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Insurance bothers me for a few reasons: 1. What pisses me off more than anything else, it enables fraud that otherwise wouldn't exist. People manufacturing cal
by gmd63 3y ago
Insurance bothers me for a few reasons:
1. What pisses me off more than anything else, it enables fraud that otherwise wouldn't exist. People manufacturing calamities and then claiming insurance allows dishonest people to get ahead in life over people who are honest and concerned enough about the future to buy insurance. Additionally, insurance fraud is net bad relative to other types of fraud because it encourages criminals to manufacture damage that wouldn't otherwise happen.
2. There is an obvious incentive for them to chase an endgame of knowing exactly whether you will cost them money or make them money. When they attain this, insurance simply becomes a fortune teller and an instruction manual for Living Without Calamity. If you're denied coverage, you're going to experience something calamitous. If you're accepted, you have the ability to be fine and don't need insurance, unless you aren't sure how to Live Without Calamity. When you are accepted, you're only covered if you surrender your agency and follow their instructions for Living Without Calamity. Basic things like travelers insurance have clauses that void your policy if you scuba dive past 30 feet on your trip.
3. Insurance policies can create toxic incentives for people that hurt society. I filed a claim with Generali travel insurance because my host tested positive for COVID with a take home test, and I canceled my trip. Their web portal indicated that my claim had been received and was awaiting processing. I called incessantly to confirm my claim was good, and was not able to get an answer after several calls that routed through incompetent-by-design help desk employees and into a voicemailbox of a claims processor. Weeks go by and I receive a voicemail from the person I had been trying to contact telling me that I needed a doctor's note confirming that the person had COVID, and a take home test would not suffice. So, a company allegedly tasked with helping the public live safely wanted me to, at the time, ask my COVID infected host to waltz in to the doctor's office and spread around a pathogen that could kill patients. Nice. I guess they weren't medical insurance so they didn't care. And of course no doctor would retroactively go back in time and confirm that a person was positive for a sickness after they had already recovered.
- nradov 3y agoWhat did policy actually state around medical reasons for trip cancellation? I'm not aware of any insurers that would accept a home COVID-19 test to justify a claim since it isn't reliably tied to any particular patient.
- gmd63 3y agoThey don't allow at home tests. That's my point. If I had wanted my claim to go through, I would have needed to tell my host, who at the time was infectious, to go have a doctor confirm it. So the price to defend against fraud--which, related to my point #1, is prevalent enough such that Generali has this policy--is to ask infected people to spread their sickness in doctors offices just so they can use doctors as tools to verify claims are legitimate. So yes, I should have read the policy, but I would not have asked my host to go into the doctor's office and spread COVID around just so I could get my legitimate claim processed. I just wouldn't have bought the policy in the first place.
- xcv123 3y agoThe host can book a virtual appointment and get a doctors certificate online. It is easy and done in a few minutes. The insurer should have told you that.
- mk_stjames 3y agoRegarding your situation in point #3, if your claim was of significant monetary value (I'm guessing $>2k) I think at that point I would have cited them some numbers from journal studies on take home tests showing sensitivity of such home tests as at least (78.9)[1] percent of a professionally administered PCR test and that by their actuary logic you should then at least receive at least 78.9% in return compensation of your total claim based on this data and if they otherwise refused a payout your follow up would be with a claims lawyer. I have no idea how that would play out but it seems like an interesting strategy to take. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34448871/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34448871/
- xcv123 3y ago> So, a company allegedly tasked with helping the public live safely wanted me to, at the time, ask my COVID infected host to waltz in to the doctor's office and spread around a pathogen that could kill patients. Nice. No. That is done over the phone or video chat. Not required to physically attend a doctors appointment in order to obtain a doctors note for COVID infection. It's called telemedicine or virtual consultation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gmd63 3y agoYes. Here's the actual covered event from the policy: "The Sickness, Injury or death of you, your Family Member, your Traveling Companion or your Service Animal. The Sickness or Injury must first commence while your coverage is in effect under the Policy, must require the in-person treatment by a Physician, and must be so disabling in the written opinion of a Physician as to prevent you from taking your Trip (either because your condition prevents your travel, or because your Family Member, Traveling Companion or your Service Animal requires your care);"
- xcv123 3y agoSo if a doctor provides a written note they would reject that note because it was done through a virtual consultation? The doctors note should be sufficient and the fact that it was done virtually should be irrelevant and confidential. How is that legal?