Mental Health Care Improvements

In the wake of recent shootings, the nation is taking a closer look at mental health care and how it is being handled. The current mental health system in the United States is lacking to say the least, preventing millions of people dealing with psychological issues from receiving the proper treatment. U.S. mental health experts urge lawmakers to fill these gaps in the health care system, pointing out that not receiving treatment can result in violent behavior as we saw in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

People with serious mental illnesses often fall through the gaps in our current health care system. According to Rick Cagen, executive director of the Kansas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one-third of people who need help don’t get it in time to avert a crisis. Experts nationwide are calling on policymakers to get better funding for early treatment.

At a hearing Thursday, January 24^th, Democrats and Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee met to address these gaps in health care and also urged the Obama administration to speed up revisions on the mental health care agenda.  With the passing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, individuals suffering from mental illness should have better access to health insurance that covers mental health and substance abuse treatments.

Several other provisions of the health care reform law are also meant to help people with mental illness, including:

• Prevention programs

• Insurance plan for long-term community care

• Reauthorization of SCHIP, the children’s state health insurance program

• Improvements to Medicare’s drug benefits

Many states are also taking legislation into their own hands. Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota released a proposal this week calling for counties to pay a larger share of the cost for patients receiving long term psychiatric care at two mental illness facilities. Counties are currently paying ten percent of treatment costs for residents, while Dayton’s proposal would increase that to fifty percent.

Should OFT approval require moneysavingexpert.com to be regulated by the Press Complaints Commission?

Martin Lewis, who last week sold his editorial business to FSA authorised and regulated Moneysupermarket.com Group plc, spent £1 million on the deal in legal fees. Much of this seems to have been spent on hammering out a 15 point so called editorial code, according to Lewis, who has been posting in defence of his sale on his forum.

Lewis’s editorial code is not the official Editor’s Code being picked over at the Leveson Inquiry. This code is administered by the Press Complaints Commission. The printed media and their websites (with the exception of Northern & Shell) pay a voluntary levy to the PCC  which hears complaints from the public against the press about inaccurate or misleading articles, invasions of privacy and other matters.

Rather than sign up to the PCC for a relatively small fee Lewis has instead spent a vast sum drawing up a private code of his own. It seems an extraordinary amount for a man who refuses to pay over the odds for a can of cola.

Lewis, whose appears on Wikipedia as a financial journalist, has always considered himself as such and his business an editorial one, with the freedom of the press. Asked by the chair of the Treasury Select Committee in 2010 who regulated him, Lewis said it was nobody. ‘ I am a financial journalist and regulation of the media is an interesting one,’ he said. In 2009, he corrected the Committee which seemed to think his business was a price comparison website: ‘We are not actually a price comparison site, we are an editorial site,’ he told MPs.In 2008, appearing on Channel 4 News, he corrected Jon Snow’s misunderstanding about his business: ‘No Jon I think you are misunderstanding I have an editorial website’.

Now that his editorial business with its access to press information and the public through national broadcasters (*) is owned by a price comparison website, is it time the public had an independent regulator to complain to, even a feeble one like the PCC?

Lewis told the BBC his code has the power to fine Moneysupermarket.com a seven figure penalty for breach. The PCC lacks even the ability to fine. But is all this talk about paying lawyers a million pounds and seven figure fines preparatory work aimed at impressing the OFT, which has to approve the merger, when what such an influential media business needs is independent regulation?

Learning From Mistakes

It doesn’t matter which industry you’re in or what your profession or trade is, when you run your own business, there is one thing you will make plenty of on regular basis. Mistakes.


You can expect accidents and you can expect to do things the wrong way. For the more serious stuff that you can’t control, you can cover yourself with something like  public liability insurance, employers’ liability insurance or any number of different packages designed to protect against the common mishaps of your industry. For the stuff that is completely your fault and not so easily insured, there’s only really one solution. The best thing you can possibly do is take a deep breath, keep a mental note of your mistake and move on.

Blame culture
When something goes wrong, and it frequently does, there is a very natural urge to find out exactly why something has gone wrong and who is to blame. There is nothing wrong with this – establishing why something has gone wrong and identifying the mistake itself is incredibly important. Finding out who is responsible is equally important and a part of that process, but what is a bad move however is turning that into a jingoistic witch-hunt. Automatically dismissing whoever is to blame for something going wrong is also rarely the best course of action.

