its a MLM, just like health insurance. theres no guaranteed they will cover your cost in damages some of the time.
And the best part is it’s mandatory!
Gotta pay the capitalism toll.
Well, only the liability part and that sorta makes sense
So the person who hit you and totaled your car can hire a lawyer and sue the shit out of you, which your insurance will settle out of court for an undisclosed sum, and they get to walk away with the money, you get Jack shit, and to top it all off, you don’t even have a fucking car anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of insurance when it comes to 1000+ lbs death machines that go barreling down the road at speeds faster than the fastest land animals as part of normal usage, while packing more kinetic energy than a high caliber bullet.
… It’s just… Those laws aren’t there for you, they’re there to protect the rich. After all, you might hit their Porsche with your Honda, and they don’t want to pay for that.
If mandatory liability insurance existed for the sake of Porsches, the madatory maximum would be enough to cover a Porche. Then they wouldnt have to go to the trouble of suing you.
Any guesses as to how much money would be in the pool if every person in your country paid into a single pool for automotive insurance? I bet that if such a pool existed, then there would be a lot of motivation to use that money to reduce the risk of paying out. Which makes me wonder if public transit is better in countries with national health insurance as a result of the national health insurance.
In BC, Canada, auto insurance is managed by the government. We have low insurance rates to begin with, and then we get a cheque in the mail at the end of the year if they collect more premiums than they pay out. (It’s not a straight annual thing, of course. I don’t know the details, but over the longer term it’s how it works.)
It’s kinda weird not having any sales pressure, too. They aren’t at all light about upselling extra features. I only just found out that for ~$30/yr, I can add replacement car coverage to my plan. Over a lifetime, that’s like $2K to never need to worry about a collision leaving you unable to drive for more than like a day to get a rental.
German here, the answer is no. Our public transit is crumbling left and right. Our health insurance too though. Serves us right for voting conservatives into power again and again for the last 30 years.
I have to imagine the tail wags the dog both ways in that scenario. Better public transport feeds into better public health outcomes, and nationalised healthcare (should) have a vested interest in reducing auto reliance for myriad reasons.
Funny enough, if somebody offers you insurance that builds cash value, even though the sound of it does make sense you should probably run.
I’ve never heard of this. Why should I run?
The price of insurance only covers the statistically predicted amount of payoffs to all people insured plus a profit. If you’re building a cash value, then that’s priced in, with more profit priced in for them on the equity youve built. You’re better off pocketing the difference.
Right, I would assume it’s an investment vehicle with the extra margin built in. This is why insurance should only be in the largest pools with no profit interference and only the lowest administrative overhead possible.
What op is describing is called “self insured”
Also called “illegal” in most places.
And the flying is, it was much cheaper when it wasn’t mandatory. Liability insurance used to be super cheap because people didn’t want to pay for insurance that didn’t cover their own car. But when states started mandating liability insurance the price skyrocketed.
What grinds my gears though is being required to have liability insurance for every car even though the car itself isn’t covered. I’d love to daily drive a super-efficient electric car, but I teach scuba on the side and once or twice a week end up having to haul a bunch of dive gear in my cargo van. But with the cost of liability insurance, I can’t afford to keep my van as a beater weekend driver when the time comes to get a new daily driver, so I’ll have to buy another fuel-guzzling murder machine that I mostly drive to an office job downtown.
Have you considered a hatchback plus a small trailer?
Everybody is 12
Everybody is broke.
I don’t understand your comment. 12 years old? What does that have to do with this? Or is it an “I am 12 and what is this?” joke I’m not getting?
Its like gambling, I bet 100 bucks something will happen to my car this month. Damn nothing happened, lost again.
Except you know legally required.
Forced. And raped.
It’s not gambling, it’s risk aversion. They are not the same. It’s assuring you’re protected from harm by distributing out the costs in case of harm, that any individual couldn’t handle.
Gambling the goal is to get money. Insurance the goal is distributed liability so that possible danger will not bankrupt you. You still often can not come out ahead with an insurance payout, but hopefully won’t come out bankrupt.
