4 ms·

Junk mail keeps the USPS alive. Really.

• mattgreenrocks 12y ago
  I don't think it's junk mail, per se. Real junk mail, AFAIK, requires the senders to pay USPS money to send. Why would insurance companies (who are cost-sensitive, or so they want us to believe) pay to send useless mail that doesn't generate any additional revenue?
  • weaksauce 12y ago
    Regulation is the likely answer.
  • dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Why would insurance companies (who are cost-sensitive, or so they want us to believe) pay to send useless mail that doesn't generate any additional revenue? Because it reduces costs and risks. First, because I believe that in most cases where the insurance company is billed it is legally required, so there are noncompliance costs, but also because customers sometimes do need them (perhaps less often now, but in multiple coverage situations it used to at least occasionally happen that the beneficiary would have to do coordination of benefits between primary and secondary insurer rather than providers or insurers handling that, and you can send a lot of no-decision-involved mail for the cost of dealing with occasional request plus dealing with on-demand mail.