Insurance is a brilliant, beautiful idea. People come together to pool resources so that in the rare event that a catastrophe befalls someone, that unlucky person does not lose everything.
The idea of insurance went wrong when for-profit companies were allowed to get involved. Public insurance is cheaper and better. I’m not sure if it is still the case today, but until a few years ago public insurance in Saskatchewan cost a couple hundred bucks a year while people in other provinces were paying $1500 for the same coverage.
Here is an exhaustive list of things that were improved when it was made for-profit:
Can confirm, SGI still exists in Saskatchewan. It is definitely more than a couple hundred bucks a year but it is nice knowing that they don’t make a profit. They sent everyone a rebate a few years ago because they had a surplus
The point of insurance is to protect your standard of living. If you can absorb the loss of something then you don’t need insurance for it(game controller for example). Most people can not absorb the sudden loss of a car(or house). So a company takes on the risk for you for a fee. That’s the general idea anyway.
Even if you can absorb it your still required by law to have it. So no it’s nothing like a game controller. Its nothing about protecting your standard of living.
It’s about protecting others standard of living from yourself. Insurance end of the day isn’t for you, it’s for others. So when you fuck up they arnt punished.
To some degree yes it is for yourself but that’s by far the least of its reasons for existing. To the point of it being more a happy accident then the intent.
Even if you can absorb it your still required by law to have it.
But the coverage you’re required to have isn’t for damages to YOUR car, it for you damaging MY car. YOU are required to have insurance so that when you total my car and cripple me for life, you’re able to pay that. That’s entirely different from a house.
That’s liability insurance and that is a requirement in order to share the road with others. The post is about their own insurance “I have to wait to get hit???” Which is the much more expensive insurance.
Well yeah, but that one is actually optional though.
You are not required to have it. If you own the car you do not have to have full coverage.
Most people don’t know that there is mandatory insurance for damage done to others, plus optional insurance for their own car. Clearly the person in the posted image is one of these people.
The main reason for car insurance is to make sure you can’t fuck someone else’s life up, that’s why it’s state mandated
You are taking about liability insurance. The post is about the insured’s car.
Let’s not forget when you get hit not everything is covered, also some damages like trees falling in your car from storms etc. Is also not always covered unless you have specific and even more expensive insurance. Also you don’t even cover your own car, you cover the other persons car.
In conclusion: insurance is a fucking scam
IDK what’s worse about that, that it’s called force majeure or that it translates to God hates you, so ain’t paying for that.
If Bob hates you and drops a branch on your car with a chain saw, then suuuuure you might get something, after your deductible of cause, but if you’ve pissed off God then…
I’m currently having some suspect cardiac issues, but my insurance won’t pay for “preventative” treatment. I t seems I have to have, and survive, an actual heart attack, in order to be reimbursed for my treatment.
So, just like car insurance, where you can claim only after an accident.
It’s fucking stupid and makes no sense, because AFTER an incident is far more expensive…
I love how you pay them thousands every year, and then when you want to use insurance, you have to pay them EVEN FUCKING MORE in excesses. Then, despite paying them thousands, they argue with you and try to not pay it. WHAT THE FUCK AM I EVEN PAYING FOR??
Wait to get hit?
I don’t think you’re doing it right.
Step 1 make sure you have gap insurance.
Step 2 never make more than the minimum car payment.
Step 3 when your ready for a new car, side swipe a car on the left and drive into a brick wall on the right. Make sure there are no cameras.
Step 4 enjoy your new car.
Step 5 commit identity fraud so you can keep a low insurance premium!
Step 6 do none of this because it’s all crimes. I really hope you read the instructions to the end before starting.
Things like insurance, home and auto need to government run and not for profit
Single payer insurance of any type pulls from a far larger pool than any company could have, lowering the individual cost and allowing a bigger risk coverage. But… what about all those insurance companies (of all types), as well as other industries that rely on the increased costs? How will they survive? /s
Ahhh I’m sorry! I forgot about the poor shareholders! Forgive me!
I’m beginning to think you don’t love the GDP, citizen
GDP me harder daddy
I work in auto insurance and 100% agree. Shocks my coworkers when don’t think auto insurance shouldn’t be all about profit.
Home insurance should absolutely NOT be government wrong. That’s just government sponsored building in flood zones at that point
Flood insurance largely is only government run, it’s far too costly for private companies. The flood insurance program started paying for people to not rebuild
And it’s a great example of an incredibly stupid and wasteful government program.
I mean they can stop allowing building in flood zones. Home insurance should not be for profit
Well because if you crash right after making the insurance there won’t be enough in your “savings”.
