6 ms·

I don't disagree with you- insurance does perform an essential function in risk management. However, this doesn't mean that individual actors in this space have

I don't disagree with you- insurance does perform an essential function in risk management. However, this doesn't mean that individual actors in this space have always performed in the "best" way. Not to mention the nature of insurance in general is adversarial against the customer- if you pay out on too many policies you're underwater.

xienze 8y ago
>Not to mention the nature of insurance in general is adversarial against the customer- if you pay out on too many policies you're underwater. Like any business, “dollars in” has to be greater than “dollars out” in the long term. This seems to be a controversial train of thought when it comes to insurance for some reason.
- murph-almighty 8y ago
  It's problematic when you have companies deny claims that shouldn't be denied, or otherwise trying to disincentivize using their services. For example, from a pure dollar-in-dollar-out perspective it's in the best interest of my insurance provider for me to not visit my doctor, because it costs them money out of the payments I make them. If they create a small network of doctors who take their policy in my area, it makes it even harder for me to use their services- maybe the doctor is inordinately far from me, or constantly overbooked, or never in the office (what I'm dealing with right now). The harder you make it to access a service that your customers are paying for, the more money you make.
goobynight 8y ago
I wouldn't say that is overly adversarial. Insurance fraud is a career for some. I suppose if I worked in insurance I'd want to work for the gold standard that pays out and does a good job, while aggressively sniffing out fraud.
Pigo 8y ago
I really didn't want to delve into this on here, but I suppose I should have assumed that a lot of people out there work for insurance companies. So here it goes... It was a relatively small dental insurance company that had a reputation for being "for the little guy". To be honest I hadn't thought about it much before working there. But then I sat through meetings where they were actively trying to come up with strategies to get more single guys to sign up, and to keep mothers from signing up. They weren't even coy about it. All development went into signing certain people up, almost nothing went into helping people actually use it. I blame the hospitals and the insurance companies both for the pricing arms race. I guess my big conceptual concern is how our society no longer makes anything, but just finds new ways of extracting money from each other. And besides housing market crashers and the bad actors on Wall Street (who should be in jail), I can't think of another industry that is completely built around a vague concept of money. This will probably anger a lot of people, but it's just how I feel. I don't think everyone who works there is going to hell, it's just not something I was proud to say I was a part of. I didn't feel like I was contributing to something that was making the world better.

xienze 8y ago

>Not to mention the nature of insurance in general is adversarial against the customer- if you pay out on too many policies you're underwater. Like any business, “dollars in” has to be greater than “dollars out” in the long term. This seems to be a controversial train of thought when it comes to insurance for some reason.

murph-almighty 8y ago
It's problematic when you have companies deny claims that shouldn't be denied, or otherwise trying to disincentivize using their services. For example, from a pure dollar-in-dollar-out perspective it's in the best interest of my insurance provider for me to not visit my doctor, because it costs them money out of the payments I make them. If they create a small network of doctors who take their policy in my area, it makes it even harder for me to use their services- maybe the doctor is inordinately far from me, or constantly overbooked, or never in the office (what I'm dealing with right now). The harder you make it to access a service that your customers are paying for, the more money you make.

goobynight 8y ago

I wouldn't say that is overly adversarial. Insurance fraud is a career for some. I suppose if I worked in insurance I'd want to work for the gold standard that pays out and does a good job, while aggressively sniffing out fraud.

Pigo 8y ago

I really didn't want to delve into this on here, but I suppose I should have assumed that a lot of people out there work for insurance companies. So here it goes... It was a relatively small dental insurance company that had a reputation for being "for the little guy". To be honest I hadn't thought about it much before working there. But then I sat through meetings where they were actively trying to come up with strategies to get more single guys to sign up, and to keep mothers from signing up. They weren't even coy about it. All development went into signing certain people up, almost nothing went into helping people actually use it. I blame the hospitals and the insurance companies both for the pricing arms race. I guess my big conceptual concern is how our society no longer makes anything, but just finds new ways of extracting money from each other. And besides housing market crashers and the bad actors on Wall Street (who should be in jail), I can't think of another industry that is completely built around a vague concept of money. This will probably anger a lot of people, but it's just how I feel. I don't think everyone who works there is going to hell, it's just not something I was proud to say I was a part of. I didn't feel like I was contributing to something that was making the world better.