36 ms·

Car insurance in America is too cheap

• feliciegerald 3y ago
  [dead]
• sys_64738 3y ago
  If you claim too much on your health insurance then the company (e.g. UHC) requires you to file a report of all details related to it. If it's a car accident then they require all info about the other parties. They will sue the other parties to recover their costs.
• 082349872349872 3y ago
  A "fun fact" that often astonishes europeans when I tell them: in America, it's even possible (and common?) to get insurance coverage for cases where the other party doesn't have their own insurance cover.
  • smaccona 3y ago
    I believe in some states this is required.
    • sircastor 3y ago
      My state (Oregon) requires insurance for motor vehicle operation. I understand the idea, but I can’t help but feel like it’s business model protection ensconced in law. The insurer isn’t obligated by law to pay for… anything. They’ll do everything they can to get out of paying for anything. And yes, you can buy “uninsured motorist protection” from your insurer as well. Even in states where it shouldn’t be possible for there to be uninsured motorists.
      • kjkjadksj 3y ago
        I would expect if you have liability insurance theres a lessened chance you would flee the scene of an accident you caused.
      • NegativeK 3y ago
        Every state I've lived in requires auto insurance. The idea makes sense -- the state recognizes that vehicle accidents will happen and preemptively deals with free loaders by requiring auto insurance, instead of just suggesting it. It falls down when the state isn't actually requiring the insurers to do their damn job.
      • user_7832 3y ago
        Mandating insurance makes sense from the perspective of CYA, though I wonder if the govt could do something to enforce competition. Maybe make public actuarist data, and payout rates and information?
      • Nifty3929 3y ago
        Regulations frequently kill competition, either explicitly on purpose, or accidentally. Insurance is otherwise a hyper-competitive business anyway. Super easy to shop rates among many companies, so they all gravitate downward to about the same level, net of small differences in coverage or services, fancy websites, etc. And of course uninsured motorist coverage is a thing, because making something illegal doesn't mean people won't do it.
        • 082349872349872 3y ago
          > making something illegal doesn't mean people won't do it Isn't that the point of making something illegal? Here the system is: no insurance, no plates. (it's also no inspection, no plates. One has to be wary of the sketchier tourists, but everyone with local plates has both insurance and a functioning vehicle)
      • wongarsu 3y ago
        If people engage in a risky activity where the legal system expects them to pay for damages if something goes wrong, but damage sums are so high that most people are unable to pay for these damages, it makes perfect sense to require people to have insurance if they want to engage in this risky activity. The real crime is the state then zoning and building infrastructure in a way that forces you to engage in said activity, effectively forcing all citizens to buy insurance.
  • morsch 3y ago
    Frequently covered by (non-car) liability insurance in Germany.
    • kjkjadksj 3y ago
      In the US you can get away with only having liability insurance.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • jwr 3y ago
    Why would that be astonishing? It's routine (EU).
    • 082349872349872 3y ago
      Do uninsured drivers exist in the EU? We're not barbarians, here ;) (no insurance, no plates)
• User23 3y ago
  Get an umbrella policy. They are remarkably inexpensive for what you get.
• neonate 3y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20240203134307/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-insurance-in-america-is-actually-too-cheap http://web.archive.org/web/20240203134307/https://www.econom...
• whimsicalism 3y ago
  Car insurance in California has price caps. And as many of us know from econ 101, price caps lead to shortages. The California auto insurance market basically failed in December and it is now almost impossible to get auto insurance with less than 3 weeks lead time. Most of them have closed their brick and mortar locations and do not accept online applications. Of course, California’s solution to a shortage is to try to mandate supply. quote from commissioner that refused to allow price increases for 4 years: > “These alleged passive-aggressive tactics by insurance companies to slow down drivers’ access to coverage are unacceptable, dangerous, and will not be tolerated,” Lara said in a press release Thursday.
  • kkielhofner 3y ago
    I tried to get car insurance in California last year. It was so absurd I just sold the car.
    • TexanFeller 3y ago
      Have you considered moving to any other state rather than just trying to live without a basic necessity of life in America?
      • techsupporter 3y ago
        I live in one of the "any other states" (Washington) without a car quite comfortably. A lot of us can't or don't drive. It's nice to not have to put up with car insurance companies.
        • danielhep 3y ago
          Hello fellow car free Washingtonian! Selling my car was one of the best decisions I ever made.
        • anon291 3y ago
          As a car lite person, this comment is condescending. As much as I'd love if it were the case, efficient public transit is not a thing in most parts of the country. A car is a necessity. California needs to greatly expand transit or figure something out quick.
• mrlonglong 3y ago
  You chaps in the US have no bloody idea how lucky you are. In the UK, everyone's car insurance are increasing by 50% to 100% for ICE cars. EVs premiums are even worse. I think personally greed has a lot to do with it and the fact the UK Govt don't care about the people.
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    I live somewhere where the government has tried to impose price caps on auto insurance and now I can’t even get insured. My guess is the reason premiums are going up is people are driving worse and repair costs are going up.
    • dclowd9901 3y ago
      Also, car design requirements for safety usually leave the car as totaled from almost any accident. It’s basically always cheaper to total out a car, but of course that still isn’t a cheap thing to do.
    • callalex 3y ago
      Healthcare costs keep doubling every few years as well.
  • alexriddle 3y ago
    The UK motor insurance market is one of the most competitive in the world. Aggregators have created a situation where every insurer is looking for the slightest competitive advantage to drive themselves up the comparison table. I don't have the most up to date figures but in 2022, combined ratio was forecast to be 115% for motor insurance - this means for every £1 in premium, £1.15 was paid out in claims and expenses. There is some income from investments but it's minimal compared to the pre 2008 situation. Consequentially several insurers have exited the personal lines market as they cannot make money from it - RSA for example. 2022 is forecast to be the worst year for insurers since 2010. The market does suffer from a cycle of 'hard' and 'soft' markets and there will be an overcorrection in the short term - over a few years, we'll see insurers seeing an opportunity to undercut the market and gain market share and premiums increases will ease. TLDR - whilst it is painful to see premiums rising so quickly, it is not an industry that is awash with profits.
• paulsutter 3y ago
  The article explains that insurance /coverage/ in the US tends to be inadequate, which has nothing to do with the pricing of insurance. My first reaction to the title was surprise that insurance companies would be willing to price the risk too cheaply
  • prng2021 3y ago
    Agreed, it’s a very poorly worded title.
  • nsagent 3y ago
    The article does state this though: According to the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (apcia), a trade association, last year insurers paid out $1.08 in claims for every $1 in premiums they took in.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • matthewdgreen 3y ago
      The business of insurance sometimes has good (profitable) years and sometimes has bad (losing) years. That’s why insurers work so hard to invest and spread their risk over multiple years. I got a dividend from State Farm during the pandemic because they had an unusually profitable year, and they re-distributed some of their profits to policyholders.
      • likpok 3y ago
        Another aspect is that insurance companies can make money on the float, and this can potentially let them be profitable while paying out more in claims than they take in (or at least netting out to paying out what they take in). That’s assuming that they can effectively invest the premiums. Buffett successfully applied this strategy with geico.
      • mint2 3y ago
        Errr the pandemic profitability and refund was extremely abnormal. It was due to the lockdown where essentially no one drove for several months and then there was reduced driving for a year is so. The refunds were also not done willingly, they were done due to DOIs demanding it and peer pressure.
