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I’m fortunate to have a colleague in our firm that specializes in insurance for the nutraceutical and supplement industry. Here’s a summary of his recommendations:You should obtain commercial general liability insurance that includes products liability. While it is less expensive to acquire a policy that does not have products liability, this is your largest exposure when selling dietary supplements and should not be neglected. Typically these policies have a coverage limit of $1,000,000 per occurrence for any one loss for bodily injury or property damage and $2,000,000 in total aggregate for a one-year policy period. For new supplement companies working with outsourced manufacturers, higher limits may be required if there is a contractual requirement with a particular distributor or retailer.A general liability policy provides coverage for defense from lawsuits (including those that may be frivolous, fraudulent or groundless) and to pay out financial claims when negligence on the supplement manufacturer or seller can be proven. In the dietary supplement industry, historically over two-thirds of the insurance claims costs are comprised of legal and investigation expenses.You should also request to be added to the manufacturer’s products liability policy as an Additional Insured - Vendor. This helps to mitigate your products liability exposure should a claim or lawsuit occur. The manufacturer will not automatically add you to their policy - you need to ask!Please be aware that in the nutraceutical/supplements industry, there is currently minimal/no insurance coverage available for intellectual property infringement such as patent, copyright and trademark. Many new supplement companies have been quickly sued out of business because their product was perceived as being too similar to a competitor’s product. Also be aware there is no insurance coverage for false advertising, so be very careful about representations of your product’s benefits and effectiveness. Consult with an attorney experienced in the supplement business for help in avoiding these pitfalls.In addition to general liability insurance, the following additional coverage should be considered, especially if you are selling your product directly to consumers:Cyber liability & privacy: Provides protection for data breach and theft of customer’s personally identifiable information and credit card informationInternet media content liability: Provides protection for errors and omissions in content on your product website or social media sites which covers gaps in the general liability policyProduct recall: Covers costs if your product that has already been sold needs to be recalled from consumersIf you keep an inventory of your product and ship it directly to consumers, you should also have coverage for the value of the product itself while in storage or transit.Please consult with an insurance broker experienced in the nutraceutical and supplement industry before you begin selling your product, as he or she can provide recommendations for your specific situation.Good luck!

Depends widely on the year made. Many cars employ aluminum hoods, roofs, and trunks as they lighten the vehicle’s weight and lower the center of gravity. Tesla has been forced to change its metal and alloy mix(es) in the undercarriage and elsewhere due to exorbitant repair costs and replacements. So every year has seen a different mix.Why would you care? Any body damage to a Tesla will cost more in parts and labor than any other comparable car anyhow. The majority of body shops won’t do significant work if any on a Tesla, decreasing the number of repair shops, increasing the price by lowering competition and parts are typically available only from Tesla which charges more for them. The wait time(s) for Tesla parts exceed that of major car makers such as Honda, Toyota, Ford, GM. Hyundai, VW etc. anyone of which you can bring to local body shops and compare pricing to cut your deductible or simply to have the car repaired locally and promptly.From TFLCAR.com. This is an utterly typical Tesla insurance story and demonstrates why insurance rates are higher for Teslas and why many body shops want no part of them. My body shop saw this picture - she will not do Teslas but DOES do Rolls Royce, Lotus etc in addition to the usual brands - she says that this damage to an Accord or Camry is 3 -4k all in.Here’s the damage:“If you’re rear-ended in a Tesla, this is what it may cost to repair the damage.“Earlier this month, we covered how much the cost to fix our long-term Tesla Model 3 has ballooned so far. Right now, our local Tesla-approved collision repair center has estimated our costs at over $10,000. However, that’s nothing compared to Josh, who shared his own repair story after we published our video.This is how his message started: “I thought I’d like to share my repair story with you. Maybe enough stories will influence change…”Josh pre-ordered his Tesla Model 3 the day the car was announced. At the time, his Performance Model came out to $79,000 including options. That included the following:$1,000 for Obsidian Black Metallic Paint$5,000 for Enhanced Autopilot$3,000 for Full Self-Driving Capability$5,000 for Performance Upgrade Package“He had driven his car for 8 months and 9,000 miles when he ended up in an accident on May 8, 2019. Onboard footage Josh provided below shows a third-generation Lincoln Navigator smashing into his Tesla. Fortunately, the car rockets away at the last moment, mitigating some of the impact. It could have been much worse.Assessing the damage“The day after his collision, Josh went to a local insurance adjuster, and was “told they can’t give estimates on Tesla,” according to his