One of the questions we are frequently asked is, “How can you offer low prices?”
Our answer is simple. We work with a multitude of insurance companies and we shop around to get the best value for the types of coverage you need. We will look for discounts including bundling packages and other applicable discounts based on the types of policies you need. Here’s the list of companies we work with:
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ACE
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Allianz GSC Marine
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Allied Insurance Group
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AMTrust
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American Bankers – Flood
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Arrowhead
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BHHC – Berkshire Hathaway Homestate
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Chartis
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Chubb
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CIG – Capital Insurance Group
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CNA
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Commerce West
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Deans & Homer
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Employers Insurance Group
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EMC – Employers Mutual Casualty
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Encompass
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Everest National
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Financial Pacific
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Fireman’s Fund
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First American Specialty
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Foremost
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GMAC Insurance
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Golden Eagle
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Great American – Non-Profit
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Guard Insurance Group
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Guide One
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Hanover Insurance Group
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Hartford Insurance Group
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ICW – Insurance Company of the West
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ILM- Indiana Lumbermens Mutual
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Kemper – Personal Lines
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Liberty Mutual Middle Market
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Magna Carta
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Majestic
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Markel Risk Solutions
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MetLife Auto & Home
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MGAlive
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Midwest Insurance
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Nationwide Ag
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Navigators
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NIAC-Nonprofit’s Insurance Alliance of Calif.
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One Beacon
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Oregon Mutual
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Philadelphia
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Preferred Employers
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QBE Agri Insurance
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Republic Indemnity
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Safeco
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Seneca
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Sequoia
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State Compensation Ins. Fund
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Titan-( Victoria Insurance)
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TOPA
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Travelers
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Unigard Insurance Group
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Zenith
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Zurich
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Contact us if you are in need for car insurance, homeowners insurance, or commercial insurance. We will work hard for you to get the best price possible for your needs.
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Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
Let Scurich Insurance Services know if you are a Happy Customer!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
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Whether your friend or family member is newly diagnosed or in the midst of treatment, she’s unlikely to be wowed by vague offers or having to do your thinking for you. She has enough on her mind; she has cancer. She may not want that tuna casserole or to hear about what treatment your Aunt Phyllis had either.
So how can you help? There is no one-size-fits-all answer. That’s why we turned to survivors for our list of support dos and don’ts. Our patient-generated advice is sorted into three stages — Diagnosis, Surgery & Treatment, andRecovery — identified by Maureen Broderick, a licensed clinical social worker who has worked with cancer patients and run cancer support groups. Here’s what you need to know.
Learn To Listen
“One of the most important ways a friend supported me was by listening to me as I decided what to do,” says Orinda, Calif. writer Victoria Irwin, 57, who had a lumpectomy and radiation earlier this year. “When I was in decision-making mode, it’s all I could think about or talk about. My friend listened to me over and over again. I think she learned more than she ever wanted to, and she helped me formulate the questions I needed to ask at doctor’s appointments,” she says. “She didn’t give advice, but acknowledged the difficulty of the situation. That listening was the most helpful thing she could have done.”
Be An Advocate
A year after having a stroke, New Jersey homemaker Florence Tweel, 55, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her first concern was her children, who were 12 and 15.
“I needed all of my strength to focus on how I was going to get through this and tell my children,” Tweel says. “I was lucky to have a friend, Linda, who went with me to every appointment. She wouldn’t let me out of her sight. It wasn’t my job to understand anything that was being told to me medically because she took notes on it and we’d go back to her husband, who is a doctor, to get advice.” Linda’s support gave Tweel the energy to be at her best with her family and get the treatment she needed. “She was a Godsend,” she says.
Follow Online
A great way to help a breast cancer patient is to visit their page on a site like Mylifeline.org, Caringbridge.org, Lotsahelpinghands.com, or Carepages.com(or help them set one up if they don’t have one). Such sites let people (or friends or family) build private or public communities where patient updates and schedules can be shared, says Broderick.