That’s part of why medical insurance is so bad these days is because it doesn’t even prevent that. But it’s still an insurance, and not one that you want paying out.
Hell, not all insurance is even monetary --conceptually, saving grain silos for drought and famine is still insurance.
Actually, insurance is like gambling, your goal is just to loose, not to win. Lloyds, the world’s first and foremost insurance company started as a London coffee house where rich aristocrats met and bet on the return of ships. This was the pure gambling stage. Merchants soon started to bet that their own ship won’t return and the rest is history.
So you think getting cancer and having your medical bills paid is winning? Because that’s one form of insurance. Sure, if you get into certain types, it can be closer to gambling. But it can be further or closer
Sort of – you loose health and win money. It’s definitively a win compared to getting cancer and not being able to get treatment.
Yes. In this framing, where the goal is to lose the bet, getting cancer is winning. Winning the bet is a bad thing.
How insurance should work: Disasters are unpredictable, are bound to happen and can be very expensive to resolve. So instead of each individual risking bankruptcy for participating in a system, everybody pools together money at a much lower individual cost. That money goes toward a statistical guarantee that the cost of any disaster will be covered.
How insurance actually works (under capitalism): For-profit companies use every tool at their disposal, regardless of ethics or legality, in order to take as much of your money as they can possibly get away with while simultaneously paying out as little as they can possibly get away with, and then pocket the difference.
Iirc, margins for insurance are actually extremely thin. Consumers almost always go with the lowest cost option, and since insurance is mandatory, they don’t differentiate much on anything except cost. Insurance companies don’t actually make money on insurance premiums. They make money by investing the float.
The province I’m in has socialized car insurance through a crown corporation. We all pay relatively the same rate, and there are discount tiers applied based on years of experience. If they have a good year of low payouts we get rebate cheques because its not a profit corp.
What happens if they pay out more than forecast?
Then there might be a rate increase for everyone in subsequent years, but not your current contract.
That’s the way you do it, if it must be done at all. And despite my antipathy towards cars, it seems it must.
I would think it would disincentivize driving?
Drive less > less chance of accident > fewer payouts > bigger refund check > adjust forecast lower for next year > lower premiums > GOTO 1
Or maybe it’s closer to zero sum. because some think that way while some asshole cough Alberta uses the money on extra tires and gasoline to drive even more.
Not surprising that the refund check doesn’t reduce driving in practise. If memory serves - you can’t reward a behaviour into extinction, just like you can’t punish a new behaviour into existence.
At least, that’s if you credit what they teach in applied behaviour analysis courses. I don’t get to use my degree much, except at times like this.
Or not to build homes in a place called Tornado Alley, for example.
Why people think first part is great for insurance, but when somebody wants to scale that up its suddenly horrible socialism.
America basically has socialised healthcare already. It’s just funneled through a 3rd party first, who jack up prices. Where do they think those premiums are going?
How dare you.
"When you pay the government, you’re paying for other people’s care. The taxes will go up when more people use and abuse the system and probably won’t even be used for healthcare, and will just be used for something equally unimportant to me like feeding someone elses children in a state I don’t even live in. When I pay a private insurance company, I’m only paying for me. The rates only go up when the insurance company deems it necessary. The profits go to the people that really deserve it, you know? The hard working executives.
🦅 'murica
everybody pools together money at a much lower individual cost
Another example of this is would be public transport.
Another example of this would be a thousand things: Firefighters, police (not American), education, Healthcare (not American), defense, unemployment, childcare, pensions, roads…
insurance is a scam. us insurance seems more so.
put that money in a savings account instead. if you are not living in a place where you are forced to get private insurance that is. usians are so ingrained with this insurance thing though.
The problem is insurance inflates the prices of all the things that take insurance so much that you can’t afford it without insurance anymore. I could put the money I spend on health insurance every month into savings instead but if something actually happened I’d never be able to afford the bill.
Which is part of why it may feel like a scam, right?
Insurance should in theory be a good thing, but the manner of implementation means that on-paper costs are outrageously high, but yet your insurance company magically gets a 90% discount on everything for being “in network” - which you as an individual who wanted to pay for your own care couldn’t benefit from.
