The board of struggling insurance titan American International Group Inc. forced out its chief executive and replaced him with its chairman, Robert Willumstad, betting that Mr. Willumstad’s long experience at financial giant Citigroup Inc. will aid in turning around AIG’s own complex and sprawling empire.

When the largest, strongest insurance carrier in the U.S. has problems, it is worth paying attention. Former AIG head, Hank Greenberg is certainly having his share of problems. You can read the whole article originally published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal HERE on Advisen.

There are two BIG problems that plague our health care system.

1. Patient records are not (except in rare instances) electronic. Managing and transferring those records are laborious and rather expensive tasks. (Paperwork makes up 21 percent of total health care costs.)

2. Consumers cannot easily make their own choices when it comes to getting healthcare because they lack critical information about costs and benefits of care versus no care.

Consumer-driven health plans don’t truly exist despite what our leaders tell us about health savings accounts (HSAs). HSAs are not the health care panacea they were supposed to be.

Google, who always is thinking BIG, thinks they have a solution.

Their solution is Google Health, a free online tool that enables you to upload your health records and share them with health care providers.

Scary as Heck? –YES.

Should we just give in to the reality? (Google already knows almost everything about us — why not just fill in the remaining gaps?)

Learn more: www.google.com/health

Our firm has always tried to stay on the bleeding cutting edge of technology that can help our clients. I am a long-time reader of The Anderson Agency Report and have attended several HIGH-TECC conferences over the years. It is a great forum to interact with other agencies and vendors and see what is the true state-of-the-art in insurance agency technology. I signed up today so as not to miss the early-bird discount. It is in Vail, Colorado once again this year. It is a great place to be in the middle of summer and always has a lot of smart, technologically savvy folks to learn from.

This blog here had it’s origin in a HIGH-TECC session in which Megan Mahan talked about the necessity of all businesses to not only get on the web but to create an online persona via blogging and other resources.

We have a number of technology initiatives underway and are always looking for help in lessening the learning curve of implementation. I will update you with what I have learned after the conference in July.

At the TechAssure meeting a couple of weeks ago, I saw John Moccia with the Rollins Agency in New York. I got turned on to his blog. John is a rather entertaining guy and his blog is written in the same style in which he talks.

Last Thursday, John made a post about Business Income Insurance that had some great info. If you care to skip the witty banter, just read this and click on the link below:

“At the TechAssure conference last week one of our partner carriers, Chubb, launched a new flash based BI worksheet that I thought was pretty cool. In the light speed environment that most executives work in today, this is the type of internet-based solution that I think will be very appealing. The interface is simple and the questions and calculations take into account real-life 21st century business scenarios. It takes about 10 minutes to go through the whole thing. Plus it comes complete with a groovy host. Check it out:

http://chubbtraining.com/MyBIC_forpublish/MyBIC.html”