People can ask for and get the kind of help they really want and need. Survivor Anne Steele, 51, Hermosa Beach, California, who had chemo, a lumpectomy, and radiation, for example, liked having companions with her during chemo while Victoria Irwin, who spent her chemo time in solitary pursuits like reading, preferred to save friends’ graciousness for another time.
Read more here.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Website | Facebook | Blog | LinkedIn
Information provided by: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/how-to-help-breast-cancer-patients_n_4031150.html
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The average price for basic health coverage purchased on health insurance exchanges created by President Barack Obama’s health care reform law will be $249 a month, not counting subsidies, in 48 states reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a government report published Wednesday.
The health insurance exchanges, marketplaces for uninsured people and consumers who don’t get health benefits from their employers, are scheduled to launch on Oct. 1 for an enrollment period that runs through the end of March for 2014 coverage. This latest analysis of what the health insurance plans will cost comes just six days before people will be able to find out what they’ll actually pay.
“For millions of Americans, these new options will finally make health insurance work within their budget,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday. Reporters were provided access to the report prior to its publication.
The figures released by the Department of Health and Human Services represent averages and prices will vary widely by geographic location as well as family size, age, tobacco use and income. Even the average price of a so-called bronze plan, designed to cover 60 percent of medical expenses not counting monthly premiums, masks big variation. The average price of the cheapest bronze plan in Minnesota is $144 while in Wyoming, comparable coverage costs $425 on average, not including subsides.
For people who currently are uninsured and who qualify for financial assistance or enrollment in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, the average prices look to be low: 56 percent of uninsured will be able to get coverage for less than $100 a month per person, Gary Cohen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, said during the conference call.
Read more here.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Website | Facebook | Blog | LinkedIn
Information provided by: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/obamacare-premiums_n_3984979.html?ir=Impact&utm_campaign=092513&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-impact&utm_content=Title
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Washington (CNN) — With one vote on Friday, the Republican-led House launched the latest spending battle in Congress — one that could bring a government shutdown in less than two weeks.
By a 230-189 tally almost strictly on party lines, the House passed a short-term government spending plan that would eliminate all funding for Obamacare.
The measure now goes to the Democratic-led Senate, which is certain to reject the provision that defunds President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement of his first term.
Even though House Republicans now have voted 42 times to repeal or otherwise undermine Obamacare, Speaker John Boehner and fellow Republicans held a brief victory rally after Friday’s action and challenged the Senate to follow their lead.
“The American people don’t want the government shut down, and they don’t want Obamacare,” the Ohio Republican said to applause and cheers. “The House has listened to the American people. Now it’s time for the United States Senate to listen to them as well.”
In a display of the raw politics of the battle, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia called out Senate Democrats facing re-election next year by name, asking how Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Kay Hagan of North Carolina will vote on the House proposal.
“It’s up to Senate Democrats to follow House Republicans and show some responsibility,” Cantor said.
Later Friday, Obama accused conservative Republicans of holding the nation hostage by trying to make passing a federal budget and increasing the debt ceiling contingent on defunding health care reforms.
“You don’t have to threaten to blow the whole thing up if you don’t get your way,” Obama said in a campaign-style speech at a Ford plant in the Kansas City, Missouri area, adding that legislators in Washington were focused on politics and “trying to mess with me,” rather than helping the middle class.
In legislative jargon, the House passed a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded for the first 11 weeks of the fiscal year that begins October 1. Without some kind of spending measure by then, parts of the government would have to curtail services or shut down.
Conservatives tie Obamacare to budget talks
The controversy involves the provision demanded by the GOP’s conservative wing and agreed to by Boehner that eliminates all funding for the 2010 health care reforms popularly known as Obamacare.
Approval by the House set in motion a Capitol Hill showdown that will continue through October, when the nation’s debt ceiling must be increased so the government can pay all its bills.
The two-stage process includes the possible government shutdown at the end of the current fiscal year on September 30 if there is no compromise on a spending resolution, followed by a potentially even more rancorous debate over raising the debt ceiling.
Cantor said Friday the House would consider a one-year debt ceiling measure next week that contains other conservative-backed proposals, expected to include postponing implementation of Obamacare for a year and approving the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada.
