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Insurance companies want money to come in and never go out. If they could they would sell life insurance to dead people and homeowners insurance to the homeless

Insurance companies want money to come in and never go out. If they could they would sell life insurance to dead people and homeowners insurance to the homeless.

tptacek 3y ago
The irony here is that's what insurance customers want, too: to incur arbitrary risks and have other more responsible customers pay for them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nothercastle 3y ago
  Customers want to pool risks with other customers that are lower risk than they are. Florida homeowner want to be on a national market because they are the highest risk group. Obviously the rest of us want Florida to be separate.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    It's good to want things! But if you're a bad driver, you don't get to pool with people with zero accidents and tickets.
    - lobsterthief 3y ago
      This is a really bad analogy that doesn’t hold water. There are good drivers and bad drivers. There are also good homeowners and bad homeowners. I live in Florida, but chose not to live in a flood-prone area. We also have hurricane clips on our roof, and we just changed all our windows to impact-resistant windows (with the help of a state-sponsored program, actually). Our insurance isn’t that high at all. Could it be lower? Sure, I’d love that. And maybe a national program would do that. Modern building codes require things like impact windows and that the building be rated for high winds. Older buildings should be retrofitted with things like impact windows, but I would only call those homeowners “bad drivers” if they can afford to do so but don’t. I wouldn’t blame an elderly person on fixed income for not affording to do this and call them a “bad driver”. I’ve walked around San Francisco quite a bit since my company is based out of there, and I’ve seen a lot of people retrofitting their houses with those diagonal beams for earthquakes. San Francisco is waiting for the “big one”; is anyone who can’t dump money into living in a safer building, or retrofitting the one they own, the equivalent of a “bad driver”? Obviously not. FYI in Tampa, also called the “Bay Area” to locals, we’re also waiting for “the big one” (a CAT-4 or CAT-5 coming directly into shallow Tampa Bay, which would cause an enormous storm surge). That last happened in 1918 or so and it actually permanently changed the geography where it came in, creating an area known as Hurricane Pass. All we can do is prepare and be responsible to our communities. Anyways, you can’t lump all people in a geography, regardless of behavior, into one group. It does a disservice to the people who are doing the right thing. Unless your building has been fully retrofitted for [insert local disaster] or you chose to live outside of [insert worst geography in your area to live with regards to local disaster], then you’re a “bad driver” too.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        This is a lot of words about a lot of scenarios, but here we're talking about people who (1) secretly install trampolines, (2) secretly install swimming pools, and (3) falsely claim to have replaced their roofs.
trogdor 3y ago
Businesses want to maximize profits, but an insurance company that doesn’t pay claims will quickly have no customers.
- bilegeek 3y ago
  Except for the mandated ones, like car insurance.
  - antiframe 3y ago
    But if there are ten companies offering car insurance and one is known to never pay out, the customers will migrate to the nine who do. Car insurance may be mandated in some states but no one is forced into a particular company.
    - jodrellblank 3y ago
      I want to reply to your (antiframe) comment from 21 days ago in the Alzheimers discussion ("Can you point to some evidence that increased saturated fat consumption does not increase LDL? Or that there is no link between serum LDL levels and plaque build up? Or are you making a different claim?") but there's no reply button anymore; here is a talk from Dr Paul Mason about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lRXZfs6Sjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lRXZfs6Sjs Specifically that high levels of LDL alone are not what causes plaque buildup, and why not. Higher LDL cholesterol goes with lower chance of death, found a review of 19 cohort studies over 68,000 people, published in the British Medical Journal, for one.
  - PurestGuava 3y ago
    In the UK, car insurance companies have actually been loss-making recently, despite car insurance being mandatory. It's not a guarantee of profit, especially not given how hyper-competitive the car insurance market is here.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
That's why we regulate insurance companies in a way not particularly comparable with other businesses.
WalterBright 3y ago
If you could sell your car for a million bucks, you would. So would I. What prevents it is there are no customers willing to spend $1m on our cars. This is the Law of Supply & Demand, and how markets work.

