Book Reviews

The following reviews were prepared for UP by Lila Hayes. Ms Hayes advocated for fair insurance claim settlements for survivors of the 2003 wildfires that devastated thousands of homes in the Southern California counties of San Diego and San Bernardino.

Insurance Claims Help

Claim Paid, A Consumers Guide Through the Insurance Claims Maze	How to Make Insurance Companies Pay Your Claims	Policy Ensurance	Payment Refused	The Household Inventory Guide
Top Dollar Property Claims: Secrets to Successful Insurance Claim Settlements	How to Win the Insurance Claim Game	The Claims Game: How to Win at Negotiating Insurance Claims	Your Credit Score, How to Fix, Improve and Protect the 3 Digit Number that Shapes your Financial Future	Fight Back & Win, How to Get your HMO and health insurance to Pay Up
Get Your Claim Paid: A Pro-Active Guide for Handling the Most Difficult Part of Insurance	Mold, Fire, Flood, & Other Topics - Homeowners Insurance Explained	.	.	.

Insurance Industry Information

The Invisible Bankers

The Game of Insurance, How Insurance is Conducted in California

Insult to Injury, Fraud and the Big Business of Bad Faith

This book is recommended for:

Property Insurance Claimants with full loss	Lawyer preparing for trial with insurance company
Property Insurance Claimants with a partial loss	Anyone wanting to learn more about the industry
Medical/Life insurance claimants	Potential policyholder wanting info on buying a policy
Auto insurance claimants	Insurance Claimant who wants to hire a lawyer.
Insurance company employee

Book	Review	Recommended for:
	Policy Ensurance by Tony Braga Acorn Library; 2005 This book does an amazing job of putting you in the right mind set for moving through the claims process. The book is packed with useful information. It lists insurance deadlines, has blank forms as well as example forms showing you how you should fill them out. The book covers the history of property insurance as well as insurance company monetary statistics, lists of regulatory authorities, unfair claims practices codes and regulations, quotes from adjusters training books and California 's Unfair Practice insurance Codes. The case histories will be interesting to attorneys and claimants alike.
	Payment Refused by William M. Shernoff William & Sons; 2004 Written by the author of "How to Make Insurance Companies Pay Your Claims" (see below), this book includes up-to-date information on insurers' efforts to avoid legal liability for unfair claim practices by lobbying for tort reform. Claimants seeking to understand insurers' strategies will want to read this book along with one of the books that goes into more details on the technical aspects of the claims process.
	Your Credit Score, How to Fix, Improve and Protect the 3 Digit Number that Shapes your Financial Future by Liz Pulliam Weston Prentice Hall; 2004 The author is a writer with the Los Angeles Times who's been covering personal finance issues for many years. In simple, easy to understand language, she explains how your credit rating impacts how much you get charged for your insurance policies, and offers up-to-the-minute information on today's radically new credit scoring system. The information in this book can save you thousands on credit and insurance.
	Mold, Fire, Flood, & Other Topics - Homeowners Insurance Explained By RA Martinez Self Published in Hong Kong; 2003 RA Martinez has worked in the insurance industry mainly as an adjuster for the insurance company. His writing style is to basically explain the insurance company's side without advocating for the claimant. His explanations are so basic as to be basically useless. If someone bought this book and followed his advice they would get no more than the adjuster originally offered. No "insider information," no explanations of how those strange insurance clauses will help you get what you paid for.
	Get Your Claim Paid: A Pro-Active Guide for Handling the Most Difficult Part of Insurance by James Walsh Silver Lake Publishing; 1999 By reading this books table of contents you'd think this book covers it all (auto, home, rental, condo, life and other insurances). The book is thick and there are lots of examples and legal cases. He even quotes claims manuals and tries to describe legal tactics for people who want to see where the insurance companies actions are coming from. Although, this book covers things I haven't seen in any other book, sometimes the author seems to move off topic with little to no segue. For example on page 121 there is a heading called "Personal Property Issues" I expected to learn tips on filing a personal property claim, but the discussion starts with "plants trees and shrubs" and moves into "unauthorized credit card use" and then onto "excluded business losses" all without a change of heading. All in all the book is useful and if you learn by example and not being told exactly what to do, this book is definately for you.
	Top Dollar Property Claims : Secrets to Successful Insurance Claim Settlements by Les Watrous TGWB Publishing, Inc.;1998 This book is great for people with partial losses, but individuals with a total loss (or even a constructive total loss), might find this book a bit lacking. For example, Mr Watrous strongly recommends using a restoration contractor, which is not necessary for claimants who've suffered a total loss. It contains useful explanations of key terms such as "resultant damage" and "proximate cause" which might help people who have covered damage which they don't know is covered. He also has lots of detail on Additional Living Expense, ("ALE") coverage.
	Fight Back & Win, How to Get your HMO and health insurance to Pay Up by William M. Shernoff Bottom Line Publishing; 1998 Available via www.sbd-law.com Real life examples of HMO claims abuses and practical suggestions for claimants who have been denied necessary, covered medical care.
	The Household Inventory Guide by Carol Phillips IPP Press; 1994 This book is currently being revised and republished. It is an invaluable aid to those who've suffered total losses and want help reconstructing the contents of their home and/or settling a contents claim under a homeowners' policy.
	How to Win the Insurance Claim Game by Ron Alford The Plan Publishing Company; 1992 Easy to read with simple graphics to drive home the points. Offers some very helpful information. The author has a bias in favor of hiring public adjusters. The book appears to be oriented toward people with partial losses and has relatively little information for people with total losses. His timelines and exhortations to move forward quickly might leave a person in a disaster situation or with a total loss struggling with their sanity since getting a full and fair settlement of a total loss claim can take a long time.
	The Claims Game: How to Win at Negotiating Insurance Claims by RJ Atherton Lambert & Morris Press, Inc.; 1991 This book was written in the voice of someone who appears to have seen way too many adjusters trick innocent claimants out of their money. With experience as an adjuster under his belt, in one section he tells the reader about questionable techniques that he has seen used by con artists that actually worked. Although these techniques can not be recommended it is interesting to see how the insurance company works through these claims. The book also has some detail on bad faith and even shopping for an insurance policy. Ultimately his unrestrained manner will NOT be for everyone. These two sections along with negotiation techniques are pretty much the extent of the practical information available to claimants.
	Claim Paid, A Consumers Guide through the Insurance Claims Maze by Frank R Dumas Stratton Press; 1990 One of the best overall books on getting through the claims process. Due to the age of the book, beware of items (especially legal tips, laws and insurance codes) which might need to be updated. Insider tips can be useful and the chapter on hiring a lawyer is especially powerful.
	How to Make Insurance Companies Pay Your Claims by William Shernoff Hastings House; 1990 The first section of the book offers good tips on how to keep track of your insurance claim. If you follow this advice, you will be in a far better position if there are legal issues down the road. The case histories in the last 1/2 of the book are especially interesting and can be enlightening if you have similar "bad faith" problems with your claim.
	Mold, Fire, Flood, & Other Topics - Homeowners Insurance Explained By RA Martinez RA Martinez has worked in the insurance industry mainly as an adjuster for the insurance company. His writing style is to basically explain the insurance company's side without advocating for the claimant. His explanations are so basic as to be basically useless. If someone bought this book and followed his advice they would get no more than the adjuster originally offered. No "insider information," no explanations of how those strange insurance clauses will help you get what you paid for.

