Archive for February, 2010

There’s yet another effort underway in the state Legislature to try to change the decades-old laws that forbid beer sales in convenience stores and grocery stores across the Commonwealth.

Right now, you also can’t buy a six-pack of beer in a beer distributor in Pennsylvania — you can only buy a full case by law. You are, however, able to buy individual six-packs of beer from bars and restaurants that have liquor licenses which permit them to make such sales.

According to a story this week in The Philadelphia Inquirer, state  Sen. John C. Rafferty Jr., a Montgomery County Republican, is the latest state lawmaker to try his hand at expanding the legal sale of individual six-packs through beer distributors and grocery and convenience stores across the state, arguing that it’s about “consumer choice” and opening up freer competition for beer sales. Some convenience store executives, including Stan Sheetz, the CEO of the Sheetz convenience store chain, support the idea, according to the Inquirer. “We support this bill because it treats adults like adults and it protects the rights of beer drinkers,” Sheetz told the paper at a rally held in Harrisburg to promote the effort. His company has tried in the past to gain permission to sell individual six-packs of beer but has been stymied in the courts. That hasn’t deterred his company, however.  “Our beer laws are backward, they’re counter-intuitive, they’re inefficient, and they’re hypocritical,” he told the Inquirer.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/janisr

Well, he just may be right about Pennsylvania’s beer sale laws. They may truly be backward and counter-intuitive and inefficient and even hypocritical. But that’s fine, because they’re also smart. There are already plenty of places to buy beer here, at beer distributors by the case and in bars and restaurants by the six-pack.  No one who wants to buy beer is being denied the opportunity to buy the stuff.  But we certainly don’t need to make beer sales available at every street corner of every town and city across this state. We’ve got enough problems with under-aged drinking, drunk driving, alcohol-related crimes and other social ills caused by alcohol abuse.

Make it easier to buy and consume beer across the state just to allow a bigger revenue stream for stores and beer companies? That just doesn’t make sense from any standpoint at all.  It’s not an idea that would get a great reception from groups that are fighting these same kinds of problems every day, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

That would be a decision that would likely mean more alcohol-related vehicle accidents, crimes and incidents of under-aged drinking.

It’s a bad idea, a terrible precedent and an idea with no social merit. In fact, it’s irresponsible and wrong.

We need more libraries on street corners, more senior centers, more drug and alcohol treatment programs and more youth centers.

What we don’t need are more places to buy beer.

At the Olympic Winter Games, no one is supposed to die.

Certainly not a 21-year-old luge competitor from the Republic of Georgia, who was in Canada for his first Olympic games.

But the athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili,  died last Friday on a practice run on the luge track as he and his sled flew down the luge run at almost 90 mph.  At the bottom of the track, his sled climbed an inside track wall and then went airborne, catapulting him into a vertical, immovable metal support structure, killing him instantly, according to a story in The New York Times.

Unbelievably, some Olympics officials at the Games quickly released a statement the next day saying the track was not to blame for the crash and that essentially, it was the victim’s own fault. “The technical officials of the [International Luge Foundation] were able to retrace the path of the athlete and concluded there was no indication that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the track,”  said the terse joint statement from the International Luge Federation and the Olympic Committee. Instead, “the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16. This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem he eventually lost control of the sled resulting in the tragic accident,” the statement continued.  Operator error. How convenient.

A luge athlete flies down a luge course in this illustration from a U.S. postage stamp. Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/raclro

It’s amazing how quickly they were able to conduct an exhaustive review of the accident, the track design, the track conditions, the hazards at the bottom of the track and all the other factors that might have played a part in Nodar Kumaritashvili’s death.  More attention is paid by a cop writing a parking ticket on Broad Street at rush hour.

Since when does the Olympic Committee and it’s affiliated agencies get to play investigators, witnesses, judge and jury all at the same time in a case like this?

The Olympic Committee was quick to judge, quick to blame and quick to push aside a catastrophic incident during an international sporting event.

So who is looking out for the late Nodar Kumaritashvili and his family? What recourse might they have in this tragic and certainly preventable death?