Insurance companies want money to come in and never go out. If they could they would sell life insurance to dead people and homeowners insurance to the homeless.

tptacek 3y ago

The irony here is that's what insurance customers want, too: to incur arbitrary risks and have other more responsible customers pay for them.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nothercastle 3y ago
Customers want to pool risks with other customers that are lower risk than they are. Florida homeowner want to be on a national market because they are the highest risk group. Obviously the rest of us want Florida to be separate.
- tptacek 3y ago
  It's good to want things! But if you're a bad driver, you don't get to pool with people with zero accidents and tickets.
  - lobsterthief 3y ago
    This is a really bad analogy that doesn’t hold water. There are good drivers and bad drivers. There are also good homeowners and bad homeowners. I live in Florida, but chose not to live in a flood-prone area. We also have hurricane clips on our roof, and we just changed all our windows to impact-resistant windows (with the help of a state-sponsored program, actually). Our insurance isn’t that high at all. Could it be lower? Sure, I’d love that. And maybe a national program would do that. Modern building codes require things like impact windows and that the building be rated for high winds. Older buildings should be retrofitted with things like impact windows, but I would only call those homeowners “bad drivers” if they can afford to do so but don’t. I wouldn’t blame an elderly person on fixed income for not affording to do this and call them a “bad driver”. I’ve walked around San Francisco quite a bit since my company is based out of there, and I’ve seen a lot of people retrofitting their houses with those diagonal beams for earthquakes. San Francisco is waiting for the “big one”; is anyone who can’t dump money into living in a safer building, or retrofitting the one they own, the equivalent of a “bad driver”? Obviously not. FYI in Tampa, also called the “Bay Area” to locals, we’re also waiting for “the big one” (a CAT-4 or CAT-5 coming directly into shallow Tampa Bay, which would cause an enormous storm surge). That last happened in 1918 or so and it actually permanently changed the geography where it came in, creating an area known as Hurricane Pass. All we can do is prepare and be responsible to our communities. Anyways, you can’t lump all people in a geography, regardless of behavior, into one group. It does a disservice to the people who are doing the right thing. Unless your building has been fully retrofitted for [insert local disaster] or you chose to live outside of [insert worst geography in your area to live with regards to local disaster], then you’re a “bad driver” too.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      This is a lot of words about a lot of scenarios, but here we're talking about people who (1) secretly install trampolines, (2) secretly install swimming pools, and (3) falsely claim to have replaced their roofs.

trogdor 3y ago

Businesses want to maximize profits, but an insurance company that doesn’t pay claims will quickly have no customers.

bilegeek 3y ago
Except for the mandated ones, like car insurance.
- antiframe 3y ago
  But if there are ten companies offering car insurance and one is known to never pay out, the customers will migrate to the nine who do. Car insurance may be mandated in some states but no one is forced into a particular company.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    I want to reply to your (antiframe) comment from 21 days ago in the Alzheimers discussion ("Can you point to some evidence that increased saturated fat consumption does not increase LDL? Or that there is no link between serum LDL levels and plaque build up? Or are you making a different claim?") but there's no reply button anymore; here is a talk from Dr Paul Mason about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lRXZfs6Sjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lRXZfs6Sjs Specifically that high levels of LDL alone are not what causes plaque buildup, and why not. Higher LDL cholesterol goes with lower chance of death, found a review of 19 cohort studies over 68,000 people, published in the British Medical Journal, for one.
- PurestGuava 3y ago
  In the UK, car insurance companies have actually been loss-making recently, despite car insurance being mandatory. It's not a guarantee of profit, especially not given how hyper-competitive the car insurance market is here.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

That's why we regulate insurance companies in a way not particularly comparable with other businesses.

WalterBright 3y ago

If you could sell your car for a million bucks, you would. So would I. What prevents it is there are no customers willing to spend $1m on our cars. This is the Law of Supply & Demand, and how markets work.