Crop insurance payouts may come at a cost

Crop Insurance

As the planting season edges nearer in 2013, Nebraska is among the states that have collected the most. Among all of the states in the country, Nebraska is one of the six in which its farmers have collected crop insurance payouts worth over $1 billion due to damage that was caused by the drought last year. That disastrous growing season led to over $12.3 billion in payouts as of Monday. However, the most recent statistics that have been released by the Risk Management Agency of the federal government has also…

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Tornadoes in Oklahoma and Kansas claim lives and cause damage to property

Oklahoma-tornado-insurance-news

Damages from recent tornadoes that ripped through Oklahoma and Kansas. Powerful tornadoes tore through the states of Kansas and Oklahoma over the weekend, causing significant damage to businesses and homes as well as claiming lives. The National Weather Service claims that the weather system responsible for the disasters created more tornadoes in one day than either Kansas or Oklahoma would normally see in the month of April. Insurers have been working in cities affected by the tornadoes, hoping to mitigate any further damage and to process claims quickly to help…

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Nebraska legislators prepare to fight for new cancer insurance bill

Nebraska lawmakers are set to wrestle over a new cancer insurance bill that is coming to the Legislature. The bill concerns the use of chemotherapy pills and other such medications and whether or not insurance companies will have to provide coverage for these treatments. Typically, insurers provide coverage for cancer treatments given intravenously, but do not cover oral medications. In some cases, oral treatments are effective in stopping cancer, but insurers have claimed that coverage for this type of medication would be too expensive for both consumers and insurance companies.…

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Nebraska to withdraw from Nonadmitted Insurance Multistate Agreement later this year

The Nebraska Department of Insurance has announced that it will be withdrawing from the Nonadmitted Insurance Multistate Agreement (NIMA). The agreement is designed to allow participant states to allocate funds collected through premium taxes paid by insurance organizations. States participating in NIMA are meant to pool these funds, which can then be accessed by participants for a number of purposes. Nebraska regulators have chosen to opt-out of the agreement because it does not align with the state’s own laws and timetables regarding new federal changes to taxes and health insurance.…

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Nebraska health insurance exchange needs 100k enrollees to be sustainable

The Nebraska Insurance Department has issued a new report to state lawmakers concerning the state’s health insurance exchange. Nebraska has been exploring its options on how best to execute the exchange program, hoping to find a way for the program to benefit both consumers and insurance companies. The state has yet to make any definitive action on the program apart from investigating how much it will cost and how it can be made self-sustaining. The new report may cast some doubt on the future of the program. According to the…

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