Insurance Books

As an IT consultant who works with health care clients (among other industries) this book is an invaluable guide. First, it addresses HIPAA from an IT perspective; and, second, it cuts through thousands of pages of sometimes confusing text associated with NPRMs and law to expose the key issues.

There are three main areas covered in this book: (1) Transactions and Codes (from the perspective of payments between providers and payers and includes transactions, code sets, identifiers and impact), (2) Privacy (patient-health care relationship covering key HIPAA requirements) and (3)Security (compliance life cycle, real-world security policy, computer security models and technical security mechanisms).

The book is focused, fluff-free (to the point of being terse) and up-to-date as of Sep 2001. If you are an IT consultant or a health care IT staff member, especially with direct HIPAA support responsibilities, this is an essential reference.

As an attorney, I was looking for a book that help my clients understand the scope of HIPAA. This is the excellent guide for anyone that is interested in studying this law and its regulations. I consider this as a excellent tool for reference and for those lawyers that is interested in counselling any client on this matter, you should read this book first and then all the cases and materials available on line.

Dr. Rada addressed the HIPAA issues in a easy way and without those legal terms that many people would not understand. Do not look at the price, is worth it.

Rada provides a unique perspective in that he is both a medical doctor and an authority on healthcare information systems.

HIPAA@IT Reference is an authoritative guide to HIPAA.

It includes most details about HIPAA and includes numerous graphs and charts. Anyone needing a comprehensive overview of HIPAA should definitely read this book.

This book made me feel like I was learning from the "expert" in the industry.

How to Bid Your Insurance, makes a formally time consuming, impossible process not only possible but with a minimum investment of time. The tools (The Matrix and the other charts) further support the professionalism of the author, Scott Simmonds.

A busy entreprenuer can delegate this process to a direct report; knowing the outcome will be the best value ever received in insurance coverage.

There is not much fun about insurance for a business owner. The insurance bid process ranks way down on the list of things I want to deal with. Scott puts the process forward in a methodical, understandable way. In the end, however, perhaps its just better to hire Scott!

Scott has done an extremely thorough job of describing the competitive bidding process for any organization to use for their purposes in ensuring the most competitive rates. In my experience for using the competitive assessment process for buying services, this handbook is extremely useful for a well-organized and thoughtful approach for assuring the best value for the organization.

Mr. Trupiano has a tremendous amount of experience in the insurance industry. If you want to learn how to protect your future, you should purchase this book.

As an insurance agent with a Fortune 100 company, I am constantly seeking to educate my clients to truly understand what they are buying before they do so. Anthony's book makes crystal clear the pros and cons of essential financial tools and also will help consumers and agents speak the same language! Thanks for a wonderful 'how to' book on a complicated, and often, emotional subject. J.M. Jacksonville, Florida

There is no "fluff" with this book. Everyone will learn something new. Anthony gets directly to the point and shares his experiences and knowledge about this misinterpreted industry. The facts he provides are astonishing! It makes you want to call your insurance agent right away and quiz them on what you have learned from reading Insurance Lies. Brilliantly written...easy read and I recommend this to everyone!

The book is a delight to read, especially if the reader has a corporate finance background. For those with out, Doherty devotes the first six chapters to a thorough review of key corporate finance concepts. I strongly recommend it. The book does not provide quick solutions or "to do lists". It is designed to create in you an in depth understanding of the issues surrounding the field of risk financing and the interrelationship between insurable risk, business risk and economic value. This is a book well worth the trees it took to make the paper for its 600 plus pages. If you want more, perhaps you need to enroll in an MS program...

This book is an excellent read on the importance of integrated risk management (although as the previous reviewer indicated it does not attempt to describe in any detail an integrated risk measurement system - although it does hint at the use of simulation for this purpose at the end of Chp 14). It also highlights rather well the tools that exist in the insurance markets that can be used to achieve risk management ends consistent with corporate finance theory. The book does not attempt to focus on any particular risk since the theme of the entire book is that the effect of risk, not its source, is the most important factor in managing risk.

As with many first releases this book suffers a large number of editorial oversights but given the simple presentation of the many examples in the book these errors are fairly straightforward to pick.

Having read the text on the flap of the book, as advertised by Amazon, I immediately asked our library to purchase the book. Its contents however did not contain some details that I was hoping to find. Integrated risk management is not treated comprehensively (as it is supposed to do), as risk measurement and the possible aggregation of risk measures in the framework of integrated risk management are left out. There is a long introduction into the basics, which is admittedly very good. Later on, there is a wonderful discussion on risk management strategies. As a textbook, this would do fine, since the basics are explained, and the structure of the discussion is good. But I do miss the real integration of risk measures into one figure. And also, the text of the flap mentioned how insurance methods have been incorporated into finance. This is however only in the level of strategies. Nothing on for example how credit risk measurement has taken up methods used in insurance management. In any case, the book is quite useful for those involved in strategical risk management.

