The Fine Print – Presented by Insure.com

It’s that season again, and I don’t mean the holidays. November is the month when deer collide regularly with motorists on interstates and back roads across the country. So insurer State Farm is warning you to watch out for our antlered friends.

The number of deer-related collisions nationwide has increased by nearly 8 percent in recent years, says our largest car insurance company, with more than 1.2 million collisions this past year alone. Two hundred people died and, if you’ve seen the side of most roads, a much larger number of deer.

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It looked like a frivolous issue. Self-proclaimed transgender person Ida Hammer, who was legally a man but wanted to be a woman, asked his health insurance company to pay for sex change surgery. His insurer, MVP Health Care, like most other health insurers, said “no.” Labeling it “a cosmetic procedure,” MVP Health twice denied his appeal.

But Ida wouldn’t take no for an answer. The 34-year-old New York City resident lined up influential supporters and threatened to sue. When Ida’s insurer learned who was backing him, it caved. (continue reading…)

It wasn’t the shot heard ’round the world, but in 2008 when stripper LeAndra Lewis was hit by a stray bullet fired during a fight in the Boom Boom Room in Columbia, S.C., the pain was felt across the country.

The bullet, which passed through her intestines, liver and pancreas, prevented LeAndra from working for quite some time. Lewis felt she was entitled to a workers compensation claim. Employers pay for workers comp to pay for injuries that employees suffer while on the job. If they cannot work, it covers their medical care and lost wages.

But a South Carolina Court of Appeals ruled that Lewis couldn’t collect. As a stripper at the bar, LeAndra worked as an “independent contractor” and was therefore ineligible to collect workers comp. And as an independent contractor myself, I sympathize. (continue reading…)

New Jersey gets more than its fair share of publicity, but it’s usually unwanted or unflattering. The Garden State has been home to The Sopranos, the award winning series about the mob, and Jersey Shore, whose mostly out-of-state resident cast makes us look like we live in a perpetual drunken stupor.

Our latest claim to fame is equally dubious. New Jersey Motor Vehicle offices are getting national attention for prohibiting residents from posing with broad toothy grins when they have their drivers’ license photos taken. We weren’t the first to do this, but we can take credit for blaming it on auto insurance. (continue reading…)

Almost a year ago my accountant told me that I should purchase a variable annuity —  which is an insurance contract based on the ever-changing stock market — from Prudential Financial. I would make a lump-sum payment to Prudential, which would pay me back with interest at a future time, usually at retirement.

A key component of this variable annuity was its “highest day” feature. My money would grow at a rate of 5 percent of the highest day that the market closed during the time in which I owned the annuity, until I began to withdraw funds.

Ultimately I decided not to purchase it. I figured that I’d have to pay Prudential a yearly fee to manage this money when I could manage it for free myself; variable annuities generally have too many bells and whistles, and since the market wasn’t going to rise dramatically, I assumed that variable annuities had seen better days. (continue reading…)