What if we do pay insurance and never get hit?
To me, both are not ideal. But somehow we as a society have accepted one as default and other as an extreme.
And the default one just happens to benefit the “shareholders” and not the everyday people.
(Btw the taxes we all pay could easily cover the costs of occasional accidents, and accidents could be reduced by proper regulations)
I mean thats the point, you are paying for reducing risk. If there is enough competition between insurers the average profit they make should be quite low.
The biggest thing with auto insurance isn’t covering your car, it’s covering the cost of whatever you hit sueing you.
Your car may only be worth $3,000, but if you hit a pedestrian and they require a dozen surgeries and are wheelchair bound for life, you bet you’re ass you’re getting sued for a few million in medical costs.
In a reasonable country, those medical costs would be free, but since they’re not you need some sort of protection against once accident bankrupting you in civil suits.
Why is car insurance so expensive in all the other countries then?
In addition to what everyone else said, property damage is a big part of it as well.
Let’s say you run into a building and knock out a load bearing wall. Or plough through a business or government office. It’s not impossible to rack up a couple million in damages if you crash bad enough.
Real answer: in most other countries you can be punitively sued, ex: if a person wants to recoup the emotional damages from being crippled. You can also, depending on the country, be made to cover the cost of services provided by the medical system if you were found to be at fault (I don’t know how often that happens for an individual vs. a large company, but that’s how the rates were explained to me by a UK colleague)
Plus there are things not covered by healthcare, and loss of income etc
Even in countries with universal health care surgeries aren’t typically free. They are just paid by a public health insurance. That health insurance will pay at first but it will try to get it’s money back from you if you injured somebody.
##ItsAScam
Third party liability for my policy is a few million last time I checked, if you somehow cause a heavy truck to crash or damage a piece of infrastructure you can run into those figures pretty fast.
I never really thought about that before. That’s probably why america hasn’t had healthcare for all, the insurance companies are lobbying (bribing) the shit out of the republicans.
Health insurance companies are lobbying the shit out of both parties. Car insurance companies would love universal healthcare. It would drop their outlays which would increase their profits.
Maybe you’re right and I’m wrong, that would make sense.
I have no insider knowledge, that’s just my bullshit take.
I DETEST both-sides-ism, but yeah actually in this case, both sides are being bribed and blocking true progress, just the paid off Democrats have been doing it more quietly by slow playing and avoiding real single payer solutions when the party actually has power.
When was the last time they had enough power to pass anything like that? It would take a 2/3 majority.
In a reasonable country, public insurance would charge your auto insurance to recover costs. The harms and risks of car ownership don’t need further subsidies
In reasonable countries they do exactly that. The health insurance ensures that your victim gets the required treatment. But they also ensure, that in the end the damages you caused aren’t paid for by the public.
Even in a country with „free“ healthcare, if you are at fault for the accident, your car insurance will have to reimburse the other parties health insurance for their medical costs.
I love the idea is the only thing justifying one racket is another racket
It’s in you’re contract how much they’ll pay out for this. $50-$100k is common. After that it’s on you. But you’re right in the sense that law suits often happen to seek this amount.
The idea is that what you pay goes to a fund that is used when the insurer has to pay a client, therefore socialising the costs of fixing whatever the clients insured.
If every client could get their money back, the company would likely have less money available for the payouts (and would risk everyone taking their money out once a big payout is due), and might go bankrupt if too many payouts come up at once.
So instead the idea is that ideally you end up paying less than you’d get if you needed to fix whatever you’re insured for… but it’s like a bet: you bet that shit’ll happen before you’ve paid more, the insurer bets that it won’t.
Of course, though, like in all businesses based on gambling the house always wins.
Even if they weren’t scamming you, they’ve got actuarial tables telling them how much you have to pay to make sure they’ll have a certain amount of profit… but of course they are scamming you, and they’ll do everything possible to avoid paying you even in the unlikely event that you fall on the wrong side of the actuarial table.
It’s not a scam, it’s just how companies work. By definition, every insurance will pay out less than they collected in payments. They have to pay their employees, their offices, taxes an yes, also their shareholders. That’s why, on average, insuring something is always a loosing bet.
You should only insure yourself against things that are potentially threatening your or your family’s existence: Liability, health, home, occupational disability, survivor benefits. For everything else it’s almost always better to just put the money into an account to have it at hand in case.
Insurance should always be public. If you feel the need to say things like “companies need to pay their shareholders,” you are only one braincell away from saying “gotta keep the lights on”.