• bmitc 3y ago
  Whatever you say. For years after I purchased a new car, my car insurance was basically half of my car payment. I haven't had an accident, which was a minor fender bender at a light, in over 15 years. My rates were so ridiculous that I thought it would be better just to buy another car and lower the insurance to the minimum required. And when you need the insurance, even when you are not at fault, they immediately raise your rates. What were you even paying them for before if they just raise your rates to repay themselves?
  • tptacek 3y ago
    The point of the article seems to be that the minimum coverage rates people are required to get don't come close to paying the medical bills of car accident victims. It's not a consumer argument, it's an argument about externalities.
    • denimnerd42 3y ago
      Bad headline for sure. The coverage by law is too low.
  • TexanFeller 3y ago
    > For years after I purchased a new car, my car insurance was basically half of my car payment Different cars have very different insurance rates, it’s a big part of the TCO. If you aren’t rich enough not to care, insurance rates need to be considered early on in any car purchase decision. I don’t even know how much my car insurance costs because it’s too small to matter because I have a basic paid-off car that’s cheap to insure.
    • tibbon 3y ago
      Insurance rates were actually the deciding factor for me not buying a Tesla 3 a few years ago (before the carriers seemed to figure out coverage and risk for them a bit better). The insurance was going to be stupidly high, making the TCO with a decent loan (around 2% at the time) to be like $1k/month. I was like, I do not need to spent $1k/month on a car, so I bought a used Porsche for cash instead and pay almost nothing for insurance in comparison.
• prmoustache 3y ago
  How can 1 out of 8 driver be uninsured in that country? Aren't the cars supposed to be registered? The state isn't checking that registered cars are also insured?
  • tptacek 3y ago
    You technically can't drive a car off a lot without proving you have insurance coverage (at least in every state I've lived in), and, when you re-register your car every year, you'll again need to prove insurance coverage; failure to re-register deprives you of a sticker you'll need to keep from being pulled over. So in that sense, the system coheres. But insurance coverage can fluctuate over the course of a year, because unlike with health insurance, there's no annual enrollment period; people switch insurers, or miss bills, or sign up ruthlessly for a month of insurance to get past the state bureaucracy and then just never pay again. There's the SR-22 system, which is a court order to maintain insurance at minimum levels, which you get for getting repeatedly pulled over without insurance (or, perhaps, for getting pulled over without proof of insurance and then not proving you did get coverage afterwards). But that's not a fix, because you can only enforce it at police traffic stops.
    • thfuran 3y ago
      >failure to re-register deprives you of a sticker you'll need to keep from being pulled over My car is insured and registered, but it has been the better part of ten years since I actually bothered to put a new sticker on the plate. Maybe there are places where cops try to more actively police expired plates, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a thing around here.
    • flutas 3y ago
      > failure to re-register deprives you of a sticker you'll need to keep from being pulled over. So in that sense, the system coheres. anecdata, but in my town of 60k people, any one drive I do I couldn't even count on my hands the number of expired temp tags (I've seen over a year old), and expired registration. It really _feels_ like people don't get pulled over for that anymore.
• seatac76 3y ago
  My experience has been completely different. State Farm jacked up my price by 40% over the last two years, even though I had to incidents. When I called and asked they said it’s due to inflation. Insurance increase along with groceries has been one of the permanent inflationary increases in my expenses since Covid. I’m sure a lot of people are in the same boat.
  • callalex 3y ago
    The increase in auto insurance is just reflecting the increase in their two main expenses: healthcare and cars/car parts.
    • achates 3y ago
      Also higher crime.
• jhallenworld 3y ago
  Always buy the underinsured/uninsured motorist coverage. My daughter was hit by a car, the main payout was from my insurance, and not from the person who hit her. Liability is everything, the cost of the car is nothing. Get the umbrella policy on your house. Buy liability insurance when you rent a car. It's not just the medical bills- it's also the legal damages.
  • warner25 3y ago
    > Always buy the underinsured/uninsured motorist coverage. Agreed. I'm a personal finance nerd, and it felt like an epiphany when I discovered this a few years ago, because it's rarely discussed but seems so important. I max out our UM/UIM coverage now. Side note: My wife is a stay-at-home mom and I've long wished for a disability insurance product that would cover the economic value that she provides, i.e. cover the cost of daycare / after-school care if she couldn't care for the kids. As far as I can tell, there's no such product for people who aren't wage earners. The closest thing I've found is UM/UIM coverage, since the most likely cause of disability is a car crash. Presumably it would pay for at least some of the other things beyond medical bills. > Buy liability insurance when you rent a car. Why do you say this instead of just relying on the liability coverage under your regular auto insurance?
    • jhallenworld 3y ago
      Getting the umbrella is good, because during the process they review the rest of your insurance (at least they did for me). >stay at home mom I'm in the same situation, it sure would be nice. We do both have life insurance at least. >Why do you say this instead of just relying on the liability coverage under your regular auto insurance? To be careful. If you don't buy it, make absolutely sure that your own auto insurance covers it. [also people who don't own a car won't have auto insurance..]
    • daydream 3y ago
      >Side note: My wife is a stay-at-home mom and I've long wished for a disability insurance product that would cover the economic value that she provides, i.e. cover the cost of daycare / after-school care if she couldn't care for the kids. As far as I can tell, there's no such product for people who aren't wage earners. AD&D (accidental death and disability) is the closest you’ll come. It’s most commonly offered by workplaces I believe, and is not expensive. On the flip side the situations it pays out are pretty narrow. The only other alternative I know of is life insurance but of course that covers death, not disability.
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• anovikov 3y ago
  Somehow i always paid an invisible amount for my insurance (even after having one accident where i was at fault, and drunk). And yet local insurance companies seems to be making ends meet easily. I don't know what is the problem there. Maybe because it's not the USA? Why is this only a problem in Anglosphere (yes i heard in UK it is about as bad - and their healthcare is socialised, so it's not because of healthcare)?
• saxonww 3y ago
  This article is really an indictment of healthcare costs, not that car insurance is too cheap. Change my mind.
  • tiahura 3y ago
    As an ambulance chaser who gets to deal with both the healthcare industry and the insurance industry, you are correct.
  • silexia 3y ago
    The USA limits the number of new doctors a year, driving pay for doctors to stratospheric levels averaging over a million dollars a year each. Deregulate medicine and watch the free market dramatically improve quality of care, time with each doctor and costs.
    • saxonww 3y ago
      Now I guess I'm arguing against my point, but I think these numbers are out of whack. I don't think the US limits the number of new doctors per year. That would surprise me. I do think the AMA or whatever has a vested interest in controlling the supply of physicians, because it props up salaries. That said, it is certainly not the case that US doctors average $1m/yr in salary. There are some doctors that make that much or more, and different specializations make different salaries on average, but the overall average is more like $225k/yr. Finally, while I am not going to argue about the benefits of deregulation - we do have to make sure people actually get appropriate care - it is the case that practices across the country are being bought up by companies like HCA. This seems to lead to the 'enshittification' phenomenon as applied to medicine. The parent companies demand more efficiency, leading to office staff having to handle more patients and more work than before, and doctors having to see more patients in the same amount of time as before. Quality, from the perspective of the patient, suffers. I don't think deregulation fixes this. I don't think 'the market' is a good solution to healthcare. When I think of healthcare, I think of people who are sick, or hurt, or whatever, and they need to get some help. If there is ever a time where having to weigh pros and cons of available services while shopping around to find the best deal is a good outcome, asking people to do this when they are hurt or sick is not it.
