Florida Governor Charlie Crist isn’t exactly a friend to the insurance industry — his support for maintaining artificially low rates for coastal property insurance rates have driven State Farm and others from the state. However, his signature this week on a bill prohibiting “crash taxes” was a smart move.

In May we featured an article by PCI’s William Stander on the pernicious trend of cash-strapped local governments charging drivers involved in accidents and their insurers for providing emergency response services, with bills ranging from less than $100 to more than $4,000. While this is obviously a problem for the drivers and insurers, it’s also bad news for the agents who have to explain the hidden charges to their policyholders — who already pay for this stuff through their taxes. And with so many states and municipalities hard hit by the recession, the trend was growing.

Florida’s move to end the “accident tax” makes it the eighth state to do so. It’s a smart move for someone with political ambition who recognizes that this might not be a good time to ask hard-hit Florida taxpayers — almost 10 percent of whom don’t have jobs.

A surprising item on yesterday’s newswires was an Accenture study revealing that two-thirds of the world’s biggest insurers were planning to expand operations outside of their home markets over the next 12 months, with 75 percent of respondents viewing the current economy as as opportunity for growth.

On second thought, maybe it isn’t that surprising. The study included both property-casualty and life insurers, both of which have been aware for awhile that emerging markets are where large number of people with disposable incomes have people and property to protect, some of them for the first time.

On a related note, I noticed an item about how a Bolivian unit of Zurich Financial Services is teaming up with BancoSol, a microfinance bank, to offer a form of life insurance to Bolivian emigrants in Spain. The coverages come in four forms, all based on a $10,000 coverage to return a decedent’s body to Bolivia in case of death, with annual premiums ranging from $57 to $129.

This is a pretty creative way to address a socio-economic trend: Bolivian emigration to Spain has increased dramatically throughout this decade.

There are opportunities like this right in our backyard. A recent study by the Minneapolis Foundation shows that African immigrants in the U.S. represent a growing but “largely untapped” market segment. Most of these immigrants have their own checking and savings accounts, and most have cell phones and e-mail. The results were collected from focus groups in Minneapolis, New York and Los Angeles, and surveys of African immigrants in Minnesota, California, New York and Washington, D.C.

Four grand.

That’s how much it cost me to get back surgery — for my dachshund, Keaton.

No, I’m not nuts. Both I and my living room rug are fully aware that Keaton is a dog, and I’m not the kind of person who buys him holiday-themed doggie outfits, or any outfits, for that matter. But when an animal that’s part of your family is dragging his hindquarters and unable to walk, what would you do? If he was elderly, I might have had him put to sleep, but there’s plenty of life in the old guy yet.

Pet insurance, you say? Nope. Doxies are notorious for back problems and to to top it off, Keaton is a rescue dog, so we have no idea exactly how old he is or who his parents were. Pet insurance wasn’t an option.

Animals today can get better medical treatment than people in Third World countries. The clinic that did Keaton’s surgery has 9 vets on staff, and specialties like dermatology and opthamology. They even offer acupuncture, chiropractic, herbology and water and treadmill exercises for dogs with arthritis and other conditions.

If all of this seems off topic, it might be, except for a recently released Harvard study indicating that medical bills play a role in 62 percent of bankruptcies

 (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/la-fi-medical-bankruptcy4-2009jun04,0,4495714.story).

The really scary thing is that 78 percent of those people who filed bankruptcy had health insurance, which obviously doesn’t cover everything.

Part of what makes modern medicine so wonderful (and so expensive) is the cost of diagnosis and preventative treatment. A big chunk of Keaton’s hospital bill came from the cost of the spinal MRI, which determined exactly where the vet would operate.

The availability of doggie MRIs is just one indication of how far medical science has advanced. My mother died of colon cancer in 1988. Today, an unpleasant but routine procedure allows doctors to remove precancerous cells before they turn into anything worse. If this screening had been available 20 years ago, my mother might have lived to see her grandchildren.

A November 2008 study by the Brookings Institution  weighs the problem of how trying to squeeze costs out of the health care system could result in a decrease in medical innovation. Mortality rates for cardiovascular disease have decreased 43 percent between 1950 and 2005, a direct reflection of medical innovations. Who wants to make the call to cut those costs? Not me.

http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/~/media/Files/events/2008/1117_realhealthcare/1117_strategicreview.pdf

A lot of people in our industry are concerned about health care reform. I’m no fan of national health systems, which haven’t seemed to have worked very well in other industrialized countries. On the other hand, after experiencing how expensive it can be to take care of a sick dog, I’d hate to be in a similar uninsured position if the sick person was myself or one of my kids.

Sorry, no answers here to what we should do about health care. I’m just really glad I’m not Max Baucus.