Obama, however, rejected playing politics with the debt ceiling, which is the limit for how much the federal government can borrow to pay bills it owes.
“This is not a deadbeat nation. We don’t run out on our tab,” the president said, calling even the threat of not raising the debt ceiling “the height of irresponsibility.”
He also made a point of telling the auto workers that raising the debt ceiling “doesn’t cost a dime” and “does not add a penny to our deficits.”
“All it says is, you gotta pay for what Congress already said we’re spending money on,” Obama said, adding that “if you don’t do it, we could have another financial crisis.”
Tea party conservatives who have pledged to fight implementation of Obamacare consider the current budget debate their last major chance to undermine it, because the brunt of the new system takes effect with the start of fiscal year 2014 on October 1.
They demand a halt to funding all programs from the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and they seem indifferent about forcing a government shutdown if that doesn’t happen.
“I will do everything necessary and anything possible to defund Obamacare,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said Thursday, threatening a filibuster and “any procedural means necessary.”
However, more moderate Republicans in the Democratic-led Senate call the defunding effort a waste of time.
Veteran GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona told CNN on Thursday that because of the chamber’s Democratic majority, “we will not repeal or defund Obamacare” in the Senate “and to think we can is not rational.”
In addition, the White House said Thursday that Obama would veto the House spending resolution defunding Obamacare if it reaches his desk.
An earlier compromise proposed by Boehner and fellow GOP House leaders to their conservative wing would have allowed a symbolic vote on the defunding provision that the Senate would then strip out.
The result would have been what legislators call a “clean” final version that simply extended current levels of government spending for about two months of the new fiscal year, allowing time for further negotiations on the debt ceiling.
However, conservative opposition to the compromise made Boehner agree to a tougher version that made overall government funding contingent on eliminating money for Obamacare.
Moderate Republicans question the strategy, but fear a right-wing backlash in the 2014 primaries if they go against the conservative wing.
In reference to the divisions in the House, McCain said it is “pretty obvious that (Boehner) has great difficulties within his own conference.”
On the House floor on Friday, legislators warned of the serious consequences of a government shutdown. The last shutdown, which occurred during the Clinton administration more than 17 years ago, comprised a total of 28 days and cost the nation more than $1 billion, according to congressional researchers.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the intent of the Republican measure is to shut down the government, calling it a “wolf in wolf’s clothing.”
GOP Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said “a government shutdown is a political game in which everyone loses.”
“It shirks one of our most basic duties as members of Congress and it puts our national security at stake,” he added.
Republicans said the House vote showed bipartisan support for defunding Obamacare because two Democrats backed the GOP resolution — Reps. Jim Matheson of Utah and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina.
Meanwhile, Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia was the lone Republican to break ranks with his caucus by voting against it.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada made clear on Thursday that any plan to defund Obamacare would be dead on arrival. Instead, the Senate is expected to strip the measure of all provisions defunding Obamacare and send it back to the House.
“They’re simply postponing an inevitable choice they must face,” Reid said of House Republicans.
Boehner would then have to decide whether to put it to a vote, even though that could undermine his already weakened leadership position by having the measure pass with only a few dozen moderate Republicans joining Democrats in support.
If he refuses to bring the Senate version to the floor for a vote, a shutdown would ensue.
“Will he act as the captain of the entire House of Representatives or remain a captive of his right wing Republican mates?” asked Democratic Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan. “Will he, as he acts, worry mainly about the risk to his speakership or the risk to our entire nation? House Republicans taking the ship over the cliff would take the nation’s economic well-being with it.”
Polls showing a decrease in public support for the health care reforms embolden the Republican stance. Meanwhile, Democratic resolve is bolstered by surveys showing most people oppose a government shutdown and more would blame Republicans if it happens.
Shutdown scenario
Voices across the political spectrum warn against a shutdown, including Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Republican strategist Karl Rove.