• sudden_dystopia 3y ago
  No it is not. Insurance companies get a bad rap, some of it deserved. But you would be absolutely shocked at the amount of exaggerated injury claims and the amount of fraud encouraged by lawyers and doctors.
• excalibur 3y ago
  Don't get me wrong, the insurance industry writ large played a huge and active role in shaping the current hellscape. But this is still putting the onus on auto insurers for what is fundamentally an issue with the healthcare system.
• manicennui 3y ago
  This sounds more like another symptom of the problems with our healthcare system. I wonder how many non-American are aware of this extra idiocy in the system: if you get hurt on commercial property, at someone's home, or in a car, you can't use your own health insurance; you now have to fight with someone else's insurance.
• advael 3y ago
  Insurance run for profit has to be a scam by definition. You can't turn a profit from a risk pool without ensuring that you can avoid paying at least a good chunk of the time. It should be as illegal as ponzi schemes
  • abigail95 3y ago
    "what is drawdown and how much will i pay to avoid it"
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • Invictus0 3y ago
    Wait till you find out about free market competition!
    • advael 3y ago
      Let me know when there's a free market somewhere
  • l33t7332273 3y ago
    Strictly speaking I don’t think that’s true. If premiums are sufficiently high then an insurance company could pay out every valid claim and still make a profit.
    • advael 3y ago
      When you get to decide what claims are valid and profit from deciding they're not, the incentives just don't stack up to actually covering people adequately, and by this same property as well as the obfuscated nature of the internal judgments that lead to these conclusions and the infrequent occurrence of incidents built into... why risk-pooling makes sense for anyone, buyers don't have good enough information in advance to drive any selection pressures on acting against these incentives There is no honest insurance company because the mechanism design implications of making it possible to be one would effectively destroy or nationalize the sector. Thus, it's a business that can't not be a scam
• black_13 3y ago
  [dead]
• pkoird 3y ago
  > Since then, the number of severe crashes has climbed. It is hard to say exactly why. The article mentions some of the reasons but the one I find personally annoying the most are white LED headlights. What in the absolute seven hells is wrong with every manufacturers these days? White light may give you extra vision but it blinds everyone else. Eventually, everyone starts using it and then no one will be able to see properly at night anymore. Truly, a tragedy of the commons. A swift intervention at the Federal level seems like a must.
  • blacksmith_tb 3y ago
    I see quite a few searing LED headlights that don't blind me because they're angled low enough, I think the biggest problem (so to speak) is when they're on towering pickups and SUVs. I suspect there's no good way to angle the beams on those to allow their drivers to see the road without also frying the retinas of normal-sized vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians. There also seem to be quite a few iffy aftermarket LEDs, which apparently don't always allow for much fine-tuning when they replace halogens.
    • selimthegrim 3y ago
      There was a big NYTimes article about this a few weeks ago, and somebody in the comments complain that the bright white LED headlights were ruining the proximity sensors on their Volvo and they couldn’t install optical filters without voiding the warranty. To me this seemed weird cause I thought those things worked on IR. I’m wondering if there’s some sort of CV solution to this? I don’t see how narrow color temperature of LEDs would affect IR sensors, etc.
      • yial 3y ago
        Leds can output 275nm-950nm. IR is between 780nm-1mm. These aren’t exact numbers. Probably something in that overlap was damaging them somehow. Or it might be something totally different and the person had misdiagnosed. What I’m uncertain of, is if the led is intended to produce a certain color (white, blue) how much it would be emitting on the IT spectrum. Example: https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/semiconductor/knowledge/e-learning/discrete/chap5/chap5-3.html https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/semiconductor/knowled...
• RecycledEle 3y ago
  The problem when someone is killed by a car and their family gets $0 of the $100,000 per person payout is not the lack of auto insurance. It's a crooked hospital who decided to cheat everyone involved.
  • Wytwwww 3y ago
    Why can't it be both? I mean the coverage limits in the US are still ridiculously low by Western standards and would hardly cover serious treatment throughout much of Europe despite healthcare being cheaper there.
• vacuity 3y ago
  I recently had an uncomfortable realization that driving is a bunch of people trying their best and some not trying their best, all in a fast-paced context. People needing a car to get to work every day...makes me appreciate public transportion all the more. We need it last decade.
• alkonaut 3y ago
  Or perhaps the healthcare is too expensive? I think my car insurance is expensive-ish ($800/yr or so) but I can't imagine what it would be if any healthcare for the other party would be on the line. Now, of course I pay for that healthcare one way or another anyway, whether I'm involved in the accident or not. Which is why there are seatbelt laws, 0.02 percent alcohol limits and drivers licenses requiring $1000 or more in driving lessons.
• ttul 3y ago
  Here in British Columbia, the car insurance system recently received a massive overhaul. Car insurance has long been a public monopoly that many complained led to higher prices than in other provinces. That much may be true. But the recent overhaul involved eliminating the right to sue in most cases, instead requiring the insurance company to cover the long term healthcare costs of the injured. No longer do the victims of accidents have to sue for a settlement. Of course it’s not perfect. Some people have been injured and then felt they received less care than they would have otherwise under the litigious system. But on balance I think this change is likely for the best. It closed of an externality that previously led to a great deal of unnecessary expense (on lawyers), recognizing that car accidents are largely random. At a bare minimum, everyone should purchase uninsured motorist insurance to the maximum degree possible. If you are injured by someone from out-of-state or someone who has no insurance at all, you will need it.
  • wyldfire 3y ago
    > recognizing that car accidents are largely random. I think maaaaaaaybe that was more of the case twenty years ago. But these days, inattentive drivers distracted by you-name-it are the cause of many accidents. It doesn't seem random at all. > everyone should purchase uninsured motorist insurance to the maximum degree possible Absolutely agree with you there.
    • btbuildem 3y ago
      Random as in you're not deliberately targeted by the loathsome subhuman creature piloting the weapon without paying any mind to its surroundings.
  • bsdpufferfish 3y ago
    They are not at all random. In fact almost everyone’a insurance is more expensive because insurance companies are not legally allowed to use the highest predictor of risk besides age.
    • bsdpufferfish 3y ago
• jolmg 3y ago
  > And in those countries, going into hospital does not mean running up a life-altering bill. I chuckle a bit that the next sentence to that is: > Why not raise the liability legal limits? Shouldn't the focus be on the insane hospital costs?
  • btbuildem 3y ago
    In a sane place, that would be the answer -- in a place where healthcare exists to care for people's health, and insurance exists to protect from consequences of accidental or deliberate damage. Here, both exist to extract as much profit as possible for the operators of each, leaving us the unlucky participants as little more than units of measure.
• temporallobe 3y ago
  Car insurance rates in FL are among the highest in the nation and my rates keep going up. One of the drivers to this (no pun intended) is that so many motorists here are uninsured or underinsured (and many are not even licensed), as we are only required to carry $10k in Personal Injury Protection and $10k in Property Damage Liability, and many people carry just that. It’s also a “no-fault” state, which for simple fender-benders works pretty ok, but for more serious accidents can get very complicated and costly. It’s why we have so many personal injury attorneys and our cities are saturated with billboards shouting things like “DAN NEWLIN GOT ME $800,000”.
  • biddit 3y ago
    We have a whole grifter-industrial complex built around milking your own $10k PIP for any little thing that happens.
    • kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
      I was hit by an incompetent driver and burned through $40K in medical expenses of the $50K mandatory PIP in my state. It is a nice thing to have when it's needed.
  • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > One of the drivers to this (no pun intended) is that so many motorists here are uninsured or underinsured (and many are not even licensed), as we are only required to carry $10k in Personal Injury Protection and $10k in Property Damage Liability, and many people carry just that. This could drive up the price of full coverage (i.e. uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance), but you're not required to buy that. In principle it should also reduce the moral hazard of insurance -- if people have less insurance then they have to be more careful about causing damage because if they do it comes out of their own pocket instead of the insurance company's, or puts them at risk of being charged with a hit and run if they flee. The actual problem is that too many people don't own anything anymore, because otherwise they would want to carry insurance to protect their assets. Leave too many people poor and desperate and you can see what happens.
  • 3y ago
• 0n0n0m0uz 3y ago
  Lawyers and fraudelent claims are a big part of the problem. My wife rear-ended someone at a slow speed and the other party declined ambulance coverage. They were able to drive home no problem. A week later they hired a lawyer and my wife caused the woman to have a miscarriage. Of course they were unable to provide any medical documents confirming even the most basic details yet the insurance company still gave them a payout probably because it was cheaper than paying attorneys to right it. A very similar scenario exists with condo property insurance. The lawyers make millions and the consumers premiums keep going up.
  • rearendinsthrwy 3y ago
    I got to see this world firsthand recently, though not as extreme, and while, at least, trying not to make this system worse. I was rear-ended while stopped. Other driver was (otherwise) pleasant, had insurance. Made a huge dent in my bumper. Really shocking, but I felt fine and could go about my night with nothing but emotional damage. (My city doesn't even send police if there are no injuries and both cars are driveable.) Everyone told me I should "get checked out", in case there was non-obvious injury, which I did, at an urgent care place, which charged more than it should, but not a crazy amount. The doctor confirmed I was unhurt from it. Because I didn't know how much injury I had when filing the claim, I just answered "yes" on the form for that part, planning to fill in details later. About two months after the accident, I got an email from their insurer offering me $1000 compensation plus up to $5000 toward any medical claims I could document (conditioned on waiving further claims against the other party or insurer). My (very naive, paladinesque) instinct was to contact them and say, "Oh geez, come on, there wasn't even a real medical issue, just cover the doctor bill for the exam and we can forget about it." I asked my friends for advice, and the consensus was, "No way, man, you gotta take them for all they're worth! Really play it up! They don't want to pay for litigation, you can easily milk more out of them! Giving up the right to sue alone has gotta be worth $5000, easily!" (Spoiler: I didn't do that.) I was gobsmacked. Really? This is the kind of world we live in, where it's expected that you use the threat of the crappy court system to play up injuries? Remember: I didn't even have to document anything. I just answered "yes" to the injury part, and that was enough to spook them into that overgenerous offer. This should really scare you. Litigation is so overbloated that you'll get a "sucker's" offer of $1000 just for asserting injury with no documentation. That should scare you. It means the inflated costs appear throughout the system and pump up insurance costs. (Throwaway because I don't want my real identity within a hundred country miles of this.)
• viktorcode 3y ago
  The title should have been "Health insurance in America is too expensive".
• the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  > She quickly discovered that there was little hope of that. The driver who killed Seamus had just $100,000 of liability coverage per victim This is pretty wild. The legal minimum coverage in Austria for cars is 7.6 Million Euro (6.3M for personal injuries and 1.3M for property damage). Apparently in most US states the minimums top out at 50k (however they are per victim). Seems widely off though.
  • SoftTalker 3y ago
    At least in my state, an umbrella liability policy is fairly inexpensive. Mine does require that I also maintain liability coverage on my cars and home so it only covers liability in excess of that, therefore it's not too costly. If you own a house and have assets such as retirement accounts it's probably something you want to add. I do agree that the minimums have not really kept up with inflation in healthcare costs. A $50K liability minimum would only cover a few days' care in a hospital, any serious injury would likely cost several multiples of that.
• dgunay 3y ago
  It's unfair and a drag on everyone to have such high rates be the norm, but it's really indicative of deeper problems in society (or at least certain areas) that the insurance company has little to no control over. I moved from a very low crime area with adequate policing to LA, and the difference in insurance premiums is nuts. Eventually I was the victim of a hit-and-run (not while inside my car, thankfully). A witness gave a description of the vehicle and where it fled to (within a 1 block area). Police report was filed. Crickets. The car was an old shitbox so I only carried liability. Now I'm just without a car. I briefly looked into getting a newer car now that I make a lot more money, but the premiums are just eye watering. I'm lucky to work remote. I imagine many other law abiding citizens have been through very similar situations here. When one party in an accident is likely to be uninsured, unlicensed, or just allowed flee the scene, it's no wonder that insurance companies have to pass the cost onto everyone else who pays for insurance. To say nothing of other cost inflating phenomena like the increasingly proprietary design and overengineering of cars that are totaled by a fender bender. Insurance companies are businesses and have to remain profitable. I hate it, but this is the system we've built.
  • kccqzy 3y ago
    > The car was an old shitbox so I only carried liability. Now I'm just without a car. I briefly looked into getting a newer car now that I make a lot more money, but the premiums are just eye watering. Carrying only liability insurance continues to be cheap even in California. The problem with getting a newer car is that either the lender requires more expensive insurance to protect an asset that they partially own, or most people have emotional attachment to a new car so they don't want to carry just liability insurance. That's why premiums are eye watering. It's difficult for most people to fathom buying a $50k car (about average new car price) and say they don't want to protect it. > To say nothing of other cost inflating phenomena like the increasingly proprietary design and overengineering of cars that are totaled by a fender bender. I looked into this and this is actually a trade off between cost to repair and cost to manufacture. Newer car designs like Tesla's "gigacasting" simplify manufacturing because they can use one machine to make one large part, whereas in a conventional car the equivalent might be 100 parts welded together by humans or robots. Even when welded by robots, it is much more time-consuming and lowers throughput in production. Thus, auto makers consciously choose manufacturing techniques to lower the selling price of the car, knowing that they are increasing the price of any repair.
• Spooky23 3y ago
  State minimums are too low. I carry a shit-ton of insurance. If you're in the tech biz and have a fat 401k, you should be thinking about umbrella liability as well. At a minimum, drop the extra $50 to max out uninsured motorist and medical payments coverage. A friend's wife was hit while walking by a dude about to retire. She's on her 12th surgery, and has been inpatient for almost 3 months his $50k limit was exhausted in days. Dude isn't gonna be retiring by the time the lawyers are done.
  • sokoloff 3y ago
    401k balances are safe from (non-divorce) litigation per ERISA. If you have a fat income or other assets, umbrella insurance is wise.
• tonymet 3y ago
  No mention of whether $180000 is reasonable for the medical treatment. Insurance companies receive all of the blame, when the root cause is usually the providers. Insurance companies are probably the only entity keeping costs down. This is the case with auto insurance and medical insurance. The publication is called “The Economist” but they are omitting a massive externality.
• nox101 3y ago
  A common reaction in the comments is that healthcare costs too much and I don't disagree but my first reaction was "I lived 20 years in places with amazing public transportation and didn't have to deal with this at all" Those places were Seoul/Singapore/London/Paris/Amsterdam/Berlin/Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto Like, I just didn't need a car at all. Rarely missed one.