It’s the very definition of collusion.
Oh yeah I agree it’s a scam but I’m just saying we don’t really have a choice unless society as a whole buys into the doing a savings account by yourself thing. It’s not feasible on an individual level because you won’t save enough money to cover a medical issue.
Good recent example from myself. I was hospitalized a few months ago and the attending doctor wanted to do a test outpatient once I was released. At the time I had no insurance, I was in the process of signing up. I was quoted $300 for out of pocket, so I decided to hold off a month until my insurance kicked in. That test was only a $350 copay with insurance.
yes, that’s part of the reason why it’s a scam.
Never said it wasn’t. I’m just saying trying to save on your own will not work under this system.
yea, with healthcare you guys are in way too deep. it’s gonna take massive mobilization in the streets. and car insurance is mandatory in the us too, isn’t it?
It’s mandatory in 49 states.
In New Hampshire it is not, if you 100% own your vehicle and it has no liens or debts tied to it and you have not been arrested (not convicted, but merely arrested) for a DUI.
We also have the cheapest insurance (for the population density of the Northeast - I mean, yeah places like Montana probably are cheaper as they have scant traffic on the roads) because it is NOT mandated, so people can tell the insurers to fuck off it their rates are too high.
(but I gotta be honest on this point if you’re uninsured and even if someone else is the cause of an accident and they’re insured, you’re going to have to lawyer up to get paid for the claim. So just on the lawyer angle, insurance is smart… Heck, just a liability policy wil cover you. Collision… Well… if you’re a dolt at the wheel and drive off the road and hit a rock wall… that’s on you, otherwise… get that coverage as well…)
Because of this, NH has some of the highest compliance rates - over 90% of all drivers - in the country.
Isn’t a truly free market grand?
Yeah collision insurance is.
We have socialized car insurance here in BC, we all pay to the provincial public crown insurance corporation. If they payout less than they anticipate we get rebate cheques.
The image posted shows the person doesn’t understand how insurance works. You don’t get your cash back if years u retire with no accidents because the nominal cash paid for somebody else that had a crash.
I had pet insurance because my dog eats things that aren’t food but it tripled in price and I couldn’t afford it anymore especially since it didn’t help with this non-emergency needs so I started putting the money aside in a savings account and it was super useful. I have money set aside for his vet care and it earns interest. Not a lot but I feel comfortable that if he eats something and, we’ll be able to get it taken care of.
I don’t think it’s going to be a good idea for everyone to do it but I do think it is a good strategy in some situations.
I have been putting £60 a month aside for my 2 cats since they were born 14 years ago.
After 12 years, one of the cats got bladder stones. It took some effort to diagnose at first so he had blood tests, urine tests, more extensive blood tests, several vet visits and 2 x-rays. Once diagnosed, surgery was arranged and the stones were removed.This completely wiped out my cat health fund.
I continued to put the money aside, and then the same cat developed diabetes. So I now have another monthly bill of ~£40 a month for insulin and needles.
My recommendation is to get insurance. Its always a gamble, but that money you spend on insurance could offset 1000’s in vet care.
Health insurance in the USA maybe and a couple of other insurances may seem that way. However your private saving can only be so much. Get into an accident in your car - the 10 million in damages is paid by the insurance. Your car is broken afterwards and you manage to cause an accident on your bicycle- the damages is covered by your normal damage insurance. You are injured - the costs are not covered by your insurance. Hence you sue the insurance - your legal insurance covers the six-figure legal fees.
Now I could spin that further without deviating much from reality - even in Europe. Yes technically you’re better of saving the money instead of spending it on insurance - that however is a gamble on your bad luck. Great if it works out - there’s likely no way you could ever save enough to cover all eventualities
six-figure legal fees.
part of why it’s a scam tbh. in my country a car accident will never cost six figures because healthcare is public, car parts are not that expensive either. unless it’s something really bad or unique.