Excellent, thoughtful, and concise analysis of what works and what doesn't in managed care - and why. The authors make a significant, highly practical contribution to the study - and improvement - of managed health care. Highly recommended for anyone wanting a sound, balanced grounding in the subject. Would be an excellent book for graduate courses in managed care.

This book provides a very concise but complete discussion of the accomplishments, unfulfilled promises, and problems of managed care. This summary is useful for health policymakers and others especially interested in the subject but is written to be accessible to non-experts. The authors outline several public and private sector policy changes they believe are needed to make managed care more effective and acceptable. The book's strengths are its balanced view of managed care's pros and cons and its identification of often-ignored trade-off between preferences (particularly consumer preferences for unlimited choice of doctors and medical services) and the desire (on the part of employers and government, which pay most of the bill) to control medical care spending. This book should be required reading for everyone participating in public discussion of health care regulation and "reform."

In lively, concise chapters, Zelman and Berenson explain why and how managed care came about, what it is, what its problems are, and how they propose to solve them. My class loved the book. I was impressed by their judgment in highlighting just the right details from a vast history to carry their argument. I also was impressed by their honesty; they are keen on managed care but are candid about its failure to realize its potential for improving quality. Their concluding recommendations are fine, but the trends in the industry which they identify are blocking the changes they would like to see. Is managed care its own worst enemy?

The book title suggests help for small organizations, but the blurb inside the front cover says that the book "provides targeted strategies for companies with as few as 50 employees or as many as 5,000."

If you have fewer than 100 employees you may be disappointed with this book. The biggest focus is on self-funded plans, which the author says are most feasible for organizations with more than 100 employees.

Highly recommended for all smaller employers struggling with the process of buying health benefits for employees. Carefully crafted, well structured, and quite comprehensive, the book details everything a small or medium sized firm needs to know to begin to leverage their buying power in the marketplace. Certainly not for large employers with market power (because large purchasers will want to use more sophisticated tools to buy quality and incentivize plans and providers for greater performance), but a good primer for anyone just starting out.

As a small employer of only 35 employees, I wasn't sure how to proceed with changes in our health plan that are under consideration. This book has helped us resolve some of the different approaches suggested by our broker. I expect we'll use it again, as we grow over the next few years.

This book presents extreme value theory and its applications with the finance industry as its primary target. There have been many excellent texts written on extreme value theory but none this extensive. As the authors admit even as extensive as it is the theory of multivariate extremes is neglected. They chose to only cover in detail the theory that is mature enough for application.

What you will find here that is not in many texts on this subject is a treatment of risk theory and fluctuations of sums and various time series models including cases with heavy-tailed marginal distributions.

Chapter 8 on special topics is particularly interesting with a lot of coverage for the extremal index, large claim index, ARCH processes, large deviations, reinsurance, stable processes and self-similarity. The book contains over 600 references to the literature and is a welcome resource for practitioners in finance and insurance as well as extreme value theorists.

book presents extreme value theory and its applications with the finance industry as its primary target. There have been many excellent texts written on extreme value theory but none this extensive. As the authors admit even as extensive as it is the theory of multivariate extremes is neglected. They chose to only cover in detail the theory that is mature enough for application.
What you will find here that is not in many texts on this subject is a treatment of risk theory and fluctuations of sums and various time series models including cases with heavy-tailed marginal distributions.

Chapter 8 on special topics is particularly interesting with a lot of coverage for the extremal index, large claim index, ARCH processes, large deviations, reinsurance, stable processes and self-similarity. The book contains over 600 references to the literature and is a welcome resource for practitioners in finance and insurance as well as extreme value theorists.