  • lostlogin 3y ago
    While these cities might make cars less common per head of population, there are still cars. So if you cross a road you could still end up in the same scenario couldn’t you? The US has a wicked combo of big vehicles, high healthcare costs and insurance options which don’t cover expenses. As a contrast, I’m in New Zealand where you don’t have to purchase insurance, but healthcare will be paid for by the state.
    • nox101 3y ago
      yes but if there are less cars then there are less accidents. If there are less accidents then the insurance companies need less money to cover them and so the cost of insurance doesn't need to go up as this article suggests. The article's solution to too many accidents is to raise rates but another solution is less accidents.
• RickJWagner 3y ago
  Anyone who thinks insurance is too cheap does not have a teenage driver. Also, if rates are increased (to afford bigger payouts) there will be more deadbeat uninsured drivers. (Recently had to pay a large deductable when one such driver smashed into my son's car.)
• bparsons 3y ago
  Vehicles are bigger. People are constantly on their phones. There are basically no consequences for killing someone with your car. It is unconscionable that in an era of ubiquitous data and technology that vehicle mortality rates keep increasing.
  • sokoloff 3y ago
    US road deaths have started to increase recently after a multi-decade steady reduction. IMO, that’s disingenuous to call “keep increasing.”
• Glyptodon 3y ago
  One thing that bugs me is that it's hard to tell when/why I'd need car insurance to cover medical or wages costs vs. short term disability, long term disability, health insurance, critical illness/critical injury insurance, life insurance, etc. It seems like we could easily simplify the kinds of insurances offered and what they cover to be more standardized in an effective way. And would then have less gaps. One more thing where the entanglement of workplace provided insurance benefits makes it messier too (particularly with disability insurance/benefits).
• ziofill 3y ago
  This sounds to me like the king of XY problems: it shouldn’t cost 25k to go to the ER in the first place.
• anArbitraryOne 3y ago
  Indeed, the cost of most car-related goods and services is too cheap
• hakfoo 3y ago
  The thing that confuses me is the wild swings in prices between carriers. You'd think that the underlying underwriting strategies are fairly similar (convergent evolution, regulation, and likely everyone watching everyone else's behaviour). The market is aggressive enough that there are ways to scrape and analyze your competitors' rates. Hell, Progressive spent years advertising that service explicitly. So why will the same coverage on the same car for the same person vary by hundreds of dollars per year? I'll just pull out the standard "hakfoo solves all the problems with civilization" hammer and say this should be a state-run monopoly. The math of insurance is based on having the biggest, most diverse risk pool to sop up any poor bets. Parceling out the population among different carriers works directly against that. Spending millions of dollars a year to remind me of your name and logo works against that. Needing have redundant C-suites and agent staff works against that.
  • lokar 3y ago
    I know that some (higher priced) insurers offer much better service and less hassle in the event of an issue.
  • CivBase 3y ago
    I do not have enough experience to speak to this, but I have heard others in the auto repair industry complain about how insurers like Progressive are very cheap about replacement parts for damaged vehicles - opting for the lowest cost parts no matter the quality, instead of paying more for OEM parts. That might help account for some of the differences in cost between providers.
    • mikeho1999 3y ago
      This is absolutely true. There is a pretty staggering difference in terms of how the different insurance companies pay out their claims -- everything from how they dictate services and hourly rates within their Direct Repair Program (DRP), and to the parent's point, where they set thresholds on the percentage of parts on a claim/repair which can be: * OEM (e.g. genuine parts from the auto manufacturer) * vs. Aftermarket (e.g. 3rd party clones) * vs. Remanufactured (e.g. picked up from a salvage yard) In general, higher-end insurance companies that charge higher premiums tend to want collision repair body shops utilizing majority or even all-OEM parts, whereas other "cut rate" insurance carriers typically try and get body shops to utilize mostly or all Aftermarket parts, some of which can have very questionable reliability. My company has many clients in the automotive and collision repair industry, and we've even built a number of parts procurement platforms for the US and Canada markets -- in one of those applications, we specifically had a module that put in the DRP part allocation requirements for each insurance carrier, and to run reports for those carriers to show body shops that were in compliance vs. out of compliance with those requirements.
• anonreeeeplor 3y ago
  This article is 100% planted industry nonsense designed to prime the public for entirely unjustified price hikes being set by monopolists. If you don’t know the playbook for industry to jack prices by colluding, time to educate yourself. This is PR. The economist is not your friend, it is a corporate : government mouthpiece. The entire argument is because healthcare costs too much then car insurance should cost more. Argument for back door inflation of insurance. You already have health insurance why do you need more expensive car insurance on top of your more expensive health insurance. This is total bullshit. Don’t believe it.
• orange_county 3y ago
  Cars in general are just getting bigger and more expensive to repair while our insurance liabilities are not being scaled for that. On the flip side, I wish the fed gov't would regulate vehicle sizes such that we don't have such an arms race for bigger cars. We really should be upping the minimal liabilities for cars. That might be the only thing that would really push our local gov't to invest in safer driving infrastructure along with alternative transit options. Vision Zero in many cities have been extremely lacking in comparison to our european counterparts.
  • BeFlatXIII 3y ago
    > Cars in general are just getting bigger and more expensive to repair while our insurance liabilities are not being scaled for that This is a good thing. Let the victims get stiffed to force them into smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.
• tmaly 3y ago
  Can someone correct the title? I think it meant to read “Car insurance in America use to be cheap” I was paying $55 a month back in 2001. Today I pay $277 a month.
  • nayuki 3y ago
    You didn't read the article. > And yet what Ms DuBarry’s story shows is that, in fact, American car insurance is still far too cheap. As much as drivers may resent paying higher premiums, insurance covers only a small fraction of the costs inflicted in car crashes. Instead, health insurers, government and drivers involved in crashes shoulder the burden, and victims are rarely fully compensated. > According to a study published last year by the NHTSA, America’s highway-safety regulator, the direct economic costs of car crashes in 2019 was $340bn, or about 1.6% of GDP. Yet the NHTSA says insurance—and not just car insurance—covered just 54% of that. The agency put the true social cost, including lost life years, at nearly $1.4trn. In 2019, 9m people were involved in serious car crashes; around 4.5m people suffered injuries and 36,000 were killed. > Drivers are subsidised, and society at large pays the bill. Fuck cars.
• shoulderfake 3y ago
  [dead]
• smcleod 3y ago
  We pay an insane $1500/year and often more in Australia just to deal with the worst customer service you could imagine. Don't follow our model.
• wseqyrku 3y ago
  Oh that's why no one's looking when they're making a turn. All the incredibly stupid car accident clips I've ever seen make sense now.
• Certhas 3y ago
  I know it's a recurring theme, but it's just stunning to me every time again how cruel the US health and employment system is. In any half way affluent nation, no one whose 2 year old is on the brink of death should have to worry about how to pay for the hospital stay, or the days off of work...
• mettamage 3y ago
  A close friend of mine who is an American feels strongly that this is a health insurance thing and not a car insurance thing. It’s interesting to see her reaction being offended by the article. The Economist is a British newspaper. Could there be a cultural issue writing the article? Also, car insurances are different in many states. I am Dutch, so no clue here.
• seb314 3y ago
  For comparison, car liability insurance in germany typically has a coverage limit of 50 or 100M € (not sure about potential caps per victim though). There is also a legal minimum of 7.5M.
