Goodbye/Hello: Where Did Lifeandhealthinsurancenews.com Go?

Posting life insurance news on the Web seemed like an esoteric experiment until Sept. 11, 2001. I got out of the subway station that morning and stood around the block from our office in Hoboken, N.J., at the intersection of Observer Highway and River Street, and watched smoke billow where the Twin Towers were supposed to be. I thought the towers were somewhere behind the smoke. Soon, I learned that the towers were not, in fact, still there, and we started using the Web to post whatever shreds of information we could find about the workers from MetLife, from the NAIC, from Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and from Marsh & McLennan & Companies Inc. who had turned up safe — and later, about the workers who had not turned up safe.

National Underwriter Life & Health covers people who beat their heads against brick walls trying to get past people’s reluctance to grapple with all of the unexpected, and expected, things that can happen. Suddenly, our own readers were affected by an event out of an actuary’s book of interesting but unlikely scenarios. Since then, our webite has outgrown one home, at http://www.nationalunderwriter.com, and now the home at http://www.lifeandhealthnews.com.

I’m managing the health channel here, and, if you’re reading this, it looks as if you’ve already clicked your way over here. Hope you’ve bookmarked the site.

And, to those of you who are active in the life and health insurance industry: thank you for reading the earlier incarnations of the site and for your efforts to help people prepare for change.

“Everything takes longer and costs more,” and everything is harder and more complicated, but you’re out there doing what you can, and that’s a lot. What we do matters because what you do matters.