Why should a travel cancellation insurance or a mobile phone insurance be public? You can take out an insurance for almost everything, from wedding insurances for when your spouse gets cold feed to alien abduction insurances. I don’t see why the state should be involved in that.
And of cause companies need to pay their shareholders. That’s how our economy works. Even if an insurance is state funded, it needs seed money, and that money costs interest. Either the state (i.e. you) pays the interest, or the insuree (i.e. you) pays the interest, but it has to be paid for either way.
Nobody’s talking about wedding insurance. The OP specified car insurance that you are legally required to have in many places in the US.
Nobody’s talking about wedding insurance.
I am. You know that topics can change or broaden during a conversation? I was explicitly talking about existential and non-existential insurances, and buttnugget responded with
Insurance should always be public.
which then would also include non-existentials. Also, car insurance in its broader sense is neither existential, nor is it legally required. What is required, is liability insurance for your car, because not having it and causing an accident could destroy the existences of you and your victim, by putting you into bankruptcy and your victim unable to realise their claims against a bankrupt person.
You can also insure your own car against all kinds of damages, from theft to engine failure, from collision to hailstorms. But that is not legally required, and usually it’s also not existential, unless your existence was threatened by loosing your car. Even the OP talks about non-existential car insurance, as they want their insurance to pay for their check engine light.
You know that topics can change or broaden during a conversation?
You don’t have to talk down to me or insult anyone else. I’m well aware of how basic conversations work, and the other person is trying to share their ideas.
What I mean is that you’re pigeonholing the conversation. You’re talking about perpetuating the system, as if insurance somehow needs to stay the way it is as a huge capitalist scam rather than reimagining it, especially when government systems are involved. And even then, I don’t see why insurance can’t be reformed or socialized for any of these purposes with the right framework. You’re coming at this by saying this is how it is and therefore this is how it should be.
But my bad, I forgot that in the US, even the wrong sneeze can send you into bankruptcy. It’s like Americans cling to this broken system to avoid being crushed by the weight of their own economy by pushing the problem somewhere else and turning it into monthly payments.
You can change the system all the way you want. But even a co-operative insurance in a communist society will have to spend money on other things beyond damage claims. Thus even they will take more money from the insuree, than they pay out.
Even if your insurance is only a pot where everyone throws their money in, and takes it back out when they need to, someone still had to buy the pot.
It doesn’t matter how you organise it, paying insurance premiums will – on average – always be a loss. That’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing, it’s just a fact. The important part of insurances is the “on average”: The vast majority of people will never cause a million dollar damage, so they can pay a tiny share of the damages caused by the one unlucky person who does.
Instead of being mad that you paid for the car insurance and never needed it, you should be happy that you didn’t end up in a car crash, destroying someones life. Instead of being sad that you paid for your health insurance for 90 years without ever needing it, you should be happy that you aren’t the one who had to spend years in hospitals fighting cancer. And instead of paying an insurance premium for your phone, you should put that money in a piggy bank and take it out if your phone ever gets stolen.
will have to spend money on other things beyond damage claims
Isn’t that what the government does with everything else? I don’t understand why this is a special case. They already take in a whole lot more taxes than they give out in services, and that’s fine. It’s understood that there’s an operational cost. But insurance, as it stands, is arguably little more than a mandated expense for the great majority of people.
Instead of being mad that you paid
I’m not mad that I pay for services. I’m upset that people are being denied claims, that not even a fraction of the money that had been paid for decades is available for other kinds of emergencies or basic needs because it’s a money sink where it all disappears under the pretext that you may need it some day under some specific circumstances as outlined in the fine print, that it’s mandatory to buy into this system, that it’s being touted as a necessity without giving a chance for alternative systems, and that the execs do everything in their power like raising premiums over bullshit solely for profit at the expense of people’s lives. There’s really no need to excuse this system as it is.
You should only insure yourself against things that are potentially threatening your or your family’s existence: Liability, health, home, occupational disability, survivor benefits.
That, and anything that’s legally required (such as auto insurance if you want to legally drive a vehicle)
How about the fact that home insurance doesn’t cover preventative care. We had a branch fall on our roof and the insurance had to pay out to get that part of the roof fixed. I pointed out that there’s another dead branch up there that I’m a little concerned about hitting the roof, and maybe they would prefer to pay a few hundred to get a guy up there to remove the branch than a few thousand to get the roof repaired the next time, and the insurance company said absolutely not.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Insurance is about compensation for loss, and that’s it. It’s not their job to keep your house safe, that’s still on you. It’s their job to give you money if something happens beyond your control. Now that you mentioned that other branch, you should probably take care of it, if it falls they could deny your claim since you were negligent in preventing a known risk.