• sgammon 3y ago
  It’s the healthcare costs, plain and simple. In my opinion, driving hasn’t changed much during the pandemic era. Healthcare costs have continued to balloon and they will spill into other areas of society as a natural consequence.
• ryaniscool 3y ago
  The unseen side effect of increasing car insurance coverage across the board would be the hospital would charge $360k for a single day of trauma care instead of $180k. I have to admit that I stopped reading the article after this line "The day after the crash, Seamus died. The hospital charged the couple’s insurance $180,000 for his care." One day of care added up to $180k. Their actual costs could not have been a tenth of that. How can the author seriously say that car insurance is the issue in this situation.
• tyingq 3y ago
  "The driver who killed Seamus had just $100,000 of liability coverage per victim." That's actually several steps up from what the insurers pitch to you as "basic". A screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/JVe2flB https://imgur.com/a/JVe2flB The 3 numbers are per person, per accident, property damage. Above 100k per person is 7 tiers up from their recommendation. Though, to be fair, the incremental cost is pretty low...~$9/month to jump up to that 7th tier in this example. Also, I wonder if the issue is wholly "cheap" insurance or is it also expensive health care?
  • rstuart4133 3y ago
    Just to put this in perspective, in Australia $20M third party insurance is compulsory. You can not register the car without it. The cost is about $500/year.
• tristor 3y ago
  There’s no surprise why drivers are worse to anyone paying attention around them. It’s TikTok and similar apps. There are stupid assholes in droves on the road doing 80 while scrolling through videos. If you keep an eye out you’ll start to notice the growing abundance of people doing this in the left lane of the interstate and relying on active lane keeping to keep them on the road. It’s an epidemic of people addicted to their phones who won’t set it aside for 20 minutes to drive somewhere. It’s that simple. The knock-on effects is they enrage everyone else and create a generally more aggressive environment.
• MandieD 3y ago
  When I was getting ready to move to Germany in 2004, car insurance was one of my main to-do’s, as I was shipping my car over (only sensible if you’re involved with the US government) and my bank would only release the title for export when I showed insurance coverage. There was precisely one provider: AIU via Geico. What luck, I thought! I already had a good Geico policy at Maryland’s max ($500k), because I was a very careful young woman with a bright career ahead of me that I didn’t want to bog down in legal debt should I cause an accident. When I asked for the max, the saleswoman on the phone laughed. “You just need the minimum, sweetie.” The minimum liability was a bit over 7.5 million EUR (15 million Deutschmarks, two years after Euro-ization). In Germany, you are liable for ALL costs associated with an at-fault accident, down to fixing the guardrails and traffic signs. It was also $2700 that first year, because I was 24 with no driving record and a car I still owed a fair amount of money on, and only got one year of credit for my time in the US. Forcing a grieving family to deal with medical costs from a crash they were victims of is inhuman.
• htrp 3y ago
  > According to the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (apcia), a trade association, last year insurers paid out $1.08 in claims for every $1 in premiums they took in. Grading your own work as usual
• nova22033 3y ago
  The day after the crash, Seamus died. The hospital charged the couple’s insurance $180,000 for his care. Focussing on the wrong issue..
• kerkeslager 3y ago
  This is a funny way of saying "Healthcare in America costs too much." Car insurance coverage would be reasonable if healthcare costs were lower. Car insurance can't be much more expensive, because it's already pricing out many drivers. This is just car insurance companies subsidizing healthcare--yet another example of how the entire US economy is subsidizing healthcare because we refuse to cut out the health insurance middleman corporations. Car insurance is a particular injustice because many (most?) states require car insurance to drive--another example of corporate middlemen writing themselves into laws. There should never be a case where a law forces me to be a customer of a business--if I can't walk away from the price negotiation table the market isn't free.
  • sauwan 3y ago
    Right, but if 50% of the people on the road are completely uninsured, the economy grinds to a halt because driving suddenly becomes a potentially bankruptable activity even for those not at fault.
    • kerkeslager 3y ago
      Bold of you to assume that insurance would prevent you from becoming bankrupt. In my state (and many states) you're only required to carry $10k in liability insurance. That's barely going to scratch the surface of paying for a car accident which causes serious injury. Add to this that most people who experience bankruptcy due to medical bills have health insurance[1] as of 2019, and it's clear that driving already is a potentially bankrupt-able activity. In fact, living is a potentially bankrupt-able activity as long as we insist that health insurance companies have to be a part of our medical system. The economy ground to a halt for the poorest Americans at least a decade ago. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insurance-medical-bankruptcy-debt https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insur...
• mikhailfranco 3y ago
  US lawyers and healthcare also deserve responsibility and blame in this strangely American tragedy of the Insurance-Industrial-Complex (IIC). Nobody can suck-up free money faster than the US legal and medical systems (okay, US education system is also a contender). Is that why pushy American mothers always want their kids to be doctors and lawyers? Seems like a small rent-seeking step to so-called success for a child, but a giant leap into the abyss for society.
• _8j50 3y ago
  Liability for driving a car should come in form of subsidized debt not insurance. If I cause damage and I am at fault and can't pay out of pocket, the govenrment should pay for me and then I would be in debt for that cost to be paid over 7-10 years time(basic liability is 25-30k,so maximim 250/mo for a decade). Being forced to pay for a damage I have yet to cause is messed up. The fear of being in debt would also lead to better and more careful driving. This is for the manadatory stuff, insurance should still be an alternative option. In a free society, citizens should not be forced to do business with a business. All manadatory obligations by the government must be with the government. Alternatively, the government can provide a no-profit minimal insurance service kind of like the postal service.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    You are basically swapping out private insurance for public insurance. It isn’t a bad idea, however, to handle unexpected expenses via loans rather than hedging via risk pooling. I have no idea how it would work in practice (if it were private or public), especially when huge accidents happen costing millions of dollars.
    • _8j50 3y ago
      The main goal is to remove for profit insurances. There is a perverse incentive created when anyone can get in an accident and the insurance will pay for it, same thing with medical care (why in the US it is super expensive -- because insurance will pay up). Car ownership is manadatory in most US cities yet car ownership is very expensive, for many who finance it is ever more than the cost of rent. The bureaucratic government will also pay up but to a lesser extent but the car owner/patient will not want that, since they have to pay it back. If a fender bender costs $2k to fix it's not a big deal to let insurance pay for it but if you have to pay it back you will try to find cheaper options and force mechanics to compete. Everything costs what people are willing to pay for it, but the cancerous thing about manadatory insurance is people are no longer paying, insurance will just raise your premium instead (most people don't calculate that in), they won't force you to seek cheaper options.
• Saris 3y ago
  I really do think that the minimum liability needs to be raised to something like $1 million at least. There also needs to be much more strict enforcement and scanning for people driving without insurance, that's a huge issue in CO.
• WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  Part of the problem of car insurance in the USA is that we don't really enforce people to be insured (1) and that the minimums are too low (2). Here in AZ when you drive uninsured the cops can't even hold your car anymore. They'd tow you and you get to the impound lot, pay the fine and walk away. That doesn't help anybody, as the person still isn't insured as they walk (drive) away. If we increase the mandatory minimums groups of people will not be able to afford insurance and that costs votes. This is something that is so different in Belgium. In Belgium driving without insurance and / or license (even not having it on you) is considered a big no-no. Hell, most people scoff less at driving while (slightly) impaired than driving without license / insurance.
