and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.”type: embedded-entry-inline id: 01FvcQ1aU62AtqjJa3fSig There are two key parts of that definition: 1) Wellness isn’t a static state. It’s something you’re always working toward. 2) It’s holistic, extending beyond physical health.

Money-related stress can play a big factor in your wellness. That’s why financial wellness can be a useful framework for approaching money problems, helping to turn your finances into something empowering rather than holding you back.

“Financial planning and the process of improving our financial wellness is about finding freedom from financial worry and stress, aligning our money with our values, navigating every decision with clarity and confidence, and putting ourselves in control of the lives we want to live,” Weiss says.

How can you achieve financial wellness?

Reaching financial wellness starts with your emotional relationship with money.

“Our beliefs, values, attitudes, and emotions around money can either be an inhibitor or a catalyst to our financial health,” Weiss says. “Understanding the psychology of money (how you think, feel, and act) can be a critical first step to finding calm and making decisions with greater clarity and confidence.”

Understanding why you exhibit certain financial behaviors can be important for addressing them. For example, some people overspend because of stress related to their work or family lives. Other people inherit overly restrictive money habits from their parents. 

Even if you’re more financially literate than most people, your emotions can play a big unconscious role in your decisions. That’s why it can help to have an outside voice, like a certified financial planner, to help you assess your options.

Once you understand the emotional drivers behind your money decisions, and you can approach your finances without stress, then you can tackle practical matters like making sure you spend less than you make, building an emergency fund, and reimagine the role money plays in your life. 

Prioritizing financial wellness

Traditional financial planners often focus strictly on investments and retirement, Weiss says. Facet financial planners look at everything in life that money touches in ways that support “your beliefs, your values, and the life you want to live,” he says. 

That includes protecting what you gain along the way with insurance.

“Insurance is an essential element to any financial plan and it ensures you can protect your health, your wealth, and the people you care about the most,” Weiss says.

And just like overall wellness, financial wellness is an “active pursuit.”

“Much like how physical health isn’t achieved by going to the gym one time, financial wellness is only achieved through an ongoing process that leads to a healthier financial lifestyle,” Weiss says. The approach will change and grow along your finances and your life, he adds.

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Changes in demographics

Older households have a disproportionate amount of wealth in the United States.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 4Mi8Cbocv6eXWyNYXlbGB7 And older, wealthier households don’t need as much life insurance because they have more savings and don’t need it to stretch as far, says Puneet Prakash, professor and chair of the risk management and insurance program at Missouri State University.  

On the other hand, many younger people are struggling with student debt and affording homes, making life insurance less of a priority.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2uhaZWJJlZFR7RKOx2h858

“Young folks typically don’t have the money,” Prakash says.

Having children is one of the biggest triggers for buying life insurance, but young people are putting that off. Census data shows many Americans are having children later.type: embedded-entry-inline id: 1pPqY3PjYFLev57E08jnoR

Changes in tax laws

In its heyday, life insurance was a popular vehicle for tax-advantaged savings. “People used to have life insurance for purposes of estate planning,” Prakash adds.

Life insurance proceeds are typically not subject to taxation. But the size of the exemption from the estate tax increased drastically in 2018, meaning only the wealthiest estates have to pay. 

And since the 1970s, new ways of saving money without paying taxes have emerged, like 529 plans, health savings accounts, and Roth individual retirement accounts, giving people specialized ways to save tax-free for education, medical expenses, and retirement, respectively. 

Changes in how life insurance is sold

A large and growing percentage of life insurance sales are handled by independent agents,type: embedded-entry-inline id: 2apzCx8C8ZEF6GAdtV68SL meaning agents who can sell products from multiple insurance companies. Most of the population, Prakash says, “doesn’t have access to these agents, or brokers, or financial planners.” 

These agents tend to work with wealthier clients. That explains why, even as the percentage of the population covered by life insurance has dropped, the face value of active life insurance policies has held steady, hitting a high of $21.2 trillion in 2021.type: embedded-entry-inline id: yByGHctvY885OerizYyaP

“Even though the number of policies sold has steadily declined, the dollar amount of coverage has actually gone up,” Prakash says. “That tells you it’s only the high-net-worth individuals who are buying this.”

Even as the number of active life insurance policies has dropped, their face value has reached new heights, as data from the American Council of Life Insurers shows.

Why you need life insurance — even if you’re not rich

Many people don’t grasp the repercussions of going without life insurance, says Anna Sergunina, a certified financial planner and CEO of MainStreet Financial Planning. 

“In my experience working with clients, I have observed that many individuals lack a clear understanding of the reasons why they need insurance, how insurance functions, and what type of life insurance policy is most suitable for them,” she says. 

Many people end up settling for “bare minimum” policies provided by their employers, which are often limited in their coverage amounts. You also probably won’t get to keep it if you lose your job. 

In general, anyone who has shared debts or has someone who depends on their income should consider getting life insurance coverage. Delaying can be costly, since life insurance rates tend to increase with age.

Kevin Brady, a certified financial planner and vice president of Wealthspire Advisors, agrees that insurance agents have gone away from selling cheaper term life policies and toward selling more expensive whole life policies to wealthier clients.

“However, that is not to say that life insurance is not needed,” Brady says. “I do believe that there is a huge need for the death benefit protection it provides; it’s just that the coverage is often best provided by cheaper term life insurance.”

High-net-worth households aren’t the only ones that can benefit from life insurance. In fact, people with less wealth should probably have more insurance coverage because they aren’t as able to deal with financial risks. Brady says anyone who is the breadwinner in a single-income household, and who has dependent children needs to have life insurance. 

Even younger couples without children should consider buying term life insurance, Brady says.

“Everyone is different, but health issues can pop up out of nowhere,” he says.

Image: Cavan Images / Getty