Assurant, was released in 1980. While living in Rhode Island, he became a member of Sax Odyssey, led by Tony Giorgianni, and Duke Bellair's Jazz Orchestra. In 1986 he was hired by Dick Johnson to play tenor saxophone in the Artie Shaw band. He has also appeared with Jerome Richardson and Red Rodney. He has taught at Rhode Island College. In April 2016 Abate was among eight inductees for the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. Greg Abate Greg Abate (born May 31, 1947) is a jazz saxophonist, flautist, composer, and arranger. He grew up in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. In 	Greg Abate
28319733	Assurant Assurant Assurant, Inc. is a global provider of risk management products and services with headquarters in New York City. Its businesses provide a diverse set of specialty, niche-market insurance products in the property, casualty, extended device protection, and preneed insurance sectors. The company’s main operating segments are Global Housing and Global Lifestyle. The company, formerly known as Fortis, Inc., was spun off from Dutch and Belgian financial-services company Fortis Insurance N.V. in 2004. The company’s initial public offering on Feb. 5, 2004 at $1.76 billion was the fourth largest that year. In connection with the 	Assurant
28319734	public offering, the company changed its name to Assurant, Inc. Assurant is 302 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in the United States by revenue as of 2021. History. Assurant can trace its roots back to the founding of the La Crosse Mutual Aid Association, which was established to sell disability insurance in Wisconsin in the early 1890s. La Crosse Mutual Aid Association would later become the Time Insurance Company. In 1978, N.V. AMEV of the Netherlands acquired the Time Insurance Company via its U.S. holding company AMEV Holdings, Inc. During the next 12 years, AMEV Holdings	Assurant
28319735	, Inc. would expand through acquisition, buying American Security Insurance (credit-related insurance); United Family (funeral insurance); Western Insurance Company (mutual funds); and Superior Insurance (auto insurance). In 1990, N.V. AMEV of the Netherlands acquired VSB Groep NV bank to become the Netherlands first financial conglomerate combining an insurer and a bank, creating Fortis. In 1991, AMEV acquired the group life, accident and health insurance of Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company. AMEV Holdings, Inc. was rebranded Fortis, Inc. in 1991. Superior Insurance was sold in 1996. Fortis acquired John Alden in 1998 and American Bankers Insurance in 1999. Fortis Inc. sold 	Assurant
28319736	its life insurance to The Hartford in 2001. Fortis' American business was subsequently renamed as Assurant and spun off from the parent company in 2004. On June 10, 2015 Assurant announced an exit from the health insurance marketplace to focus on housing and lifestyle specialty protection products and services, and would be winding down its Assurant Health business. In October 2015, Assurant announced it had completed the sale of Assurant Health’s existing supplemental and self-funded business lines to National General Holdings Corporation. Assurant began to wind down its major medical operations and did not participate in the next 	Assurant
28319737	Affordable Care Act open enrollment period beginning in November 2015. Assurant sold its HSA assets and other medical-account assets to SelectAccount in March 2016. In 2015 Assurant also announced it was exiting the employee benefits marketplace. Sun Life Financial agreed to acquire Assurant Employee Benefits for $940 million in September 2015, and closed the sale in March 2016. Operations. Assurant operates two main segments: Assurant Health policy claim denials and cancellations. Assurant Health (now divested from Assurant) was repeatedly found to cancel health policies for some customers that had serious medical conditions, and 12 states criticized the firm 	Assurant
28319738	for denying claims, with most of the states levying fines against Assurant. A number of individual cases have been reported. In September 2009, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s verdict that the firm (then known as Fortis") wrongly revoked the health insurance policy of a holder who had contracted HIV subsequent to getting an insurance policy, and ordered the firm to pay $10 million to the plaintiff. The court found that: A Reuters report on the ruling stated that Fortis had a company policy to target every recently diagnosed HIV-positive policyholder for an automatic  fraud investigation as a pretext to rescind their policy, according to undisclosed records. As in that case, their insurance policies often were canceled on incorrect information, flimsy evidence, or for no reason at all. In March 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the firm's appeal of the ruling. In February 2010, a Boulder, Colorado jury found that Assurant Health had breached its contract with a woman who was severely injured in a hit-and-run accident, and awarded her $183,551 for medical bills and approximately $37.1 million in punitive damages. This was described as "one of the  largest bad-faith judgments in Colorado history". Assurant Assurant, Inc. is a global provider of risk management products and services with headquarters in New York City. Its businesses provide a diverse set of specialty, niche-market insurance products in the property, casualty, extended device protection, and preneed insurance sectors. The company’s main operating segments are Global Housing and Global Lifestyle. The company, formerly known as Fortis, Inc., was spun off from Dutch and Belgian financial-services company Fortis Insurance N.V. in 2004. The company’s initial public offering on Feb. 5, 2004 at $1.76 billion was the fourth