Insurance costs leave firms reeling

AUGUSTA – Businesses across the state are being hit by significant, and sometimes substantial, increases in their insurance bills for various types of policies ranging from health to property and casualty. Maine Insurance Superintendent Alessandro Iuppa said the rates he has seen filed with his office back up what business owners are reporting.

“I do not have a detailed list,” he said, “but I am seeing increases in rates filed for a broad range of policies, not just for health insurance and [Workers’ Compensation] that have gotten all the attention.”

Typically a business has liability and comprehensive policies to cover the workplace and equipment needed to operate. If a firm has vehicles, those, too, have to be insured. And if the business has employees, it also must have Workers’ Compensation coverage. Many companies also offer health insurance as an incentive to get qualified employees.

“I have got them all and they have all gone up dramatically,” said Bruce Tisdale, owner of Mountain Machine Works in Auburn. “Any one of them increasing is a problem and when they are all put together, it’s a crisis.”

Tisdale’s machine shop, which employs 20 people and uses three trucks and a van for business, has seen double-digit percentage increases in insurance costs. He said the biggest bills are for health insurance and Workers’ Compensation, but the others add up, too.

“I will tell you,” he said, “it is very nip and tuck about keeping going. We were hit hard after the terrorist attacks and we are getting hit again.”

Tisdale said his business was off about 6 percent before the September attacks. It dropped 20 percent in the weeks that followed. Then insurance costs increased significantly for his vehicles and for the umbrella policy he has on the shop.

“It’s not just bad, it’s a crisis,” said Roxanne Adams, owner of Atlantic Awards in Bangor. “Business is down, but costs are up and people are going out of business. Sixteen of the companies that supply my business have gone out of business since last fall. They are from all over the country.”

Adams said she agrees that health and Workers’ Compensation insurance is the biggest problem for her business, which employs eight full-time workers and one part-timer. But all of her policies have gone up.

“I tell people I have to sell $110,000 worth of awards, T-shirts and ID tags just to pay what I have to – unemployment, workers’ comp and payroll taxes,” she said. “That’s a lot of little stuff that I have to sell.”

Iuppa said that while he sympathizes with business owners over the increase in insurance costs, the reasons for the increases given by the insurance companies parallel the problems facing all businesses.

“The insurance companies had billions of dollars in claims from the terrorist attacks and that was across all the lines,” he said.

Insurance companies also saw losses in their stock portfolios last year, with the stock market downturn that started before the terrorist attacks. The earnings from those investments help pay claims.

Iuppa, in reviewing rates, has to make sure the companies are charging enough to pay future claims, but just how much needs to be set aside to cover potential terrorist attacks is an unanswered question.

“Insurance companies have some certainty in most lines,” he said. “For example, they have had hurricanes and can make a pretty good estimate of what claims will be. That is just not true when you try to assess potential claims from a terrorist event.”

Insurers are estimating their losses from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at $50 billion. But since the insurers have no idea what future attacks might cost, they aren’t sure what rates to charge to cover their potential losses.

Insurers sought help from Congress and in December the House passed a measure to provide as much as $100 billion in government loans to the insurance industry to cover losses from future large-scale terrorist attacks. The money was to be repaid by insurers, policyholders and, if the president wanted, by the taxpayers. The Senate adjourned before Christmas without taking action on the bill.

U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, opposed the House legislation because it didn’t specify what it might cost the taxpayer. But he said Congress does need to do something so that insurers know what their maximum exposure will be should there be another terrorist attack.

“I have not seen what the Senate bill is proposing, but it makes sense to put some certainty into the process,” he said.

The Senate may consider similar legislation next week, and Sen. Olympia Snowe has written Senate leaders as well as members of the Senate Banking Committee urging that the legislation cover life insurance as well as property and casualty insurance.

“We should not facilitate insurance coverage for buildings subject to terrorist attacks without also protecting the men and women who work inside them,” she wrote.

Snowe said it is very important Congress act to provide stability to the industry. The Senate Banking Committee is considering a bill under which the government would pay for 90 percent of the losses from a terrorist attack after the first $10 billion in claims.