It may sound a strange thing to warn you about. After all, this is one of those holiday times when everyone is just having fun. The children are out and about trick-or-treating, while the more sensible adults have applied make-up and prosthetics suggesting they are the living dead or something equally hilarious. Yet, ignoring all the supernatural atmosphere, this is actually a time of considerable danger. The statistics don’t lie.

Let’s start off with the ever popular fires. Some people feel those lights powered by electricity are so 1980′s. I mean who would be seen dead with those? Well, actually, quite a lot of people do end up dead because many of those electric lights are not made with any care and short-circuits are a common way to create sparks. But if you’re one for tradition, you use real candles. They do give off those spooky flickering flames and, if anyone happens to knock one over, they can really liven up the party as other decorations catch the flame. Fortunately, almost all home policies cover damage by fire, including those where you rent out your home. Renters policies also include fire damage as a standard part of the cover. If it’s your own home, check whether you’re covered for hotel or alternative accommodation while repairs are under way.

Then we come to all those visitors, big and small. There’s a general rule of law that if you invite people on to your land or you give them implied permission to be there, you’re responsible if they are injured. It being Halloween, there’s a general expectation local children will come trick-or-treating. You invite people to parties. If people fall over in the dark or something goes wrong with your attempts to frighten and amuse, then your insurance cover had better be generous enough to cover all the medical bills. Before the “day”, walk through your home, the porch and any other part of your property where people might go. Clear away anything that might be a danger in poorly lighted conditions. Children, being children, put matches or anything else tempting out of reach. If you have a dog, keep it indoors. If it were to get excited and bite someone, this could be expensive.

Then we come to what you do outside the home. Because you know large numbers of excitable children are going to be running around, you drive slowly. The mandatory liability policy on your vehicle will cover medical treatment for light injuries should you be unable to avoid the child who magically appears in front of you. If in doubt, swerve and hit a tree. This is often cheaper and easier to explain to the neighbors. Put all this together and you have a two or three day window when you can destroy your own home, or maim children and friends of the family. It’s seriously worth your while to pull out the home insurance policy and read it through. At the very least, you will see whether there are any limitations or exclusions that might affect your planned entertainment. It will also speed up the claims process if you see exactly what the home insurance claims adjuster will want as evidence to support your claim.

Car insurance is a topic that may be quite confusing for those who aren’t very familiar with it. All those peculiarities and things that only experts are supposed to know can give a headache to a typical newbie. And of all different aspects of insurance for vehicles one of the most confusing is probably the one connected with genders. If you didn’t know, male and female drivers are charged differently even when buying from the same insurance providers and using the same policies with identical coverage options included. Sure, it may sound discriminatory and sexist at first, but let’s take a closer look in order to understand why is that so in the first place.

One very important thing you should know about just any kind of insurance is that companies providing it are all about calculating and assessing risks. Risk is an integral part of the insurance industry and lies at its core because insurance itself is a tool for managing risks. In case of insuring your car the risk being managed is the financial liability you would end up with in case of an accident. So the main interest of the insurance company would be analyzing how it’s likely for you to end up in an accident and how much it will cost them to cover all the damage caused by this situation. And in order to do so they may use the most awkward factors that the car owner would never guess being connected to risk, yet which in fact help the companies determine the risk to a certain degree. So it happens that gender of the car owner helps the insurance company to determine how it is likely for a particular driver to have an accident. But how it is possible?

It’s very simple really. Despite the common belief that women are worse drivers than men statistics prove male drivers wrong about this misconception. Fact is that women tend to have far less accidents than men and the overall damage resulted from such accidents is usually less than in case of male drivers. Women tend to take less risks on the road and even if they may be driving not as proficiently as some men they still file less claims. Some of you may argue that there are less women on the road in general and that’s the reason for the lower number of accidents involving female drivers. But even if taking the comparative ratio of claims filed per driver, women are still ahead with less accidents per capita.

What this means from the customer point of view is that female drivers usually get more competitive auto insurance quotes than men just because they are women and make part of a low risk group of drivers. Same as with different age groups, there still may be female drivers who file a lot of claims like teen drivers who are good behind the wheel. However because of the overall statistics men don’t get the advantage when it comes to auto insurance rates like women do. And that’s a fact you only have to deal with.

Somewhere in the distant past, people noticed a trend suggesting Ohio was a type of weathervane for political purposes. It became part of the mythology that a presidential candidate will lose unless he carries Ohio. Perhaps, surprisingly, this is still considered “true” even through John F Kennedy lost Ohio in 1960 yet still became president. In many ways people simply remember the facts that fit so they can continue to say, “as Ohio goes, so goes the nation”. Anyway, no matter what the truth of the matter, the Tea Party has been collecting signatures for a year to ensure Issue 3 gets on to the voting slips this next election. Simply, the aim of this electoral gesture is to block the state from adopting the Affordable Care Act – to be precise, the Obamacare mandate. The Tea Party want it clear Ohio will reject a federal statute as unconstitutional and take no action to enforce the mandate as and when it becomes law. For the record, Ohio is one of the twenty-six states currently fighting the Affordable Care Act. The results of this litigation are expected next year although the Supreme Court works to its own timetable. There’s no indication whether the decision will be available before next year’s election.

In the last paragraph Issue 3 was described as a gesture. It wants to use the ballot box to prevent Ohio from going down the same road as Massachusetts. Although quite what’s wrong with the health care mandate in Massachusetts is not clear. It should be said the resulting level of health care provision is very popular with those who actually live there. However, the Ohioan supporters of Issue 3 are taking a strictly libertarian approach. They want to assert their rights as citizens to ignore the law of the land. And that’s where all the problems really start.

Our great country is one nation made up of sovereign states. Except the sovereignty is not absolute. In many areas of our lives, federal law prevails. The test, of course, is whether each federal law is constitutional. That’s where the Supreme Court comes in. Should it decide the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional by imposing a mandate, no state in the union will be obliged to apply it. But if the Supreme Court decides this Act is a proper use of the law to regulate interstate commerce, every state will be obliged to apply it. That states have some degree of sovereignty does not give states freedom to decide which laws they will or will not apply. It’s all or nothing in this system.

So no matter what happens in the ballot, Ohio will not be free to do as it wishes but, as a piece of political theater, it could have quite important implications. This will be the first time the people have been given a formal chance to express an opinion on the merits of the Affordable Care Act. It will carry far more weight than surveys. Should the vote be against the mandate, it will be used by the GOP to argue all reform of health insurance should be stopped. Should this view prevail, there can be no more cheap health insurance. The premium rates will only fall if everyone is obliged to buy a plan.