West Seattle man pleads guilty to first-degree theft in insurance fraud case

Edward Charles Bailey, 59, of West Seattle, has pleaded guilty in King County Superior Court to first degree theft for committing insurance fraud.


Bailey, who reported an on-the-job back injury to his employer in 2006, was placed on temporary total disability and received disability pay from his employer’s insurer, Alaska National Insurance. Doctors subsequently ruled him unable to return to work.

Five weeks after the injury, investigators working for the insurance company videotaped Bailey working vigorously on his sailboat at a Seattle marina. The sanding, painting, climbing and moving of machinery were all contrary to the physical restrictions imposed by Bailey’s doctors, according to the Washington insurance commissioner’s Special Investigations Unit.

When shown the video, the independent medical examination doctors who had originally seen Mr. Bailey reversed their original opinion as to his ability to work.

According to the charges, Bailey was paid more than $26,000 in unnecessary medical expenses and disability benefits that he wasn’t entitled to.

Bailey's sentencing is slated for early next month.

Meanwhile, in Virginia...

An amendment has been introduced in the Virginia state legislature to ban insurers from requiring their customers:

"...to have an identification/tracking device or mark implanted or permanently or semi-permanently incorporated into the body, skin, teeth, hair, or nails of such person to track, or to aid in tracking such person."

Violations would be subject to a fine of $500, payable to that state's Literary Fund.

For the record, we here in Washington are unaware of any insurer planning to implant anything in your hair, fingernails, or anywhere else. The closest thing we've seen is a proposal from some auto insurers to allow their customers to voluntarily have devices installed in their cars to monitor how they drive (jackrabbit starts, speeding, etc.), for the purpose of giving good drivers a discount.

New online tool calculates your risks of car wrecks, burglary, wind damage, etc.

A company called Virtual Insurance Advisor has built an interesting online tool that allows you to type in a few variables (age, gender, state) to get a ballpark estimate of the risks in your life.

Example: A 35-year-old man in Washington state, according to the tool, has:

-a 1 in 43 risk of dying within 10 years
-a 1 in 15 chance of having an auto collision claim this year
-a 1 in 1023 chance of having a house fire this year
-a 1 in 250 chance of suffering major wind damage to the home
-a 1 in 1064 chance of a home burglary

and so forth. All told, there are nearly three dozen situations listed.

(Lastly, this post comes with our usual disclaimer: As Washington state's insurance regulator, we do NOT endorse any company, agent, etc. Mentioning a company's website, study, press release, etc. does not mean we're endorsing them or their products. But you knew that already.)

Insurance news: Oregon opens health insurer rate filings, new legislation re: autism coverage, and Allstate says teen girl drivers "more distracted" than boys

Health insurers filing rate requests with the state of Oregon will no longer be able to keep those requests secret, the Oregonian reports today.

In Missouri, lawmakers in the House have approved a bill to require insurers to cover treatment for autistic children. The same thing happened in the Virginia state senate.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about insurers getting involved on cancer treatments for their members. Headline: Insurer Plays Judge on Cancer Care.

And the Chicago Tribune reports on an Allstate study that concludes that, as the article puts it, "Differences between the sexes are becoming less noticeable when it comes to teenage driving. In what seems like a role reversal, girls are expressing a new need for speed, while aggressive driving and speeding by boys is down."
Here's the story, and here's the link to the study.

Percentage of uninsured motorists, by state

It's a question that our office gets periodically: What percentage of Washington drivers have no insurance?

The short answer is that we're not sure. Our office regulates insurers, agents and brokers, but not the consumers who actually buy the coverage.

But the Pennsylvania-based Insurance Research Council did an estimate, based on data collected from nine major auto insurers representing about half the private passenger auto market in the United States.

(Editor's note (2/7/2012): This post continues to get high hits, but you can find updated numbers here. Now back to the original post...)

The states with the highest percentages, the IRC estimates, are in the South. The lowest states are about evenly split between the Midwest, intermountain West and the Northeast.