Insurance Industry Information

Title	Review	Recommended for
	Insult to Injury, Insurance, Fraud and the Big Business of Bad Faith By Ray Bourhis Berrett-Kohler Publishers, Inc; 2005 Endorsements on the book jacket by Senator Ted Kennedy, CA. Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, and UP co-founder Amy Bach. An Amazon.com reader posted this review: "If, like the average American citizen probably does, you view the insurance industry as a benevolent protector that exists to serve its' customers, you are in for one rude awakening. Ray Bourhis, who served as plaintiff's [sic] counsel in the case detailed in the book he later wrote, confronts the awesome duplicity of his adversary, one of the largest insurance underwriters in existence, a company that seemed determined not to honor its obligations at any cost. Bourhis describes the unending legal gamesmanship [sic], the obdurate refusal to settle, the psychological brutality of a company that appeared to prefer to destroy a policyholder than pay a claim on the agreed terms. The jury was not deceived and awarded Bourhis' [sic] client a $7.7 million judgment a compensation for the egregious bad faith demonstrated by the insurer. This is an absolutely revolting story of an "ends justify any and all means" philosophy run amok at the senior management level and the terrible human cost exacted from the trusting and powerless who had believed their policies would protect them in times of dire need, when illness or injury rendered them unable to work. If you ever plan on purchasing a long term disability insurance policy from any insurer, you MUST read this book first; you have no idea what you may be setting yourself up for".
	The Invisible Bankers by Andrew Tobias Linden Press/Simon & Schuster; 1982 Even though this book was written over 20 years ago, it is fascinating to read about the history of the insurance industry and the claims culture that follows through to today. This book compares the insurance industry to the banking industry and shows the average person why the insurance industry is such a huge money maker. This book makes insurance interesting and explains why the insurance industry wants us to think it's "boring". Mr. Tobias describes why ignorance by the policy holder is key to the insurance company's success. Due to the age of the book, much of the back half of the book is a bit outdated, but most of the principals still hold true.
	The Game of Insurance, How Insurance is Conducted in California by Paul Nicholas Jade Publishing Co.; 1990