This book covers the theory and applications of extremal value theory (an area of applied probability). The mathematics is kept at an acceptable level, i.e. advanced undergraduates in math/physics/engineering, but the breadth and the sophistication of the statements are such that the results are never trivial. Chapters 2-3-4 introduce the reader to the property of sums, maxima and order statistics of random variables. Many results are only stated but not proved. Yet, this does not detract to the readability of the book. Chpater 5 treats point processes and requires a deeper mathematical background. Among the chapters, this was the most disappointing to me. The monographs of Resnick and of Kallenberg, as well as many good introductions to point processes in queueing theory, are in my opinion both a more intuitive and rigorous introduction to random measures. This is not a major flaw of the book, given its view toward applications; and besides this, the bibliographical notes will point the reader to the relevant literature. Chapter 6, on statistical analysis of extremal events, is enjoyable and extremely useful for practitioners in finance and insurance. Chapter 7 touches upon time series and its relation to heavy tails. Finally, chapter 8 is a put-pourri of topics: ARCH processes, stable processes, self-similarity. Overall, I found this book useful as a reference, but sometimes lacking in focus: some topics seem juxtaposed with no clear logical continuity. Another potential shortcoming of the book is that it is neither completely rigorous nor completely readable (i.e., an undergraduate-level book). At the same time, these can be considered as qualities: with regards to the former, there is plenty of material to consult and draw inspiration from; and at the same time each reader will find the "right" level of mathematics in the book. In my opinion the final balance is largely positive, and I would recommend this book without hesitation.

I'm very satisfiled with the book. So many useful stuff in one place. Recommending to anybody like insurance business.

A very clear book covering the Exams in the 300 series for the institute of Actuaries. Topics include Pensions, investment, asset modeling and Life.

"Modern Actuarial Theory and Practice" is an excellent reference book for actuaries and advanced actuarial students. It provides up to date overviews of all of the main issues in the traditional areas of actuarial science, that is, investments, life insurance, general insurance (a.k.a. property and casualty insurance), pensions and health insurance, with a reference list given at the end of each chapter, to allow the reader to pursue the topic further, if so desired. Each topic is clearly explained, and the detailed index and table of contents make it easy to find what you are looking for.

This is a British text book, which was written in the context of the U.K. financial and insurance environments. However, most of the topics covered in this book are universal and as an Australian, I found this book to be just as useful as if it had been written for people in my country.

Be aware that the authors' purpose in writing this book appears to be to provide a reference for practicing actuaries or students who are about to commence practicing as an actuary. As a result, there are only a few worked examples throughout this book and no practice exercises. I am currently doing a PhD in actuarial studies, and I am also a lecturer in actuarial studies at an Australian university. I found this book to be exactly what I needed to assist me in my PhD. However, most of the material in this text is too advanced for my final year undergraduate actuarial students.

This is THE guide book for electricians and engineers. Almost 700 pages of useful information. The layout, tables, and ease of understanding have all improved over past editions. But this is not a basic wiring guide and it will only frustrate those without some electrical background. If you need to meet code - you need this book.

this book is very helpfull with getting the job done A+++++ book

Book contain useful topics, easy to understand, clear picture, helpful for practical work and passing exam.

In many pursuits, timing is a key. Here in 2008, in my state, where I perform most (not all) of my work in the electrical trade, a journeyman's license exam is based on the 2002 National Electrical Code (NEC). I learned about the NEC Handbook, while I was gathering study materials in preparation for my exam. Of course, newer editions are in circulation; and a neighboring state where I also work and need a license, indicated that they base the exam on a later NEC edition. With those differences, the changes incorporated over three different series of the Code, it became a matter of budget for me, as well as ensuring I'd reviewed all the material. I was pleased, that with a little hunting, I found an earlier publication, used but in very good condition, in stock through Amazon. This NEC Handbook is well-written, with very clear illustrations, to clarify and amplify the minutiae (text and tables) that comprise the NEC. Everyone has a way by which they learn most effectively. For me, sometimes when certain concepts are illustrated, it helps me to better understand and apply a certain rule from the Code. I recommend this book!

If you hang around with fellow homeowners, there's a lot of water cooler conversation about various things, including the electrical code. This book just nails everything you ever wondered about, everything you haven't yet wondered about, and a few thousand things that you'll never need to know. Want to install a subpanel? Want to figure what gauge of cable to use to supply it? Want to know how to calculate the in^3 fill of a box? How deep to bury an underground cable? How to use raceways? That information totals about 1/4 of 1% of the contents of this book.

I am desk jockey who does electrical design work. I have little in-the-field electrical experience. I use the NEC codes frequently to make sure what I design is code-compliant. I have a copy of the standard 1999 NEC book and found many parts of it difficult to interpret. This new "handbook" version has answered all of the questions and uncertainties I had about the code. It has an illustration and explanation for just about every question I could think of. Even when I don't need a certain thing, I have found myself leafing through the book just to learn more.

I would recommend this to anyone, but especially engineer types or those who are inexperienced. I feel much more confident about my job and I don't have to ask electricans those questions that make you feel stupid anymore. Even master electricians will appreciate the explanations of code changes from the 1999 version. Overall, I can't recommend this book more, well worth the $50 or so more than the standard NEC book.