Instead of issuing an “official report” so quickly, why wasn’t the Olympic Committee listening to critics of the track who since 2008 have said it was “too fast,” according to another New York Times story.  Why didn’t the Olympic Committee and the luge officials working to avoid such an accident in the first place? Instead, only after the deadly crash did officials at the event authorized modifications to the luge track, including moving the start lower to slow the racers, installed thick protective pads onto the exposed beams at the bottom of the track and erecting a longer and higher retaining wall in the spot where Kumaritashvili flew off the track and slammed into the metal support beam. Not a deficiency in the track, huh? No, they fixed it only to have something to do. Absolutely ridiculous.

Now we will wait and see what, if anything, happens under international law in this crazy situation.

Looking at the design of the track without an engineer’s eyes, even we could see that there’s no way that those thick, metal, vertical posts should have been sitting so close to the track, as they were at the bottom of the course when the accident occurred.  The posts should have been completely covered by the retaining wall, which didn’t continue far enough to protect the racers on the course. That poor design allowed the athletes to all be vulnerable to injuries in such a crash. You don’t need an investigation to know that that was truly inexcusable.

The bobsled and skeleton athletes are now preparing to use the same track for their events in the next two weeks. The Olympic Committee has said they won’t do further modifications to the track for those events.

For Kumaritashvili’s family, now we all await justice and fairness.

Will it come?

Have you seen those ads on television lately where some downtrodden fellow is so desperate that he arranges for his own car to be “stolen” so he can later file a claim for damages and gain a windfall?

The guy ends up getting caught, of course, and is sent to jail.

And the intended message from the huge, scary insurance companies: “insurance fraud is against the law, you will get caught and you will go to prison.”

True enough.

But while the insurance companies that conceive, produce and pay to broadcast these kinds of ads are certainly correct that such incidents of insurance fraud are illegal, immoral and wrong, they’re really just trying to turn the real focus of such frauds away from themselves.

Image credit: © iStockphoto.com/nebari

Yes, arranging to have your own car stolen, your own house set on fire or purposely arranging an injury are all cases of insurance fraud, but truly those are small potatoes nowadays.

How is that so?

Because the worst insurance fraud today is what the insurance companies themselves are doing to the typical American family and working person by often and callously denying coverage and claims, delaying payment of claims so that people will take smaller settlements and using other despicable practices that are devastating families across the nation during the worse recession in our recent history.

It’s an outrage.

Filing a claim for medical treatment with an insurance company? Filing a claim for massive storm damage that destroys your property? Were you involved in a serious vehicle accident and suffered from injuries and heavy damage to your vehicle that you still haven’t been compensated for? And you’re still waiting for payment, help and final disposition of your claims?

These are all graphic examples of the institutional frauds being doled out every day by insurance companies that are looking out for their investors at the expense of the people and businesses that they insure — the very people who pay their insurance premiums and expect their insurance companies to help them quickly, fairly and honestly when all hell breaks loose in their lives.

And how do the insurance companies often repay these customers when they file claims?

Often by increasing their rates, cutting their payouts for claims and reducing the coverage limits for their customers.

And what about all the flowery messages about being a good neighbor and standing there with you and being in good hands in an emergency when you need your insurance coverage the most?

Sure, good luck with that.

Today, when more and more Americans have lost their jobs and are on the verge of losing their homes due to a loss of income and significant drops in their credit scores, insurance companies are even taking advantage again by basing their rates on those lower consumer credit scores. It’s adding insult to injury at a time when things couldn’t be worse for families across the nation.

And worse, it’s bad faith.  Here in Pennsylvania, there are laws that protect consumers from bad faith by their insurance companies. So when an insurance company engages in bad faith practices by the three D’s — delay, deny and defend — Pennsylvania law allows insured individuals to sue their insurance companies and to seek punitive damages for the bad faith actions by the companies.

If you are treated badly by an insurance company, when they disregard their duty to fairly treat their policyholders, you should seek legal advice and make educated decisions on how to proceed.

And in the meantime, what would we like to see happen to halt these deceitful practices?

We’d like to see Congress take a closer look at the behavior of the insurance industry and create better protections for consumers so insurance companies can’t arbitrarily deny claims, increase rates and delay claim payments just because they are greedy.
Congress last year took a closer look at credit card companies and how they mistreated their customers and came up with new rules that better protect consumers and their credit card transactions.

It can be done for the insurance industry as well.

It’s time for reforms that look out for consumers and stop the frauds being perpetrated on them every day by insurance companies.