Yeah, honestly that’s just untruthful. Any collision in a modern car needs an entire new front, because of damages to the fragile pedestrian safety systems and the electronics. A new bumper on a 2017 VW is around 1500 Euros painted. Another 1500 for the head lights, the labour cost is obviously country dependent. But even a small accident in a parking lot has damages almost 5 figure high when two modern cars are involved.
When you get into a really bad accident on a highway and dozens of vehicles get damaged, the road is damaged, the cargo of trucks gets damaged etc, you can easily get into the millions if vehicles get totaled or the cargo is expensive. And you car insurance also covers damages to the passengers. If you cripple a child for example, that is at least 10 million in damages, for the pain, the lack of a normal life, the renovation of the hoise of the parents as well as the car, etc.
Damages can become extrodiarinally high, so high in fact that you’re better of killing someone im Germany (by accident) than to just cripple them as that is much much more expensive.
you are justifying the scam by how it works in the law of a specific country here
Considering the fact that there are over 30 countries that have a civil code derived from the German one, I assume it’s not just one country.
Besides you used health insurance in the USA as the only basis for your argument.
Liability insurance: legally required.
Also liability insurance: costs hundreds and the price gets jacked up every few months because fuck you.
Imagine somebody without liability insurance hits you with their car, breaking your spine. And they don’t happen to have any spare money. You’d have to remodel your home for accessibility on your own dime.
Why does that person not have insurance? Statistically, because they can’t afford it. Your example is a failure of society and how for-profit insurance is structured, not because an individual chooses not to be insured.
Yeah, it sorta is. Also, if you can’t afford insurance, you can’t afford a car.
Except your city isn’t walkable and poor transit… So you can’t afford not to drive.
Too bad a car is required for the vast majority of working folks just to get to their job that would pay for said insurance along with everything else they need in life. Guess they can’t afford to live either. Seems like a great system.
Guess they can’t afford to live either. Seems like a great system.
Yes, the system is fundamentally broken and designed to screw over the little guy.
Not what I was saying, and goddamned if I’m not too tired to argue.
And if you don’t pay it you can’t legally drive a car. And if you can’t drive a car, you aren’t going to be hired for a job.
I repeat, YOU ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO GIVE A CORPORATION MONEY IN RETURN FOR NOTHING IF YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE IN SOCIETY
Car insurance is a fucking scam.
YOU ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO GIVE A CORPORATION MONEY IN RETURN FOR NOTHING IF
You aren’t, actually. You can obtain a Financial Responsibility Bond in lieu of insurance. An FR bond is where you deposit a certain amount of cash in an interest bearing account. If the courts determine you are responsible for damages accrued while driving, and you fail to pay those damages directly, they are taken out of your FR bond.
What fucking black magic are you dropping here so nonchalantly? I’m looking this up, and I’m going to be very upset if you’re right.
Every state has this. It’s not commonly used, but it does exist. In my state, you need to deposit $30,000 with the state treasurer. When you stop driving and no longer need it, you can withdraw it.
Look at the “bond” section of your state’s proof of financial responsibility requirements.
You don’t have to drive, you can take the bus, ride a bike, use taxis/rideshares, etc. Plenty of people get around without a car. My area is pretty poor for carless living, yet I did it for a few years.
Car insurance is to protect others from you, and a lot of it is due to medical costs and lawsuits. Without insurance, one accident would financially ruin you and the person you hit, so it’s a good thing people are required to have it to drive on public roads.
Every time I see a comment like this, I want to beat the poster mercilessly with public transit maps for cities like Houston, Jacksonville, Phoenix, etc. until they realize what a stupid fucking suggestion that is for millions of people.
Yea sure, just walk 5 miles in 100+ degree heat to the nearest bus stop for the bus which comes every 50 minutes and will drop you off 5 miles away from your destination. So easy!
I used to bike to/from work ~10 miles, and in the summer it gets 100+ on my way home. Sometimes I would take the bus because it was too hot. I get it, it’s not convenient in many parts of the country.
However, you do have options. You can move closer to transit, move to a different city, etc. There are options if you want to make living carless a priority.
