Life insurance in America has traditionally been dominated by mutual insurers. Twelve of the fifteen largest life insurers are mutuals.

Rule of thumb: The more trimmings an insurance plan has and the harder someone is pitching it, the faster you should run.

Having no national system of catastrophic health insurance, we have, through the courts, managed to patch together pieces of a not very satisfactory one.

The first American insurance company was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses Against Fire, founded in Charles Town in South Carolina, in 1735.

I was a writer for 'New York' magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.

The life insurance policies advertised on the radio with the line "You cannot be turned down for this coverage!" are actually saying, "For policies this small, it would cost us more to decide whom to turn down than simply to accept everybody - and make them pay through the nose."

Life insurance in America has traditionally been dominated by mutual insurers. Twelve of the fifteen largest life insurers are mutuals.