Insurance is about compensation for loss, and that’s it.
That’s certainly not true of medical insurance. Preventative care is part of the whole package. In fact, certain preventative care is encouraged. Health insurance companies are more than happy to pay for UTIs, for instance, because they’re so much cheaper than pregnancies.
Did you mean IUDs? Can’t get preggo from a UTI…
Did you mean IUDs?
… yes.
Medical has been warped into a Frankenstein product that is partially insurance, discount club, and prepayment system.
Theoretically speaking. They should’ve just raised your rates. Since your house is at higher risk than they thought. But should offer a rate decrease if you maintain your surrounding trees.
Unless that information doesn’t change how risky they think your house is, therefore theoretically “correct” thing to do is what they did, nothing.
They are insurance companies. They basically bet that you’ll be lucky. They don’t want to lower the risk. Paying insurance companies is what you do when you want to lower the risk, and that would cut into their margins.
And yes, there are insurance companies for insurance companies.
One car insurance company where I live operates kinda like this. USAA.
Every subscriber is a member. Every year, after they pay operating costs, they take the money left over from premiums and put it into accounts distributed across all the members. When you reach a certain age you can withdraw the money accumulated in your account.
It’s amazing what you can do when you aren’t accountable to shareholders
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I haven’t heard of this. What’s this benefit called?
Edit: I should take one minute before asking questions.
Member-Owned Structure: Unlike a publicly traded company that pays dividends to stockholders, USAA is a reciprocal interinsurance exchange, meaning its members are also its owners. Profits, after expenses and reserve requirements are met, are returned to members.
Subscriber Savings Account (SSA): A small percentage of the property and casualty insurance premiums paid by an eligible member is retained by USAA and allocated to an SSA in their name.
Annual Distributions: The USAA Board of Directors decides each year how much capital is needed for reserves. Any excess is distributed back to members from their SSA. This distribution amount can vary annually based on factors like the company’s financial performance and the member’s longevity and account balance.
Payout Options: Members typically have the option to: Apply the distribution to their insurance premiums. Receive the funds via direct deposit or check
Yeah I didn’t know most of that. I’m not a veteran so I can’t be a. Member even though I bank with them. Or couldn’t last I checked. I probably can now because my MiL is a vet.
There are a lot of them like that called “mutuals” which are just insurance cooperatives. If you’re American you can probably get your insurance through one, although they aren’t as popular.
And if you don’t pay you aren’t allowed to drive a car and participate in society…
Tangent: how shitty is it that owning/maintaining a car is a prerequisite to participate in society in some places.
It sucks ass I hate it
I can’t afford the work my car needs right now, and I have to do that work before I am allowed to renew my registration THAT I ALREADY PAY FOR.
So my functional car will be unregistered soon because I can’t afford the mechanic repairs. -_-
This is while I’m working 40hrs/week.
I understand why people go postal, this system hates us all and wants us to suffer/die.
the system doesn’t hate you. it just doesn’t care about you. it was made so car manufacturers can make a fuck ton of money
I don’t mind paying for auto insurance, but I also get more out than I pay :(
I probably pay in 5-6k before my car gets totaled and I get a payout higher than that before I start the process again.
Just once I want to be able to keep a car to the point where it’s actually paid off …
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Where do you live that you total a car every so often you don’t even pay them off
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What cars.? There’s no way somebody survives more than 2 totals, are you good?
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Do you still want to drive after all of this?
When your car is “totaled” (from the perspective of insurance) it just means that it would cost more to repair your car than your car is worth.
Mild hail damage can total a cheap/old car, even if you only need to replace the windshield for it to be drivable.
How cheap are we talking about???
You ever looked into how much it costs to replace all the body panels on a car? It could be several thousand bucks. If you’re running a 2000s car, even if it’s well maintained, repairs could easily cost more than the value of the car.
Recently happened to a friend of mine. Got some hail damage that was too big and widespread to hammer out nicely so the panels needed to be replaced. Old car, nothing wrong with it other than hail damage. Insurance said it was totaled. You can still drive it but it required a special title or something, I forget exactly what.
To point 2, do you know how easy it is to total a car? If you have any appreciable damage to the vehicle, it can be enough to total it. 2 of the crashes I’ve been in were parking lot speeds and it’s still enough to total it. Like, a light tap (<15mph) to the pillar separating the front and back doors is enough to total a car if it’s not worth a ton
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