• metadat 3y ago
  https://archive.today/F8vka https://archive.today/F8vka
  • bugbuddy 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • delish 3y ago
      This is not the answer to your question, but it is what HN has to say about submitting paywalled links: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html >Are paywalls ok? >It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
      • p1mrx 3y ago
        Here's a corroborating source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY >Being a pirate is alright to be >Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
        • paulmd 3y ago
          a good pirate never takes another person’s property!
      • bugbuddy 3y ago
        So, is it implicitly condoning digital piracy?
        • adventured 3y ago
          And what if it is?
• annoyingnoob 3y ago
  Is it that car insurance is too cheap or that medical care is too expensive?
  • lr4444lr 3y ago
    Or is it the lack of any cap on U.S. tort judgments?
  • ranger207 3y ago
    Medical care is too expensive, and risk of getting in an accident is too high
  • 55555 3y ago
    It is very clearly the latter, yeah.
    • lxgr 3y ago
      Medical care is much less expensive in many European countries (both before and after insurance), yet auto insurance coverage is usually still much higher.
      • giantg2 3y ago
        Do you have a source for it being higher? My understanding is that the accident rates are lower. If the accidents/claims are lower and the health care is cheaper/covered, them I wonder what the other factor is. Maybe a lack of profit cap?
        • lmz 3y ago
          It's mentioned in the article: > By contrast, in Germany drivers are required to have €7.5m ($8.2m) of bodily-injury coverage, and in Britain liability is unlimited. And in those countries, going into hospital does not mean running up a life-altering bill.
          • 3y ago
• ijhuygft776 3y ago
  Don't insurance companies have to make a maximum profit from insurance policies because of laws?
  • function_seven 3y ago
    Many states cap the profit, yeah. But that’s not the issue raised by this article. The states’ minimum required liability limits are.
  • tfehring 3y ago
    There’s not a fixed federal limit on loss ratio or profit for car insurance like there is for some types of health insurance. But they need to get approval for rate increases from state regulators for every state that they issue policies in, and some states can be extremely hard to get rate increases through, even when insurers are breaking even or losing money in those states. It’s a tragedy of the commons - each state regulator would benefit from keeping premiums low within their state, but in reality any losses need to be subsidized by higher premiums somewhere else.
• function_seven 3y ago
  Many years ago I upped my liability coverage from $15k/$30k to $100k/$300k, and I was surprised how little it increased my premium. It was a few bucks a month. A no-brainer. I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to go higher.
  • jemmyw 3y ago
    I've never seen an option to choose the liability cover on insurance, I didn't know it was a thing. I just checked my policy and it is up to $20 million NZ ($12M US) per event. How much do you pay for car insurance in the US? Mine is 1,200NZD per year, about 730USD
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      You need to specify how many miles per year to somewhat compare since the risk is directly proportional to amount of time on the road. I pay ~$50 per month for 5k miles per year for $500k liability coverage and uninsured/underinsured coverage. But I also have a few million in umbrella coverage, so not sure if it’s even comparable.
      • smaccona 3y ago
        I pay ~$440 a month for two vehicles. My buddy in PA thinks it’s because I live in New York.
        • zdragnar 3y ago
          Some states have weird laws that affect prices, too. I once got hit while in MN, and the insurance company had to pay out for the cost of a new body panel. The shop gave me the option of a new panel, or a refurbished one off of a scrap car. It looked identical when they were done, but I ended up getting a check cut for half the value of the new panel because the used one was so much cheaper. As I was in college at the time, a free $800 made my day.
          • 3y ago
• groggo 3y ago
  If someone injures you, and your insurance doesn't cover it, can't you sue them? If you do and they can't afford it, can you put them into debt? Seems reasonable rather than you going into debt for medical bills?
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    disproportionately the type of person to kill or seriously injure someone else in a car crash is the type of person that is “judgement proof”
  • lr4444lr 3y ago
    Sure. And they can get their own lawyer, and you have to pay your own lawyer, and the case will likely settle for something, and at best you'll get only the fraction of their assets minus lawyer fees that isn't subject to seizure - probably a tiny fraction of what you'd get minus the uncertainty, drama, and delays of just getting things like high under-insured motorist coverage, or long term disability insurance. I don't think once someone declares bankruptcy after you sue them into the ground that you can wring out much more.
  • tetromino_ 3y ago
    You can sue them, and you may win, but the trouble is collecting the money. They might simply not have any money. Or they may have it, but won't make it easy for you to find it. Meanwhile, you still need to pay your medical bills.
  • function_seven 3y ago
    What does “put them into debt” mean here? Force them to take a loan to pay a judgement? If so, who’s doing the lending?
    • whimsicalism 3y ago
      They have to pay the judgement. If they do not, their wages get garnished. There is no lending.
• kstrauser 3y ago
  Other recent (real! verbatim!) headlines from The Economist: “Your pay is still going up too fast” “Why you should never retire” I tend to take their pronouncements with a massive grain of salt and a massiver eye roll.
  • graemep 3y ago
    The former is an accurate reflection of central bank policies in many countries - raise interest rates to keep pay rises (aka wage inflation) down.
    • kstrauser 3y ago
      Quite likely, but I have never, not once, found myself thinking "thank heavens we're not getting raises anymore".
      • graemep 3y ago
        True. The aims of central banks very often reflect those of the business paying you than yours. My point is that the headline quoted is not a bad summary of an influential point of view.
  • syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    Those are both satire pieces.
• giantg2 3y ago
  The main reason our insurance cost so much is because there are so many claims. This is partially because our licensing is too lax, there is too much vandalism and storm loss, and the costs of the vehicles and health are is so high. Higher quality drivers will result in fewer claims and cheaper premiums.
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    Drivers are getting worse and insurance companies are often mandated to cover all “good drivers” for some state-defined definition of good. So I am basically subsidizing alcoholics and stuff because they can’t price that into the premium in California.
    • giantg2 3y ago
      I knew a kid with ADHD in high school. There were days (game days) when he would intentionally not take his medicine, yet he would still drive. He had numerous accidents. One time he stopped behind someone at a stop sign. Then he rear-ended them because he forgot they were in front of him and he got caught up in looking for a gap to pull out. He totaled 3 cars before the end of high school.
  • y-c-o-m-b 3y ago
    Our driver tests are a joke. Driver quality seems to be decreasing significantly in my area. To make things worse, there is a massive shortage in driving instructors for new drivers. Prior to December, I had only see 1 wrong-way driver in my entire 20+ years of driving. Since December, I have seen 4! One of them was on the freeway going up-hill and slightly around a bend - at night - which was extremely frightening to witness as people were dodging it at the last second due to poor visibility.
    • giantg2 3y ago
      I've seen this happening more now. I have two potential explainations. First, almost all of the people I've heard of doing this have turned out to be really drunk or high when they were arrested or autopsied. Second, one is more along the lines of what you're saying with poor driver quality. Some people have an over-reliance on GPS telling them where to turn and have lost the ability to navigate for themselves (or even just verify what the machine is telling them is at least safe).
• tnh0 3y ago
  Would my normal health (not auto) insurance cover my own hospital/ER bills regardless of whether it's from an auto accident?
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    Yes and it makes much more sense to prioritize health insurance over underinsured motorist, especially if you don’t care about your vehicle.
  • teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    Yeah but I suppose a lot of Americans are uninsured or underinsured WRT health.
    • kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Depends on what state you are in but probably car insurance rates are worse. In Mississippi 1 in 3 drivers are uninsured. Uninsured rate for health in that state is 1 in 6.
    • s1artibartfast 3y ago
      About 8 percent are uninsured, which is a lot with a population of 330 million. I dont know if that includes the 7+ million illegal immigrants.
  • mh- 3y ago
    Google health insurance subrogation auto accident. Your health insurance will seek reimbursement from the at-fault party's auto insurance. Which may be your insurance.
• xyst 3y ago
  This article sounds more like a car insurance ad. Fear mongering at its best. Yea it’s probably only a a $10-20 increase in premiums if you are in a class of “very very low risk” drivers. But people with poor credit, high number of at fault accidents, or just living in the wrong zip code (higher accidents means higher premiums!) will result in much higher increases. Most people here probably fall into idgaf category and can pay the increased premiums for the “peace of mind”. But if you are living at or near the federal poverty line. Paying for peace of mind is much less important. Personally I have the maximum limits myself since the increase in 6 month premiums is only about $20. I do wish I did not have to own a car though. No more car maintenance, car insurance, ongoing gas costs, yearly registration fees to local/state entities, tire replacement, brake replacements, … I very much prefer to use my bike, walk, or use public transportation where possible. Much better for personal health (more active), environment, and my mental health (dealing with other drivers inattentiveness, poor driving skills, drunk mofos at night). Plus it’s nice to multitask while taking the bus or train home.
  • Wytwwww 3y ago
    > Paying for peace of mind is much less important. Sure, but it's pretty important from the perspective of the people you might seriously injure and their families.
• kasperni 3y ago
  That sounds very low. Here in Denmark (where health care is a lot cheaper). The required liability coverage is around $20 million covering both treatment and compensation. Obviously the amount they pay out would normally be a lot less then in the US.
  • lr4444lr 3y ago
    That makes a lot of sense. What are the policies on underinsured motorist coverage minimums?
    • iso8859-1 3y ago
      The mandatory liability insurance covers any damage done using the vehicle, independently of who is driving it.[0] If there is no insurance for the car, I would assume that normal laws regarding liability apply. There is also punishment for driving without a license[1] or without insurance[2]. From [1], a man with no license or insurance was jailed for three months and fined 100k DKK (15k USD), but this also includes drug offences. He also cannot legally drive for 5.5 years. From [2], the vehicle is impounded the third time you drive without a license within three years. The first offence incurs a fine of 7000 DKK (1000 USD) and the subsequent 8500 DKK (1230 USD). From [3], if you lend your vehicle to a person that drives recklessly, the vehicle can still be impounded and sold. The owner is liable for traffic infractions, but the owner can't lose their license because of what the lender did. [0]: https://www.if.dk/globalassets/dk/files/privat/ipid/ipid-bil.pdf https://www.if.dk/globalassets/dk/files/privat/ipid/ipid-bil... [1]: https://viborg-folkeblad.dk/viborg/koersel-i-biler-uden-plader-og-forsikring-kostede-kassen https://viborg-folkeblad.dk/viborg/koersel-i-biler-uden-plad... [2]: https://sikkertrafik.dk/rad-og-viden/bil/korekort/boder/ https://sikkertrafik.dk/rad-og-viden/bil/korekort/boder/ [3]: https://fdm.dk/alt-om-biler/bilen-hverdagen/bilforsikring/naar-du-laaner-din-bil-ud https://fdm.dk/alt-om-biler/bilen-hverdagen/bilforsikring/na...
• MangoCoffee 3y ago
  "The hospital charged the couple’s insurance $180,000 for his care" - this sounded like a health insurance problem than car insurance.
  • Nifty3929 3y ago
    Typically health insurance is first in line, but will then try to assign this to the proper insurance company based on who is covering the actual source of the damage. If it's just some health thing, then it stops with the health insurance company. But if it's a car accident (or work related, etc), the health insurance company will go after the car insurance company (or worker's comp, etc) as appropriate. This is fairly standard, but still there might be some arguing and lawyers and whatnot. The consumer/patient/victim is last in line and doesn't need to be overly involved in these arguments between insurance companies - but it does become a big problem if none of the insurance is enough to pay the bills, and the person who caused the damages doesn't have money either. The victim gets stuck with whatever bill is left. You can sue the at-fault driver, but that's little help if they don't have money. More effective is to plead mercy and negotiate with the hospital. If you owe them $200k, that's more their problem than your, if you don't have it. And they've already gotten maybe (hopefully) $100-300k from insurance anyway, so maybe they'll forgive the rest or setup a payment plan for $50k or whatever. None of this is good! But there really is no good outcome when someone gets smashed with a car. One reasonable remedy would be to increase the required liability coverage to $1M or more - enough to cover the amount of damage one can do in an automobile. Of course then only the people who care about these laws will have it. We'll still have an uninsured motorist problem. Now that I think about it, maybe they should make proof of car insurance required for registration. Why don't we do this already? Registration is much easier to enforce (there's a sticker on your plate in the US).
  • whimsicalism 3y ago
    180k is a lot but also my guess is that having a trauma team work on you is quite expensive - pretty much no other time in someone’s life is someone going to be getting direct work from so many high-wage professionals. Note that the family was on the hook for ~4k. That seems to me to be insurance working as expected.
  • 3y ago
• xivzgrev 3y ago
  Too many articles with a kid getting hurt or dying. As a new parent these are so much harder to read now: I feel like I can just start to understand the pain the parents went thru. In a blink your world is turned upside down and your joy is gone.
  • Nifty3929 3y ago
    Just keep in mind that the world, including and especially car and pedestrian safety are much better now than in the past. Still hurts to read about these accidents when they happen though! I agree that there are too many articles about relatively few incidents, but that's what people want to read about apparently, so that's what the news people give us.
    • jacobolus 3y ago
      Pedestrian safety has gotten significantly worse in the past few years in the USA as people keep buying larger vehicles. The USA is much less safe for pedestrians than most developed countries. There should be much stricter regulations on drivers ability to see to the front and sides of their vehicles. I'm not quite sure what other regulations would force better engineering for pedestrian/cyclist safety. Policymakers should put more effort into discouraging people from buying vehicles that are significantly larger than they really need, and making large vehicles safe for everyone on the road, even at the expense of possibly making them more expensive, less convenient, less cool looking, or slower. After-market modifications which compromise pedestrian safety should be strictly banned from city streets. Personally I think manufacturers should be partly liable for damage caused by their vehicles.
      • FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
        The natural way would be to price this into insurance premiums, using a high value for human life. It would require that the premium depend on the vehicle model and the expected damage it will do. An SUV model with bad visibility that crushes toddlers, would have a high premium. E($100M * number of crushed toddlers).
• mfalcao 3y ago
  That’s insanely low! In Portugal the minimum required by law is 6.45 million for victims and 1.30 for property damage, per accident. A policy like this can cost as little as 250€ / year. I assume these low limits in US insurance also affect material damages so that if you crash into an expensive car you just get a bunch of debt you need to pay off?
  • kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Despite the seemingly affordability a lot of drivers are uninsured. In California its 1 in 5 and in Mississippi its 1 in 3 drivers that are uninsured. Its likely they try and flee the scene over staying to offer to pay with money they don’t have. Hit and run drivers successfully get away 9/10 times. You might only carry liability insurance at which point you pay for your own repair.