Towns eye FEMA program, lower insurance rates

With the start date of the new Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps looming, towns throughout the Bayshore are turning to a voluntary federal program that could potentially lower insurance rates for residents.

Four municipalities along the Raritan Bay are in various stages of entering the Community Rating System, said Rich Einhorn, regional CRS coordinator. The federal program rewards municipalities for taking pro-active measures against flooding with discounted rates on flood insurance.

These measures range from offering information about flooding on a municipal website to having lower density zoning in flood plains, according to the CRS website. Communities are given points for how well they comply with the goals. For each 500 points, towns get a 5-percent discount.

Five towns tied for the lowest score in New Jersey with a six, good for a 20-percent discount on flood insurance rates. In the county, Bradley Beach had the best score with a seven. Roselle, Calif., is the only town in the program's 18-year history to reach the lowest possible score, which comes with a 45-percent discount.

In 2008, FEMA unveiled redistricted flood maps in the region, which pinpoint areas that have at least a 1 percent chance of flooding each year. The new maps will add thousands of residents into the zones when they go into effect Sept. 25. Most of those are in Middletown and Keansburg, but Hazlet and Union Beach residents would be affected as well.

Federal law mandates that mortgaged homes in these zones must be covered by flood insurance. If homeowners do not have flood insurance when the maps go into effect, their mortgage companies will buy it for them and pass along the costs, officials have said.

Since the redistricting began, Aberdeen, Hazlet and Oceanport have completed their applications for the program, Einhorn said. Once an agent assesses their level of compliance, they will be given a score and officially enrolled in the program by May 2010, Einhorn said.

Middletown is currently applying for the program, and Sea Bright is working to improve its rating, which currently does not warrant lower rates, he said.

"They are all related to us coming out with the new maps. We talk about the CRS, so the word is out there," he said.

If accepted, the municipalities would join Bradley Beach, Manasquan, Spring Lake and Union Beach as the only participating towns in the county. In FEMA's Region II, which oversees New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, only 75 communities participate.

Einhorn said the biggest detriment to the program is that it requires a great deal of coordination on a town's part to document and add all the goals. Generally, someone has to get many existing departments to release information and commit to projects, such as having road elevations certified. Towns that go above and beyond the minimum are generally rewarded with more points, he said.

"As you can see, it's not made for everybody. For communities with a lot of flood insurance policies, it makes a lot of political sense," Einhorn said.

Health Insurance Rose Five Times Faster

A national advocacy group says health insurance premiums rose five times faster than earnings in Illinois from 2000 to 2009. More details are scheduled for release Thursday in a report from Families USA, a group working to expand health care coverage.

The group based its findings on federal data. The cost of health insurance is outpacing inflation, driven by the rising cost of medical care. Congress is considering several bills that aim to restrain costs and cover the uninsured. But benefits consultants have said if any reform is passed this year, it won't have a major effect for a few years.

Pray that you have insurance

WASHINGTON -- I am sitting here, filled with a disbelief so profound about those of my fellow citizens who don't seem to believe that we are in the grasp of horrendous health-care and insurance problems that I could scream, were not so many others screaming!

Yet, from their responses, it would seem that many Americans still don't believe we have a deadly serious dilemma. It's the old "It-can't-happen-to-me" theme, mixed up with the ridiculous idea that government can't do anything good at all. So let me offer my own personal story.

Two years ago, out of nowhere, I came down with tongue cancer, a nasty affliction that involves a 10-hour operation which leaves you with a number of thankfully treatable problems. I think the doctors were a little disappointed with me. I had never, ever smoked -- and that's the major cause for tongue cancer (never chewed tobacco, either). I was a moderate social drinker and an avid exerciser.

This entire "surprise" came upon me like a tsunami. At any rate, I went through the ordeal of the operation and am now in recovery. The cancer, they say, is gone.

Everything was going quite well until, a year ago, my insurance company canceled me. It had obviously stayed up nights searching out a reason to rid itself of this tiresome journalist, and it found I was actually an independent contractor and not a regular employee.

The fact that I had paid for my own health insurance for 50 years under three employers seemed to interest no one. I was out on the street. And were there no government Medicare, that is where you would surely find me. Alms, anyone?

But thank God there was Medicare. My assistant and I worked ceaselessly through the tiresome paperwork that it takes a PhD in health insurance to figure out -- six months of COBRA, the government's interim insurance system, which cost roughly $464 a month, then finally, Medicare and, in my choice, AARP/United supplementary insurance.

Now I have to say that Medicare has been extremely efficient. Its reports are easy to read and figure out -- and apparently many others feel the same way. Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in one of his columns in The New York Times that 56 to 60 percent of people in government-run Medicare rate it a nine or 10 on a 10-point scale, and 68 percent of those in Medicare feel that their own interests are the priority, compared with only 40 percent of those in private insurance. My experience has been the same -- but then, I wasn't exactly in a place where I could argue about my choices. I had no choice at all.

Neither do Americans much younger than I, for I soon found that I was not alone. My goddaughter, diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 36, found herself having an operation in which nine of her major organs were removed. She has not lost her insurance, but she knows exactly what would happen if she did. She would really be out on the street, for at her age, she would not be eligible for Medicare or for government coverage. What health insurance company wants cancer survivors, even those doing well and in recovery, as both of us are?

Then there's the small matter of the amount you still have to pay yourself -- even with my insurance supposedly taken care of, I spent $36,000 last year of my own money for health-care expenses.

Given this background, I was deeply touched by the overarching idea behind President Barack Obama's speech last week. "It is wrong," he said, for not all Americans to have health insurance, "and nobody should be treated that way in the United States of America." And as to Wall Street, which of course is part of the health insurance moneymaking machine, "I don't want to put them out of business. . . . I just want to hold them accountable."

I sit here wondering whether those who are so perfervidly against government-run alternative health insurance care at all about those of us whom the private health-care system has treated with such errant and selfish shabbiness. Who knows? Maybe next time it will be one of them.