Re: AERC horse insurance

[K S Swigart <katswig@deltanet.com>]

On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Glenn Foster wrote:

> Samm Bartee wrote:
> 
> > I have all my horses insured for something.  two of mine are insured for
> > Specified perils and options only...meaning hit by lightening, or vehicle,
> > trailer accident, or any other accidental death you can think of. It's 1%
> > of the insured value. In other words, if you have a horse worth 2000.00,
> > and  insure this way, it's only $20.00 per year.  Some places require a
> > minimum of $100.00 per year to insure.  Mine does.  
> 
> That's right, mortality insurance doesnt seem too bad, but check out
> liability or major medical.  I got a whole different attitude when I
> added
> liability.

Every insurance agent I have talked to has quoted a price of $125 per year
for the major medical rider (can't get it without full mortality) and you
can get liabilty insurance from by joioning the AHSA ($45 per year for a
"base" membership, which is all you need if you aren't going to compete in
any AHSA competitions) which is a $1,000,000 personal liability policy for
any horse related incident. (You don't buy liability insurance for a
horse, BTW, horses can't be sued :), you have to buy it for the person
responsible for the horse).

If you are talking about professional liability insurance, that is a whole
different matter; but I don't think when people were talking about the
AERC providing insurance that they were talking about this.

Additionally, most homeowner's insurance policies have personal liability
aspects to them (usually for about $300,000), which excludes what you do
in your car, but covers pretty much anything else.

Personally, I think that the idea of the AERC as insurance agent/group
policy administrator is a total non-starter.  The availability of
insurance through insurance agents is perfectly adequate, and like I said,
you can join the AHSA...who has a whole separate office and company to
administer the "insurance program" for a pretty paltry sum ($45/hear for a
million dollar liability policy is virtually nothing).   _I_ think that
the AERC should stick to the job of what it is currently supposed to be
doing.

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  As a total aside, one of the economic reasons that group insurance
policies are cheaper than individual ones is that in group policies there
are members of the group that don't need as much insurance as is provided
and wouldn't elect to buy it if they had to buy it individually.  If the
AERC were to provide "optional" insurance benefits (members don't have to
buy it if they don't want to) then much of this group savings is lost.