When I switched jobs, going carless was not a priority, so I ended up driving to my new job. I could have moved closer, dealt w/ a long (2+ hour each way) commute, or gotten an e-bike to make it feasible to ride the 25-ish miles to work. I made the conscious choice to drive, because it was a better fit for my family.
Victim mentality is destructive, reframing things in terms of choices you can make is healthy. That’s what I’m getting at. It’s okay if you choose to have a car, but do know that it is a choice.
Oh golly, you’re right. I forgot the option of packing up my entire life and moving cities simply so I can go carless. It’s not like I have any ties to my current location, and I definitely have the funds available to make such a move. My job is also happy to work with me on my relocation and will certainly accommodate my desire to not have a car by providing options, such as WFH or office transfers. Yep, moving sure is a perfectly reasonable option that anyone can just do without weeks/months of planning and no major impacts to their life that would be harder/more expensive than just driving a car.
People move for work all the time, and reducing the barrier to moving is one of the main perks of renting. Median job tenure is about 4 years, with a lot of people spending less time or significantly more time. You can move across town and keep your job if you like it, or you can apply to closer jobs if you prefer the area you live but want to have a more comfortable commute.
If you value a car-free lifestyle, plan for that the next time you move. ~2/3 of renters have been in their current place less than 5 years, and 1/4 have been there for less than 1 year, so most people will have plenty of opportunities to try something different. If you don’t value a car-free lifestyle, that’s fine too, just know that it’s a choice.
When I bought my house, my priorities included proximity to a bike trail so I would have the option to bike to work and close enough to a grocery store and the library to bike there as well, and I have made good use of it. My previous apartments were close to something I went to frequently (first and second were the city library and close enough to school, third was the grocery store and the freeway). There are more factors than just rent cost, and I really enjoy not having to use my car for every little trip. I could have gotten a bigger, nicer house for the same money, but I would have had a very different, very car-dependent lifestyle, and I didn’t want that. Likewise for when I rented an apartment, I could have saved a bit on rent by moving further away, but I decided that my lifestyle choice was more important.
It’s fine if you make different choices than me, just own that your lifestyle is a choice, instead of whining about transit not coming to you (general “you”, not you specifically).
I will say there are lot of areas of the country where things like biking and bussing aren’t feasible and I empathize that people don’t have that level of convenience.
I will also say that there are many areas of the country that do have bus service or could bike to work and refuse to try it.
And many people could move across town or something if a car-free lifestyle was important to them.
Having a car is a choice in many parts of the work world, and making a different choice can be uncomfortable and require effort. But it is a choice.
i’v been nearly everywhere in america, and this very obviously not true for large sections of the country…deliberately so
I’ve been in a number of places in America as well (not everywhere), generally in places that are explicitly not convenient to live carless. For example, I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle, before the nice train lines were put in, so the only option was the crappy bus line that didn’t go anywhere. My sibling still lives there, and they biked to work for a few years, despite the infrastructure there sucking for it. I live in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, just out of reach of the train system, yet I was able to bike to work for a few years. My in-laws live in the suburbs of LA, which has notoriously bad mass transit, and I’ve seen people there cycling to work.
I don’t cycle or take transit to work, but I could if I really needed to, it would just take about 1-2 hours each way to get there vs 30 min or so by car.
If you look for solutions, you’ll find them. If you look for excuses, you’ll find them. Either way, it’s a choice you’re making, whether consciously or not.
i’m not talking city suburbs, i’m talking that town in the middle of nowhere USA whose name nobody remembers, that only exists because of the local trucktop. with a 4 lane highway splitting the whole town in 2 and no pedestrian crossing on that roadway at all.
cross that on foot/bike and you risk your life
Eh, I have a different sibling in an area like that. They live right off the highway about 10 miles from town, the highway has no sidewalk, and road speeds are typical highway speeds (about 60 mph). Yet they ride into town all the time. It’s not as small as the type of town you’re referring to (my sibling’s city has several thousand people, and the larger town has 20-30k people), but it’s about the same setup.
Yes, car-free living isn’t practical in many areas, but it’s practical in a lot more areas than most people give credit for. And it’s possible to move if that truly is the lifestyle you want.