“Even the defund strategy’s authors say they don’t want a government shutdown. But their approach means we’ll get one,” Rove argued in an op-ed published Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Website | Facebook | Blog | LinkedIn
Information provided by: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/20/politics/congress-spending-showdown/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
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(Reuters) – Technical glitches still plague the display of new healthcare plans to be offered to millions of uninsured Americans starting in 26 days, including how medical charges and deductibles are listed, industry officials say.
Health insurers planning to sell policies to people who are currently uninsured, under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, say they expect the problems will be remedied by October 1, when consumers will be able to buy health insurance from state exchanges. On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead Obamacare agency, said it was on schedule to sign final agreements with insurers between September 9 and September 11, allowing them to sell specific policies on the exchanges.
“Our timeline remains the same,” said CMS in a statement, “and we are working to ensure that any issues are resolved before open enrollment.”
Although the signing of agreements with insurers is a mere two days behind the original schedule, it led to speculation that there were serious technical snags. Late last week a conference call between the government’s information technology contractors and insurance industry representatives revealed some of those problems, which centered on how information about health plans, such as charges for medical claims and deductibles, was displayed on a “preview” website, according to people with knowledge of the call.
An official from Florida Blue, a large insurer, was concerned that a health policy it plans to sell on the state’s exchange would mislead customers: The preview website showed no charge at all for some medical services, rather than no charge after a deductible is met.
An Aetna staffer was frustrated that policies the company once intended to sell in Ohio, but withdrew, were still showing up in the preview site. Delta Dental of Wyoming reported that its plan was showing zero deductible in policies that cover parents plus children.
“That will be misleading if it pops up as a zero deductible and will put us on the hook if they go to the dentist” and expect not to pay a deductible, a Delta Dental staffer said on the call, according to a participant. “We’re concerned about that.”
The insurance exchanges, the heart of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will allow residents of each state to seek subsidized health coverage. The government aims to sign up 7 million people in the first year. That number is expected to grow to 22 million in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Carriers were sanguine the snafus would get addressed.
“We knew there would be IT issues going in,” said Kerry Hall, chief executive of Delta Dental of Wyoming, in an interview. “We made a business decision to be in the exchange for the people of Wyoming, and we’ve very optimistic that CMS will get this resolved.”
Aetna spokesman Matt Wiggin said his company was also confident the problems would be fixed.
IT experts said the problems should be familiar to anyone who has had to deal with an elaborate tech rollout at work, including the sometimes unsatisfying interaction with a dedicated “help desk.”
“It’s classic,” said Rick Howard of technology consultant Gartner, which is not an exchange contractor. “When you have these large IT projects, it comes down to not having enough time to prioritize issues based on severity. If you go live with this knowing you have glitches, consumers may make decisions based on false information.”
ONLINE ONSLAUGHT
For months it has been clear that IT would be both the backbone and the Achilles heel of the Obamacare exchanges. Although people will be able to buy health coverage by phone and through paper applications, most are expected to do so online. Almost everyone will seek information for policies at the website being created for their state’s exchange.
As a result, if any issue could delay the start of the six-month open-enrollment period next month, experts have said, tech glitches would be it. A report last month by the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services warned that HHS was months behind the schedule it originally set in testing IT security.
The problems in displaying insurance information affect exchanges being built by the federal government in 34 states. Only some states were discussed on the IT conference call.
Another 16 states and the District of Columbia are responsible for their own exchanges. Among those, Oregon has said it would limit access to its exchange to residents working with an insurance broker or a state-trained “navigator” during the first few weeks of October to iron out any technical bugs. California is considering a similar approach.
Administration officials last week would not specify what IT or other issues caused HHS to push back the deadline for final approval of policies. But the IT call last Friday underlined the frustration of some carriers as they race to prepare for the launch.
Some insurance company representatives said they had asked repeatedly for errors to be corrected and still have numerous outstanding requests with the exchange help desk, according to people with knowledge of the discussion. Others said incorrect rates for certain services were on display.
After some two hours of such complaints, a federal IT representative on the call said: “I hear your frustration, and we’re doing all we can.”