e-mail. Later, the insurance company demanded his car was towed to a certified repair shop 1-1/2 hours away. That is not too unfamiliar to our own experience, where the nearest repair shop is an hour away from our office.On May 10, the insurance company went to the body shop. From there, Josh received his first estimate for the damage: $9,540.79. The body shop warned him that insurance does not like to pay for renting the “Celette fixture”, a universal jig system used to assess and properly repair structural damage. The body shop doesn’t own one “because the market in this area is small,” they told Josh.They also mentioned their concern that the battery may be damaged. However, the insurance company did not approve a pre-scan prior to tearing down the car. The body shop did a tear down, then had to reassemble the car for an electronic component test. “If the battery is damaged, the car may break its threshold for total loss,” Josh told us in his e-mail.More estimates, diagnosis“On May 14, the local body shop submitted a supplemental estimate to the insurance company’s original total. That brings the running repair cost up to $21,956.33 — more than double the first estimate. The insurance company agreed to pay out $7,437.47 more (bringing their covered cost to $16,978.26). On May 24, “after threatening them with an attorney”, the insurance company agreed to rent the Celette fixture to the tune of $1,200.“Fortunately, the electronic component test came back clean on May 29, showing no signs of battery damage. On June 4, the insurance representative spent four hours at the body shop, and developed this work plan for fixing Josh’s Tesla:Order Celette fixtureComplete dismantling, diagnosisRequest insurance out (for the 6th time) to inspect any uncovered damageClear supplemental estimatesSend Celette fixture back to vendorOrder all identified parts (and wait for parts to arrive)Re-order the Celette fixture once the parts arriveRepair the Tesla“The body shop ordered the Celette fixture on June 5. Nearly a week later, on June 11, the fixture arrived and the insurance company sent over $2,269.00 more to cover the rental.The costs (so far)“On June 13 — the latest update Josh hears the frame rails have shifted on his Tesla Model 3. The left frame rail moved up 8 millimeters and to the left by 6 millimeters. The right frame rail shifted up 7 millimeters.Then the story takes an unexpected turn. The insurance company also informs Josh that the at-fault driver — in the Lincoln Navigator in the video, remember — said he hit a “white Explorer”, not a black Tesla. “The day of the accident, my local police department was not responding to non-emergency calls, so I do not have a police report, but I do have video and a ton of pictures. What was this guy thinking?”“Then, to make things worse, Josh received information on another supplemental to fix the frame rails. Now, the total is up to $35,638, including 167.6 total hours of labor. According to Josh, the total loss threshold for his Tesla, minus its depreciation, is $45,000. So, if repairs get any more expensive, the insurance company may just end up writing the car off.The bottlenecksMirroring our own repair experience, Josh describes what he’s found looking into other owners’ stories. “Typically, I’ve been reading there are 3 different bottlenecks”:Waiting for the shop to be able to inspect the car (Some shops in California reportedly have queues “over 100” of Teslas awaiting inspectionWaiting for parts to arrive from Tesla (the company sources its parts in-house)Negotiating with insurance“That’s the situation for Josh as it currently stands. Right now, he is six weeks out from his initial accident, with no definitive date on when his car will be repaired. Our own TFL long-term Tesla Model 3 is in a similar situation.What this means for you“The reason we’ve shared our repair experience and those of owners like Josh with you is the fact that you may want to consider accidents when you’re weighing up whether to buy a Tesla. Presently, repair queues are long and fixing even minor collisions may be expensive. Unlike other more traditional cars, a long wait means you may be without your car for a long period of time.That’s a problem, since many people are swapping for a Tesla as their primary vehicle. Most of us can’t live without our cars for months at a time. Even if the insurance companies fork out money for a rental, most will hesitate to keep paying for it past a certain point. That means you may end up shelling out some of your own money for transportation because the repairs are taking so long.Tesla does rely on its own approved body repair shops, and the company sources its own parts. Most manufacturers have external parts suppliers, and allow third-party body shops to repair their cars. That makes the process much faster and less expensive. Perhaps that could change if Tesla opened up its repair process. The company may have to consider that option, since so many more cars are now on the roads, and stories like that Josh’s Model 3 will become more common.**************’Will this typical, real life story affect the decision of someone who wants a Tesla? Will the increased premiums required by insurance carriers for these common situations affect that potential buyer? Will the fact that the car may be towed/taken 1 - 3 hours from its home to await parts from Tesla and then repaired causing the owner to lose use of his/her car for a month or more matter to someone looking to buy a Tesla? Does the fact that Consumer Reports rates the reliability of prior Tesla models as “poor” matter? NO. They want what they want and if they are willing to pay the money and suffer the inconveniences of ownership, then I wish them good luck and happy motoring.