Again, my point is that you’ll find whatever you’re trying to find, be that solutions or excuses.
I mean, you could hold a few hundred thousand in a surety bond instead, but who can actually do that?
The USA has ~23 million millionaire households. So many people could do that.
It seems that one can pay a percentage of the bond amount as an annual fee, avoiding having to put up the fully amount. I have no idea if that is a good idea, and I have no finished reading the link I posted.
When would some want to do this over having normal liability insurance? Maybe if they drove very little.
People who got paid a fair wage before wealth inequality spiraled lol
no they didnt
Go learn about the change of proprtional wealth since the 1970s that coencides with the creation of the super rich class.
Wealth inequality did not used to be this bad.
im well aware of that, but even pre-70s people didnt stack cash in a surety bond to avoid having car insurance.
No it’s not, mandatory insurance of cars is there in case you do something, is it better if you get into accident and go bankrupt instead?
Agree about having to own a car but that’s a North America problem, even then there are some cities where you don’t need to own a car
Idk what country you are in, or where you live, but you are absolutely not required to drive a car to participate in society. A car is a luxury item, a privilege. Car companies have been brainwashing the public for a hundred years with pro-car propoganda so it may seem necessary but it definitely isn’t.
Trains, trams, busses, taxis, bikes, walking. These are all options available to pretty much everyone. No insurance required.
Now that I think of it, at least where I live the level of insurance you actually need to legally drive is included in your registration.
So maybe what you’re saying true for you and whatever area you live in, but it’s definitely not universally true
There are many cities in the US where it absolutely is required to have a car. Where trains, trams, busses, taxies, bikes, and walking are actually NOT available or feasible because the city does not have the infrastructure in place for them. Your comment comes across as incredibly privileged and ignorant of the reality many people face. And you can say, out of sheer ignorance, something like “well the people living there should change that!”. Sure. The single mom just trying to get her kids to school before getting herself to work everyday is going to get right on that.
Didn’t realise you were in the US. My apologies, and condolences. You guys have probably been hit the hardest with car dependency. Tbh I can’t even imagine what that’s like.
I think my comment stands for most of the developed world, but yeah, probably not the US
I used to be with a mutual insurance, which was still actually a mutual insurance, meaning the customers were also the shareholders. I got a small dividend most years out of whatever surplus existed.
Wish we could have that for fire insurance in California but the company would go belly up by the end of the month.
I first thought of starting a nonprofit insurance (all kinds) 40 years ago. It really is that obvious a market. Risk pool is always better when it’s bigger. Obama care did something, but not enough.
If it were a socialist systemic thing, and we rephrased it to, we all contribute a little each year and it goes into a pot for anyone who needs their car fixed, who contributes? (but then you gotta erase the evil corporation that rakes in billions and pays ceos unimaginable money)
The idea is when everyone pays into insurance the collective fund is used to pay for the costs any individual wouldn’t.
Thankfully accidents or thefts don’t happen to everyone, but if they do you usually get more out than you put in (personal liability is usually millions of dollars, nobody puts that much in individually).
Where this goes wrong is when fraud happens or insurance companies are incentivized to manipulate rates to increase their profits.
Where this goes wrong is when fraud happens or insurance companies are incentivized to manipulate rates to increase their profits.
I’d say the problem is that insurance companies can take profits above operating expenses at all. These should all be strictly regulated (if not entirely state-run) and predicated on funds going to reimbursements for expenses + minimal admin overhead. If money is leaking out the window to shareholders via dividends and stock buybacks, its effectively being embezzled from policy holders.
I don’t understand why we don’t have nonprofit insurance. It would be cool if someone started one that focused on serving poor people.
There’s an argument for maintaining a reserve (think about disaster prone areas for things like floods, hurricanes, etc…), but I agree that it would be better for insurance organizations to be prohibited from being publicly traded (private or public benefit corporation only)
There’s an argument for maintaining a reserve
In a federalized system where you print your own currency, there’s really not. Insurance premiums become a deliberate dampener on economic growth that offsets the possibility of future spending (and subsequent inflationary risk) during a large disaster, and an incentive to mitigate risk in order to reduce expenses.
