General > General Technical Chat
Insurers continue scamming businessowners AROUND THE WORLD!
Red Squirrel:
Something like pandemic insurance should be a government thing, and it should just be something that's there by default, for example there needs to be a plan of what to do if there is any kind of disaster where you have to force people to not be able to work or run their business.
I think a good start is to simply write off costs of living for that period. If you tell people they can't work and they can't get paid, then write off all their costs of living. Property taxes, rent, hydro, gas, insurance etc... everything is just written off. You don't make money but you don't lose money. You may have to cancel things that are not required to live like cable TV or whatever but at least the bigger costs would be covered. This would apply to land lords too, they don't need to pay their taxes or their hydro etc. The burden would fall on municipalities (no tax income) and utility companies, but they have tons of money to ride it out, the people, not so much. Most people live pay cheque to pay cheque due to costs of living always going up. The government could then have a long term plan to pay back those companies over a longer period with a fund that would have been already setup for that. Basically it needs to be setup in such a way that in the end, nobody loses money and nobody is forced to go bankrupt.
So many for sale and for lease signs downtown where I live. All the businesses that were forced to close at the start still had to pay their extremely high tax rates and utilities etc and a lot of them had to close within a week. In the end, that means more people that need to go on welfare etc long term even once all this is over, so it actually ends up costing the government more.
tom66:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on December 18, 2020, 08:48:53 pm ---In the US, there is an explicit cap in the auto insurance policies that limit this kind of exposure. It can be as low as $100K. I'm surprised that isn't the case in the UK?
--- End quote ---
No, it isn't the case, and the US is actually fairly uncommon in this respect. The Road Traffic Act which covers mandatory insurance sets no limit on liability for injury or death, and typically no lower than a £20 million limit on property. That is, an insurer can be theoretically liable for any damages without any limits if a car led to the death or injury of hundreds - in the Selby case 10 were killed and 82 were injured, some very seriously.
$100k really isn't that much money - life long disability caused by a serious accident could easily exceed that.
Ground_Loop:
Yes insurance companies do lose money. In fact many went out of business covering hurricane losses in Florida.
james_s:
Insurance companies are evil. Really what it comes down to is a form of gambling. You are gambling that the payout in the event of a catastrophe and the peace of mind you (perhaps falsely) get by being insured is worth what you pay in premiums. The insurance companies are gambling that the amount they pay out in claims will be sufficiently less than what they collect in premiums. If you do use the insurance, it's a lot like a loan to cover an unexpected loss, you end up paying it back and then some eventually. The more clients use the insurance, the more the rates increase.
Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: tom66 on December 18, 2020, 02:12:38 pm ---Insurance ONLY ever makes sense for infrequent events that would be hard to defend against.
--- End quote ---
It is actually the literal opposite.
Insurance only makes sense for events that occur fairly frequently across the entire population, making them statistically predictable.
Then, it is not a matter of gambling whether a covered event occurs, but simply balancing the payment pool and coverage. Individual events occur so often that it no longer is cost effective for the insurance company to fight every claim in court.
This works fine as long as the insurance company behaviour is controlled by simple rules. For example, denying coverage because the payment pool is depleted, must not be allowed. If it is allowed, then there is zero business risk for the insurance company.
It is exactly the rare and devastating situations where insurance companies scam their clients, because that's where it makes financial sense. They do not do it because they are evil, they do it because it is allowed and they make money that way.
I repeat. If you want to change this, you do not fight insurance companies. You fight the people, the status quo supporting majority, and convince or force them to change the rules. When those people see the real-world effects, but refuse to change the rules for a more just world, those are the true evil. Not the ones who play by the rules already set; but those who allow injust rules to remain.
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