Unless someone has been very consciously negligent or acted illegally, dismissing them for making a mistake can be incredibly damaging. First of all, people learn from mistakes and the individual who has just done something wrong is unlikely to make the same mistake twice. Their replacement on the other hand might.

Secondly, bear in mind that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone – including all of your other employees and suppliers. If you are seen to automatically dismiss people for making mistakes, how likely do you think it is that others will own up to their subsequent errors? You might get a few honest and honour-bound types confessing to their mistakes, but the vast majority of slip ups will merely be swept under the rug away from your gaze which in the long term could be much more damaging. Sooner or later there could be a business critical slip-up that your staff is determined to hide from you out of fear.

Learning and adapting
You don’t want to encourage recklessness or carelessness, but you do want to encourage an environment where people keep you informed with what’s going on. When you run a small business, it is your job to know what is going on so you can do something about it. A mistake tends to be a very rapid learning experience and can almost be argued as a beneficial training exercise in the long run.

Some accidents are thrust upon you. There is nothing you can do about them except for prepare with an adequate insurance policy and a wider reaching business continuity plan. Other accidents however can be prevented from happening again in the future by learning from your mistakes.

Home Insurer Doesn't Pay Up after £30000 Party

It may be the season to be jolly, but if your home was invaded by 800 revelers after your teenage daughter puts out an open invitation on Facebook, don’t expect your insurer to pay for the damage.Sarah Hine, 14, posted a message on the social media site that included the party address,  and hundreds of youngsters turned up.
They smashed up furniture, broke windows, wrote on walls and punched and kicked holes in walls and ceilings, and then ripped the doors off their hinges.
Sarah’s mum, Esther, 56, says the repair bill for their Billericay, Essex, home runs to at least £30,000 and her home insurer has refused to pay out on the claim because the vandals were invited in.
Police were called by neighbours and confronted hundreds of teenagers in the street. No arrests were made.
David Rochester, head underwriter at Halifax Home Insurance said; “It’s important to remind young people about the dangers of advertising parties on social networking sites, as they can easily lose control of who and how many are attending.
“Homeowners could be left with a hefty bill for damage, as most home insurance policies do not cover malicious damage, theft or vandalism caused by guests invited into your home by you or your family.”
Rochester made some suggestions to help stop parties getting out of control:

• Limit the number of guests and never suggest it’s an open house
• Safeguard sofas and carpets with plastic protectors from DIY shops
• Switch glasses, cutlery and crockery for disposable plastic
• Don’t light the rooms with candles that can easily start a fire
• Tell smokers to light up outside

Recently, more than 1,000 party-goers turned up to a 21^st birthday bash also advertised on Facebook. Police were called to deal with complaints about noise, drunkenness and disturbances. Magistrates at St Alban’s sentenced the host to a 12 month community service order and ordered him to pay £585 costs and compensation. He also must serve an eight week curfew.

A Fifth of Landlords Don't Bother with Let Insurance

Nearly one in five property investors spurn taking out specialist buy to let insurance even though standard home insurance fails to protect letting properties.

The figure was revealed in recent survey which also discovered repairs are one of the biggest expenses for property investors at £2,848 a year and that much of the cost could be reclaimed against landlord insurance.The survey looked at landlord expenses – and found on average they pay out £8,256 a year on running private rental properties, including mortgage interest.
The study also revealed the average private landlord owns 5.3 buy to let homes and earns an average £94,000 a year.

For many, specialist landlord insurance was the next largest cost after repairs – averaging £1,329 a year or 1.4% of gross rents a year.
Landlord insurance can bundle buildings and contents cover with a rent guarantee that pays legal costs and rents while evicting problems tenants or those behind with rents.
“Landlords should always take out the right cover for their investment properties. Ordinary home insurance is not designed to cover a buy to let. Landlord insurance also offers useful add-ons, like rent protection if the letting property can’t be rented out because of an event like fire or a flood,’ said Jazz Gakhal, of Direct Line.

“Good landlord insurance also has public liability cover, sometimes called property owner’s liability insurance as standard, as a landlord could be held liable for someone injured on the property or damage to neighbouring property.”
Other landlord property business expenses that amounted to around 20% of annual running costs included letting agents fees ranging from 8.9% to 12.6%.
Tenants should speak to landlords to ensure public liability cover is in place as the insurer is likely to pay out for alternative accommodation in the event of an accident at the rental property.

