|
Home Page
Company Ratings
Apply
Paramed Exam
LongTermCare
OurProfile
Our Mission
ContactUs
Glossary
Table of Contents
Member of the Better Business Bureau
| |
 | Mail Order Insurer: Type of insurance
company that sells policies through the mail or other mass media,
eliminating need for agents.
| Major Medical Expense Insurance:
A form of health insurance that provides benefits for most types of medical
expense up to a high maximum benefit, such as $250,000 or higher after a
substantial deductible, such as $500 or more. Such contracts may contain
internal limits and are normally subject to coinsurance.
| Major Medical Insurance: Health
insurance to finance the expense of major illness and injury. Characterized
by large benefit maximums ranging up to $250,000 or no limit, the insurance,
above an initial deductible, reimburses the major part of all charges for
hospital, doctor, private nurses, medical appliances, prescribed
out-of-hospital treatment, drugs, and medicines. The insured person as
coinsurer pays the remainder.
| Malingering: The practice of feigning illness or
inability to work in order to collect insurance benefits.
| Malpractice: Improper care or treatment by a
physician, hospital, or other provider of health care.
| Malpractice Insurance: Coverage for a
professional practitioner, such as a doctor or a lawyer, against liability
claims resulting from alleged malpractice in the performance of professional
services.
| Managed Care: Health care systems that
integrate the financing and delivery of appropriate health care services to
covered individuals by arrangements with selected providers to furnish a
comprehensive set of health care services, explicit standards for selection
of health care providers, formal programs for ongoing quality assurance and
utilization review, and significant financial incentives for members to use
providers and procedures associated with the plan.
| Manual Rate: The premium rate developed for a
group insurance coverage from the company's standard rate tables normally
referred to as its rate manual or underwriting manual.
| Manuscript Policy: Policy designed for a
firm's specific needs and requirements.
| Marine Insurance: A form of insurance
primarily concerned with means of transportation and communication, and with
goods in transit (see "Inland Marine Insurance" and "Ocean
Marine Insurance").
| Marital deduction: A reduction of an
estate for estate tax purposes, which is available if the decedent is
survived by his or her spouse, can be as large as the administrator or
executor elects so long as it does not exceed the value of qualifying
property passing to the surviving spouse.
| Market Price (or Market Value):
The price at which a security can be bought or sold at any particular time.
| Mass Merchandising: Plan for insuring
individual members of a group, such as employees of firms or members of
labor unions, under a single program of insurance at reduced premiums.
Property and liability insurance is sold to individual members using group
insurance marketing methods.
| Master Policy: A policy that is issued to an
employer or trustee, establishing a group insurance plan for designated
members of an eligible group.
| Master Policy (or Master
Contract): The policy issued to a group policyholder setting forth the
provisions of the group insurance plan. The individuals insure under the
policy are then issued certificates of insurance.
| Material Damage: Insurance against damage to
a vehicle itself. It includes automobile comprehensive, collision, fire and
theft. Material damage and physical damage are terms that often are used
inter- changeably.
| Maximum family benefit: The largest
amount in Social Security benefits that will be paid to any family unit.
| McCarran-Ferguson Act: Federal law
passed in 1945 stating that continued regulation of the insurance industry
by the states is in the public interest and that federal antitrust laws
apply to insurance only to the extent that the industry is not regulated by
state law.
| Medicaid: State programs of public assistance to
persons whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care.
Title XIX of the federal Social Security Act provides matching federal funds
for financing state Medicaid programs, effective January 1, 1966.
| Medical Examination: The examination
given by a qualified physician to determine to the insurability of an
applicant. A medical examination may also be used to determine whether an
insured claiming disability is actually disabled.
| Medical Expense Insurance: A form
of health insurance that provides benefits for expenses incurred for medical
care. This form of health insurance provides benefits for expenses of
physicians, hospital, nursing, and related health services, and supplies.
