Dictionary of Insurance Terms -M-

-M-

• Mail Order Insurer: Type of insurance
  company that sells policies through the mail or other mass media, eliminating
  need for agents.

• 
  Major Medical Insurance: Health
  insurance to finance the expense of major illness and injury. Characterized
  by large benefit maximums ranging up to $250,000 or no limit, the insurance,
  above an initial deductible, reimburses the major part of all charges for
  hospital, doctor, private nurses, medical appliances, prescribed out-of-hospital
  treatment, drugs, and medicines. The insured person as coinsurer pays the
  remainder.
• 
  Malingering: The practice of feigning
  illness or inability to work in order to collect insurance benefits.
• 
  Malpractice: Improper care or treatment
  by a physician, hospital, or other provider of health care.
• 
  Malpractice Insurance: Coverage
  for a professional practitioner, such as a doctor or a lawyer, against
  liability claims resulting from alleged malpractice in the performance
  of professional services.
• 
  Managed Care: Health care systems that
  integrate the financing and delivery of appropriate health care services
  to covered individuals by arrangements with selected providers to furnish
  a comprehensive set of health care services, explicit standards for selection
  of health care providers, formal programs for ongoing quality assurance
  and utilization review, and significant financial incentives for members
  to use providers and procedures associated with the plan.
• 
  Manual Rate: The premium rate developed
  for a group insurance coverage from the company’s standard rate tables
  normally referred to as its rate manual or underwriting manual.
• 
  Manuscript Policy: Policy designed
  for a firm’s specific needs and requirements.
• 
  Marine Insurance: A form of insurance
  primarily concerned with means of transportation and communication, and
  with goods in transit (see “Inland Marine Insurance” and “Ocean Marine
  Insurance”).
• 
  Marital deduction: A reduction of
  an estate for estate tax purposes, which is available if the decedent is
  survived by his or her spouse, can be as large as the administrator or
  executor elects so long as it does not exceed the value of qualifying property
  passing to the surviving spouse.
• 
  Market Price (or Market
  Value): The price at which a security can be bought or sold at any
  particular time.
• 
  Mass Merchandising: Plan for insuring
  individual members of a group, such as employees of firms or members of
  labor unions, under a single program of insurance at reduced premiums.
  Property and liability insurance is sold to individual members using group
  insurance marketing methods.
• 
  Master Policy: A policy that is issued
  to an employer or trustee, establishing a group insurance plan for designated
  members of an eligible group.
• 
  Master Policy (or Master
  Contract): The policy issued to a group policyholder setting forth
  the provisions of the group insurance plan. The individuals insure under
  the policy are then issued certificates of insurance.
• 
  Material Damage: Insurance against
  damage to a vehicle itself. It includes automobile comprehensive, collision,
  fire and theft. Material damage and physical damage are terms that often
  are used inter- changeably.
• 
  Maximum family benefit: The
  largest amount in Social Security benefits that will be paid to any family
  unit.
• 
  McCarran-Ferguson Act: Federal
  law passed in 1945 stating that continued regulation of the insurance industry
  by the states is in the public interest and that federal antitrust laws
  apply to insurance only to the extent that the industry is not regulated
  by state law.
• 
  Medicaid: State programs of public assistance
  to persons whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health
  care. Title XIX of the federal Social Security Act provides matching federal
  funds for financing state Medicaid programs, effective January 1, 1966.
• 
  Medical Examination: The examination
  given by a qualified physician to determine to the insurability of an applicant.
  A medical examination may also be used to determine whether an insured
  claiming disability is actually disabled.
• 
  Medical malpractice: Improper
  care or treatment by a physician, hospital, or other provider of health
  care.
• 
  Medical Payments Insurance:
  A coverage, available in various liability insurance policies, in which
  their insurer agrees to reimburse the insured and others, without regard
  for the insured’s liability, for medical or funeral expenses incurred as
  the result of bodily injury or death by accident under specified conditions.
• 
  Medicare: A program of Hospital Insurance
  (Part A) and Supplementary Medical Insurance (Part B) protection provided
  under the Social Security Act.
• 
  Medigap: A term sometimes applied to private
  insurance products that supplement Medicare insurance benefits.
• 
  Minimum Group: The least number of employees
  permitted under a state law to effect a group for insurance purposes; the
  purpose is to maintain some sort of proper division between individual
  policy insurance and the group forms.
• 
  Minimum Premium Plan (MPP):
  An arrangement under which an insurance carrier will, for a fee, handle
  the administration of claims and insure against large claims for a self-
  insured group.
• 
  Miscellaneous Expenses: Expenses
  in connection with hospital insurance, hospital charges other than room
  and board, such as X-rays, drugs, laboratory fees, and other ancillary
  charges. (Sometimes referred to as ancillary charges.)
• 
  Misrepresentation: A false, incorrect,
  improper, or incomplete statement of a material fact, made in the application
  for a policy.
• 
  Mode of Premium Payment: The
  frequency with which premiums are paid monthly, quarterly, semiannually,
  or annually.
• 
  Moral Hazard: Hazard arising from any
  nonphysical, personal characteristic of a risk that increases the possibility
  of loss or may intensify the severity of loss for instance, bad habits,
  low integrity, poor financial standing.
• 
  Morbidity: The incidence and severity of
  sicknesses and accidents in a well-defined class or classes or persons.
• 
  Morbidity Tables: Actuarial statistics
  showing the frequency and duration of disability.
• 
  Mortality Table: A table showing how
  many members of a group, starting at a certain age, will be alive at each
  succeeding age. It is used to calculate the probability of dying in, or
  surviving through, any period, and for the valuation of an annuity. To
  be appropriate for a specific group, it should be based on the experience
  of individuals having common characteristics, such as sex or occupation.
• 
  Mortality Table: A statistical table
  showing the death rate at each age, usually expressed as so many per thousand.
• 
  Multi-Employer Plan: A plan maintained
  according to a collective bargaining agreement, to which more than one
  employer contributes. Under ERISA, at the beginning of the plan, no single
  employer may contribute as much as 50% of the total, and thereafter as
  much as 75%. An employee may change employers within the group without
  losing retirement benefits unless a break in service (under the plan) cancels
  credits earned before the break.
• 
  Multi-Peril Policy: A package policy
  which provides protection against a number of separate perils. Multi-peril
  policies are not necessarily multiple line policies, since the combined
  perils may be all within one insurance line.
• 
  Multiple Employer Trust
  (MET): A legal trust established by a plan sponsor that brings together
  a number of small, unrelated employers for the purpose of providing group
  medical coverage on an insured or self-funded basis.
• 
  Mutual Insurance Company:
  An insurance company in which the ownership and control is vested in the
  policyholders and a portion of surplus earnings may return to policyholders
  in the form of dividends. No capital stock exists.