Contact Scurich Insurance Services to see how we can help.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Information provided by: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-usa-healthcare-technology-idUSBRE98405E20130905
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When the Obama administration said it would delay the health reform law’s requirement that employers insure their workers or face a fine, its critics began to wonder what else might get delayed. The law’s big new piece of infrastructure—the online insurance marketplaces scheduled to go live Oct. 1—involves coordinating a massive trove of information technology and a ton of personnel training. So the doubters, reveling in the recent bad news, have begun casting doubt on the whole enterprise.
Not so fast. The employer mandate was one of many ancillary provisions—not critical to Obamacare’s central mission—that the administration has jettisoned in its race to build the exchanges in time. But signing people up for new insurance plans and giving them tax credits to do so is the main idea. It will take a major calamity for the administration to delay this crucial piece of the law. The exchanges may not work smoothly in the early months, but the administration will hit the deadline, says Dan Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a consultancy helping states build their exchanges. “Worst-case scenario: October 1, all exchanges open up.”
Administration officials are repeating earlier promises of an on-time launch. “The marketplaces will be ready,” Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said Thursday in a typical statement. “We are on schedule with the testing that began in October 2012. Any discussion to the contrary is pure speculation.” And while administration officials didn’t hint at problems with the employer system until the surprise delay, the marketplaces are different. The core goal of the Affordable Care Act is to bring health insurance to those who don’t have it, and the law’s long-term success will be judged on how many new people get covered. That’s a reality with both practical and political consequences, and the people setting it up know that. “There will be a Web portal, and there will be call centers, and they will enroll people in products and put them on tax credits,” says Cindy Gillespie, senior managing director at McKenna Long & Aldridge. “That’s going to happen. How smoothly the eligibility process works? Who knows. But it will be made to work.”
Building the exchanges has proven a heavy lift. To make them work, the federal government needs not only a consumer-facing website and call centers stocked with customer-service representatives in 34 states but also a brand-new, complex IT structure to make the system work across the country. The law says that when an applicant enters her information online, various federal agencies must validate her income, citizenship status, residency, and eligibility for Medicaid. The portal must also connect to the Veterans Administration, the Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Peace Corps. Plus, it needs to communicate with every health plan selling insurance in each state.
It’s still unclear just how ready these digital systems will be on Day One and how much is already being done to mitigate the inevitable glitches. The administration has remained tight-lipped about the operational details. That has frustrated states and insurers, both of which need to connect to the new under-construction system. “From where I sit, it’s hard to monitor their progress on the data hub, because it is a black box until it either works or doesn’t work,” says Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere Health and a former official at the Office of Management and Budget.
Indeed, a Government Accountability Office report last month said that while HHS had been hitting internal IT milestones, the volume of work to be completed was too large for GAO to assess the likelihood that systems would work in time. “Whether … contingency planning will assure the timely and smooth implementation of the exchanges by October 2013 cannot yet be determined,” according to the report. States and health plans have begun testing some data exchange with the federal hub. But states have been testing “clean” data, meaning that every name is spelled perfectly and every Social Security number is entered correctly. Ultimately, the data hub will need to identify people and their information even with typos and errors.
Still, while the public deadline is Oct. 1, HHS and its contractors will realistically have a little extra time to fix IT problems. The insurance plans won’t go live until January, leaving a cushion if parts of the system have to default to paper, or if delays arise in processing applications. Cheryl Smith, a senior practitioner at Deloitte, worked on the Utah small-business health exchange, which launched in 2009. Before the open-enrollment deadline, “I had holes in my stomach,” she says. “We got to that day and I realized, this is not really the launch.” As long as the website goes live in October and people have new insurance plans in January, the administration will have kept its key promises.
In the meantime, administration officials and their allies are working to get the word out about the new systems. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters this week she would be in a new city nearly every week this summer explaining the exchanges. Television ads are running, and smaller, targeted outreach efforts have launched. That’s a big job, too, because most people without insurance don’t know what Obamacare offers them. The better these outreach efforts work, the greater the imperative to launch on time.
Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924. Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs. Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy? Give us a call, we can help!
We are located at:
Scurich Insurance Services
320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666
Information provided by: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/obamacare-delay-what-obamacare-delay-20130711
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