These benefits may be related to actual expense, specified sums, or services
rendered. Such insurance sometimes includes benefits for prevention and
diagnosis as well as treatment.
| MIB Medical Information Bureau: MIB is a non-profit
membership organization of life insurance companies. It operates an
informational exchange bureau on behalf of its members. If you apply
to another member company for life, health, or disability insurance, or a
claim for benefits is submitted to such a company, MIB, upon request, will
supply that company with any information it may have in its
file.
| Medical malpractice: Improper care or
treatment by a physician, hospital, or other provider of health care. |
| Medical Payments Insurance: A
coverage, available in various liability insurance policies, in which their
insurer agrees to reimburse the insured and others, without regard for the
insured's liability, for medical or funeral expenses incurred as the result
of bodily injury or death by accident under specified conditions.
| Medicare: A program of Hospital Insurance (Part A)
and Supplementary Medical Insurance (Part B) protection provided under the
Social Security Act.
| Medigap: A term sometimes applied to private
insurance products that supplement Medicare insurance benefits.
| Minimum Benefits: A provision that a
minimum amount of annuity will be paid if the regular benefit formula
produces less. This minimum is usually payable only if certain service
requirements are met at retirement.
| Minimum Group: The least number of employees
permitted under a state law to effect a group for insurance purposes; the
purpose is to maintain some sort of proper division between individual
policy insurance and the group forms.
| Minimum Premium Plan (MPP): An
arrangement under which an insurance carrier will, for a fee, handle the
administration of claims and insure against large claims for a self- insured
group.
| Miscellaneous Expenses: Expenses in
connection with hospital insurance, hospital charges other than room and
board, such as X-rays, drugs, laboratory fees, and other ancillary charges.
(Sometimes referred to as ancillary charges.)
| Miscellaneous Hospital
Expense Benefit: A provision in a hospital expense policy providing for
the payment of a benefit for expenses for necessary hospital services and
supplies during a period of hospital confinement. Expenses commonly covered
under this benefit include those for x-ray examinations, laboratory tests,
medicines, surgical dressings, anesthetics (including administration
thereof), and use of operating room.
| Misrepresentation: A false, incorrect,
improper, or incomplete statement of a material fact, made in the
application for a policy.
| Mode of Premium Payment: The
frequency with which premiums are paidþmonthly, quarterly, semiannually, or
annually.
| Money purchase plan: a pension plan
design in which a plan sponsor’s obligation is defined in terms of the
contribution it makes on behalf of the employee
| Moral Hazard: Hazard arising from any
nonphysical, personal characteristic of a risk that increases the
possibility of loss or may intensify the severity of lossþfor instance, bad
habits, low integrity, poor financial standing.
| Morbidity: The incidence and severity of
sicknesses and accidents in a well-defined class or classes or persons.
| Morbidity Tables: Actuarial statistics
showing the frequency and duration of disability.
| Mortality Table: A table showing how many
members of a group, starting at a certain age, will be alive at each
succeeding age. It is used to calculate the probability of dying in, or
surviving through, any period, and for the valuation of an annuity. To be
appropriate for a specific group, it should be based on the experience of
individuals having common characteristics, such as sex or occupation.
| Mortality Table: A statistical table showing
the death rate at each age, usually expressed as so many per thousand.
| Multi-Employer Plan: A plan maintained
according to a collective bargaining agreement, to which more than one
employer contributes. Under ERISA, at the beginning of the plan, no single
employer may contribute as much as 50% of the total, and thereafter as much
as 75%. An employee may change employers within the group without losing
retirement benefits unless a break in service (under the plan) cancels
credits earned before the break.
| Multi-Peril Policy: A package policy
which provides protection against a number of separate perils. Multi-peril
policies are not necessarily multiple line policies, since the combined
perils may be all within one insurance line.
| Multiple Employer Trust (MET):
A legal trust established by a plan sponsor that brings together a number of
small, unrelated employers for the purpose of providing group medical
coverage on an insured or self-funded basis.
| Mutual Insurance Company: An
insurance company in which the ownership and control is vested in the
policyholders and a portion of surplus earnings may return to policyholders
in the form of dividends. No capital stock exists. |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|