But there’s no money in simply holding cash in reserve. That’s why private insurance companies typically try to parlay their premiums into investment ROI. The real money in running an insurance company is what you can do with all the cheap cash you’ve collected while you’re sitting on it, with the expectation that you won’t need to pay it all out again any time soon.
A public system wouldn’t need to hold cash in reserve that it can print/loan itself at ZIRP. And it wouldn’t need to seek private ROI ahead of inflation or to pay off private investors in order to mitigate the risk of holding large volumes of cash for a long period of time. But - most importantly - a public insurance program attached to a large state/federal government has a financial incentive to mitigate risk on travel that it can combine with actual public policy to improve the economy overall.
Rather than just insuring a house or a car, state officials can implement public works that reduce the risks of flooding, provide emergency relief during natural disasters to mitigate loss of life, and reduce instances of highway accidents / fatalities. Instead of simply outsourcing and privatizing the risk management aspect to an independent contractor, they can attack the problems of social risk holistically, then set policy prices to reflect the risk-adjusted negative externalities of cleaning up a mess created by risky individual behaviors.
Rather than just insuring a house or a car, state officials can implement public works that reduce the risks of flooding, provide emergency relief during natural disasters to mitigate loss of life, and reduce instances of highway accidents / fatalities. Instead of simply outsourcing and privatizing the risk management aspect to an independent contractor, they can attack the problems of social risk holistically, then set policy prices to reflect the risk-adjusted negative externalities of cleaning up a mess created by risky individual behaviors.
Uhhh, that sounds like socialism
No better way to reduce car accidents than to kill 100 Zillion people.
In my Canadian province car insurance is government run and if you’re a good driver your premiums and license fees are reduced
Must be nice
It is. I’m in one of those provinces. We get rebate cheques if they take in more cash than outgoing.
We also had an accident where somebody turned into us, but no witness. The insurer of both parties is identical because its the same for everyone, so they did a 50-50 fault and we both get our car fixed with no premium changes
We also had an accident where somebody turned into us, but no witness.
I mean, in my experience that’s the point where you put in a call to the local PD and get it reported, so the accident doesn’t go on your record. If their car is t-boning your car, its a pretty clear-cut case of them being at-fault.
But if it was minor and folks were in a hurry and nobody cared, I definitely get it. Nice to live in a country that friendly and chill.
Police don’t come for accident here, unless it is really major or injury. There’s no suing each other or an opposing insurance, so a police report becomes irrelevant.
I though a side dent would show other person at fault, but the insurance company said an alternate way is person is already turning and instead of yielding to traffic in a turn you speed ahead. I felt like arguing it, but since it doesn’t matter we just let it be.
Where’s the disincentivization for manipulation?
Not all markets are the US.
Ideally you have an independent regulator who makes sure there’s competition, and if the industry can’t keep up it gets cleaned up into a well regulated government entity.
Even the US has things like Medicare/Medicade. That is, government run services that are supposed to just be a service, not a profit-making activity. Funnily enough, they don’t have the same issues.
They made issues, unfortunately. Medicare Advantage (latest iteration) has private contractors handling your care which the government reimburses, and Medicaid varies from state to state, with some covering more and others far less (and some having similar arrangements with private contractors).
In theory: Public backlash leading to competition taking market share, and regulatory penalties.
But what about the shareholders? Gotta pay out them sweet sweet dividends.
Mutuals and professional body insurances are a thing to.
This already exists, and they are called unit linked insurance plans. Basically the insurance company provides you some units in an investment/trust fund, in addition to the policy benefit, for your premiums (obviously higher to compensate).
They are actually much scammier, because the insurance company administers the unit fund as well, and the fees are often much higher than if you just buy the policy and an exchange traded trust/fund separately. They were formulated by insurance companies basically for the sole purpose of bamboozling people who echo this meme. Back in the day, door to door insurance salespeople would say “even if you never claim, you still get a payout!”.
Unit-linked insurance plan - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit-linked_insurance_plan