The most recent report uses 2007 data. Washington came in fairly high, with an estimated 18 16 percent of drivers -- about one in six -- uninsured. Oregon and Idaho were much lower: 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively. The top two spots were Mississippi, with 28 percent, and New Mexico, with 29 percent.

Here is the IRC's breakdown of states, by percentage of uninsured drivers:


Alabama = 26%

Alaska = 13%

Arizona = 18%

Arkansas = 15%

California = 18%

Colorado = 15%

Connecticut = 9%

D.C. = 15%

Delaware = 10%

Florida = 23%

Georgia = 12%

Hawaii = 12%

Idaho = 9%

Illinois = 15%

Indiana = 14%

Iowa = 12%

Kansas = 10%

Kentucky = 16%

Louisiana = 12%

Maine = 4%

Maryland = 12%

Massachusetts = 1%

Michigan = 17%

Minnesota = 12%

Mississippi = 28%

Missouri = 14%

Montana = 15%

Nebraska = 8%

Nevada = 15%

New Hampshire = 11%

New Jersey = 8%

New Mexico = 29%

New York = 5%

North Carolina = 12%

North Dakota = 5%

Ohio = 16%

Oklahoma = 24%

Oregon = 11%

Pennsylvania = 7%

Rhode Island = 14%

South Carolina = 9%

South Dakota = 7%

Tennessee = 20%

Texas = 15%

Utah = 8%

Vermont = 6%

Virginia = 9%

Washington = 16%

West Virginia = 8%

Wisconsin = 15%

Wyoming = 9%

Note: This post was updated to correct Washington's percentage.

Insurance news: States to pick up health-reform push, health care premiums rising, and a Rhode Island atty draws scrutiny with his investment plan: annuities for the terminally ill...

 Newsweek: The health care reform trickle-down: What it means when states take things into their own hands

WA Post: With health-care reform stalled, debate heats up regarding state approaches

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story about a Rhode Island lawyer who apparently saw a sure-thing in buying annuities for the terminally ill.

WA Post: Individual insurance rates soar in 4 states
Reuters: WellPoint, facing congressional scrutiny of its premium rate increases, cancels its investor day

Kaiser Health News: interesting dispute over “Whether Health Insurance Saves Lives”

Fox News: A real solution for covering the uninsured

CBS News: Beware fake health insurance (This story references the American Trade Association, which is under fire in multiple states -- including ours -- for its health coverage offerings.)

Workerscompensation.com: WA Insurance Commissioner Fines Insurers More than $400,000 last year

Washington state fined insurers more than $400,000 last year

Washington state insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler issued more than $400,000 in fines in 2009, as well as revoking the licenses of several insurance agents.


“Most insurers and agents work hard to follow the rules, but when they drop the ball, they’re held accountable,” said Kreidler, the state’s top insurance regulator.

Kreidler’s office collected a total of $407,600 in fines in 2009. That’s considerably lower than the previous year, when the state fined insurers more than $1.2 million.

“Hopefully, it’s a sign that companies are getting better at following the rules,” said Kreidler. “The whole point of fines is to ensure that the consumer protections in state law are followed.”

Fines collected by the state insurance commissioner’s office do not go to the agency. The money is deposited in the state’s general fund to pay for other state services.

The enforcement orders are posted on the Office of the Insurance Commissioner website at http://www.insurance.wa.gov/orders/enforcement.asp. Here are some of the major ones:

 Pacificare of Washington Inc., Pacificare Life Assurance Co., and Unitedhealthcare Insurance Co., all of Mercer Island, were fined $100,000 with $60,000 suspended for failing to file health care provider contracts and changes with the state.


 Farmers Insurance Company of Washington was fined $40,000 for issuing policies that weren’t in accordance with the documents they’d filed with the state.

 Nationwide Life Insurance Co. of Minneapolis, Minn. was fined $20,000 for issuing insurance documents that had not been filed with the state, among other violations.
 Kawasaki Motors Corp. of Wilmington, Del. was fined $20,000 for selling service contracts before they had been registered in Washington.