Insurance

As awareness grows of the grave dangers of concussions, coaches and parents across the nation are searching for ways to better manage these brain injuries in young athletes.

Financial giant Wells Fargo is pioneering a program in Sacramento, Calif., that creates a new insurance package that provides concussion testing and medical care for high school athletes. It's a level of diagnosis and treatment historically available only to the pros.

Jeanie Ortiz probably had to give up Choo-Choo’s cafe anyway.

Like many others her age, 60-year-old Mary Ann Mason fell through one of the biggest trap doors in the American health care system: She's too young for Medicare, with too much retirement income to qualify for Medicaid or similar low-income insurance programs, and with one too many health problems to buy an affordable individual plan on the open market.

MORGAN -- When Morgan resident Braydon Deru got a dog from the Davis Animal Shelter, he didn't think a Morgan County animal control officer would come knocking on his door, telling him he had to get rid of it.

BRIGHAM CITY -- Christie Juber has received the Chairman's Conference Award from Allstate Insurance Co., which recognizes high standards in customer satisfaction, customer retention and financial services sales.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Jane Pulcini was walking up the stairs in her Newington, Conn., home Sunday around 11 a.m. when Hurricane Irene split an oak tree in her front yard, crashing a huge limb into the roof.

"So I'm going up the stairs, and I thought I heard thunder," said Pulcini, who raised five sons in the house and lived there with her husband, Guido "Guy" Pulcini, until he died a year and a half ago. "The noise was so loud, I just couldn't imagine what it was."

Sitting on the stairs of her 1960s split-level Garrison colonial, she could see the tree through a front window. Since moving to the home in 1963, she has filed three insurance claims. Two were this year -- one for ice damming on the roof last winter and now the oak tree. Pulcini had just put on a new room in July.

"Why couldn't the tree fall toward the street?" she said.

By Tuesday, Scott Wallquist, a claims adjuster with The Travelers Cos., was walking on her roof, measuring the square footage and surveying the damage. Front and back gutters would need to be replaced, she would need a new roof, and he plans to hire an inspector to see if the chimney still intact.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Health insurers are increasingly charging patients sharply higher amounts for the most expensive drugs, often causing sticker shock for the sick people who need them.

Health plans that have hiked co-payments say affected patients must pay hundreds of dollars more per month for drugs that can cost thousands, in order to prevent big jumps in premiums for everyone else.