Why Whiplash Doesn't Add Up

Road accident figures and insurance claims analysed together for the first time show that the number of whiplash claims are outstripping the number of injury accidents reported to the police.
Police accident statistics show a 20% rise in the number of injury accidents since 2006 – but claims for whiplash injuries have increased by 40% in the same period.
The analysis highlights that in 2011, there was an 11% fall in injury accidents reported, but a 6% increase in whiplash claims.
This raises the cost of motor insurance for all genuine customers, says the report from the Institute & Faculty of Actuaries (IFA), but notes the extra costs are not paid by motorists as average car insurance premiums fell by 7.1% in the same period.
Lawyers are blamed for the increase – with the cost of a whiplash settlement averaging £8,400.

IFA chairman David Brown said: “All of the updated data that we have collated supports the conclusion that claims management companies have had a marked effect on the number of small injury, whiplash-like, claims.”

The report says that the injuries have cost car insurers around £400 million and pinpoints Birmingham as the hot spot for fraudulent claims.

Although the number of authorised claims management companies has dropped by 5%, their turnover was up 21% to £455 million in 2011, according to figures from the Ministry of Justice.
“This is good news for the consumer, but it does raise the question of how sustainable this is for insurers,” said Brown.

Birmingham has 11 of the top 20 postcode districts originating whiplash claims. The top six were all from Birmingham, with Manchester taking the 7th, 9th and 14th positions.

The 18 postcodes with the lowest number of whiplash claims were all in Scotland, excepting one neighbourhood in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Insurance Stats

It’s easy to wonder about the point of buying insurance as car and home insurers seem to spend more time  trying to weasel their way out of paying up for claims than they actually give out.
The headlines are full of moans and groans from insurance companies about fraudulent claims, especially crash for cash accidents, personal injury claims and kerfuffle with the government over protecting flood risk homes.

Of course, the ABI is keen to tell everyone just how many claims are dealt with. The figures are for 2011 and are the latest available:

• Buildings insurance: 2.1 million claims worth £3.3 billion or £9 million a day. By average claim, this is £10,200 for fire, £1,500 for theft and £30,000 for flooding

• Car insurance: 3.2 million claims worth £7.1 billion or £19.4 million every day

• Damage to property: £1.4 billion was paid at, averaging £3.7 million a business day

• Work-related: Claims of £2.2 billion or £5.9 million a day for both workplace injuries involving staff and customers and professional indemnity cover

Skiing Insurance

Travel Insurance is essential, not optional, if you are heading off on a winter sports holiday.
Terrifying figures from AA drive home the point that taking chances on the slopes without adequate insurance could cost you a fortune.

Helicopter mountain rescue, at about £20 a minute flying time, works out at £500-£1,000 in Europe and £1,000-£2,500 in the US. Manipulation treatment of a dislocated shoulder, meanwhile, costs up to £2,000 in Europe and £10,000 in the US, while flying you back to Britain from Europe with a fractured hip can hit £10,000 and double that from North America.

Do not assume your "free" bank account insurance, or the annual policy you took out for a beach holiday, will cover you unless it specifically includes winter sports cover.

Many medical costs in Europe may be covered by the free European Health Insurance Card (Ehic), but it is not a suitable substitute for travel insurance on a winter sports trip. The Ehic will not pay to get you down off the mountain, for example, nor will it necessarily pay for all transport costs and medical treatment you may need if injured, and of course it won't cover you for lost baggage, cancellation or having to cut your holiday short.

Top tips

• Ski insurers are increasingly recommending that policyholders wear ski helmets. So far, however, Essential Travel is the only insurer to have made it mandatory for the skiers it insures.

• Keep a note of your travel policy number, emergency number and Ehic number on you, perhaps in your mobile phone. Make sure more than one person has these details if travelling in a group or as a family.

• Always abide by local rules on, for example, wearing helmets and dos and don'ts for pistes or snowboarding parks. Insurers have the right to withdraw cover if you have an accident when failing to follow local rules or skiing against local authoritative advice .

• Look after your ski equipment – if you leave it in an unattended vehicle, for example, it may mean you are uninsured, and if your equipment is stolen you need a police report in order to claim, and keep receipts where appropriate.

• If you have arranged your own holiday, rather than booking through a tour operator, check your cover is comprehensive enough for problems such as delayed departure or additional accommodation if you are unable to get home.

• When purchasing an annual policy, check if there is a limit on the winter sports cover – some may restrict it to, for example, 17 days each year.

• Be aware that insurers can refuse to pay out medical costs if you were "under the influence of alcohol" when you had an accident. It may make you think twice about having a beer or Glühwein with your lunch at the mountain cafe