This is going to be a long post. I'm going to put an asterisk next to every single instance where bloat happened in the American system that it would not in, say, the UK or Canada. (Yes, I'm sticking to the Anglosphere. I don't have to branch further than the other two large English-speaking countries.)Two years ago, I had an accident at work. Muscles and tendons through my left leg and into my knee were torn and separated, and it was months before I could walk again.The process wasn't simply that I went to the doctor, got scheduled for an MRI, and was referred to physical therapy. Oh no.I went to an aid on site, whose job it was to record all the pertinent information so that I could be given medical care.* Note that this wasn't a doctor or a nurse providing care, nor a triage system. Just someone to decide whether or not the nature of my injury was actually an injury worth sending me away for. The company made the decision that I could see a doctor on work time, so I did.The employer, thankfully, was large enough that it contracted healthcare providers from a local hospital system to have a facility on site.* This meant that there had to be twice as much equipment as if I just went five minutes down the road to the hospital at which those doctors and nurses were actually employed.The hospital is one of two hospitals in the small city*, and while the doubled availability of emergency beds is nice, they could pay half as much for facilities if they made one hospital with twice the emergency room space. They wouldn't need twice as much equipment; maybe 1.5 times as much for peak demand. Food and medication could be negotiated and purchased at larger bulk. Receptionists could be cut in half. So on and so forth.I was referred to physical therapy for a month before being given the go-ahead for an MRI. After all: the decentralized healthcare center didn't have an MRI machine, and the imaging center was actually run by a contractor in a rented suite in the hospital who buys MRI machines in bulk and operates them in multiple hospitals.* I go for the MRI, don't need surgery, whatever. The end of the story for me is almost here.The imaging company has a full-time employee* whose job it is to bill my employer. My employer has so many independent liability claims that they contract a whole other company to manage bulk billing.* That insurance company negotiates payment terms with the imaging company. Or they should.Remember how I said that the imaging company isn't part of the hospital; they simply rent from the hospital? Well, the doctor employed by the hospital directly who is lent to my employer coordinated with the hospital to schedule my MRI. As the hospital is a separate entity from the imaging company, a full-time employee handles cross-company scheduling and communication.* It was not shared with the imaging company that I was a worker's compensation case, and that billing should be to my employer's insurance company.At some point in here, I moved, and mail forwarding ended before the imaging company sent the first bill: to me. Or, I should point out, the address they had on file for me.Now, the accounting department of the imaging company attempts to contact me for six months at an address I don't live at.* See where it's getting fun? That bill, in a universal system, could just go to one single payer (thus the name) and all is done. But we're not there yet.The hospital writes off the loss when I don't pay the bill (that I didn't receive). The $577 they don't receive for services rendered is absorbed, with the other missed payments by other patients, and they increase the costs for everyone else.*A debt collection agency is then given my personal information, and they are permitted to find me, to bill me, and collect on that debt. Another full-time set of collection employees, billing personnel, and accountants.*That agency has been trying to collect payment from me, personally, for about a year. On a debt that isn't mine. I have no legal way to contest the debt; it was for services rendered to me, and under the current system, it is my responsibility to resolve. The insurance company from my employer is glad to work with the collection agency, but the agency won't work with them because the negotiated rate for service provided between the insurance company and the original provider is less than the collection agency paid for the account.Let's try another.I once had a great job, with decent benefits. Health insurance was top-notch.I ended up being hospitalized for ten days, following an emergency stay. I got pre-approval from my insurance company for the hospitalization. (There's a person whose job it is to take phone calls and, even if it's explicitly covered in the policy, determine whether they will cover that procedure or care*) I would pay my deductible and co-pay.My employer opted to let me go, effective the last day I worked. Unfortunately, that decision was made seven days into my stay, and the health insurance was only active while I was an employee of the company.At this point, the insurance plan has kept all of my premiums.* Hundreds I paid into healthcare that I didn't get to use. Once more, I was hit with a bill ($26,500, if I recall) that I couldn't pay.I immediately filed for Medicaid, and they retroactively paid that bill (or, at the very least, the negotiated price). Which means that an accounting team at the state Medicaid office had to handle enrolling me and furnishing payment to several different vendors.*I came out of it okay, but you can still see the bloat.That's it. Over and over.In a universal system, healthcare providers are either simply government employees who get paid a salary to provide care, or they exist as contractors who just put through diagnostic and testing codes to a central portal to request payment.My primary care provider has two full-time staff who just interact with insurance companies.That is why we get no better care for a much higher cost. What we're paying for is a health insurance industry with tens of billions of revenue, for approximately 700,000 employees whose only job is to interface between insurance companies.Edit: I saw several comments on here point out that their providers aren’t government employees. The answer itself states that they are either “government employees… [or] contractors.” If a healthcare provider owns/rents their facility space, and is responsible for hiring staff that are paid by their business’s earnings, but all earnings come from a single payer, then that provider — be it a hospital or a small doctor’s office — is a contractor to the government. To that end, there’s still only one billing structure needed: the reimbursement for services at agreed-upon rates from the government.