Why I Hate Insurance Companies
Part, probably, 1024 – they don’t want to pay, and the legislature passes laws to help them do it.
From the Miami Herald: Sinkholes spur debate in Legislature
TALLAHASSEE — Complaining about fraud, frivolous claims and people who spend insurance payouts on items other than home repairs, insurance companies have convinced lawmakers to free them from providing comprehensive sinkhole coverage.
But look at the numbers and it’s clear the recent increase in sinkhole claims has less to do with fraud and more to do with an increase in the number of sinkholes because of weather, geologists say.
This is the same crap the insurance companies used to get “tort reform” passed in Florida. The insurance lobbyists lied to the lege and told them that medical malpractice insurance was high because of “frivolous law suits”, and the lege passed a law to make it even more difficult to sue doctors for malpractice. Of course, it had no effect on the cost of malpractice insurance, because the settlement of law suits has never been a major expense, and premiums were going up because the insurance companies lost money at the Wall Street gaming tables.
This time they don’t want to pay out if less than your entire house is swallowed by a sink hole. Sink hole coverage is required by some banks to get a mortgage, so home owners are screwed again, paying for insurance policies that won’t pay off when there’s a problem.
Insurance companies exist to make money, not to protect policy holders.
6 comments
Jaysus Xrist!
And thus, their billions in profits.
I’ve been saying the same thing for over a decade.
Thanks for being you and bringing us the truth!
S
Insurance companies exist to make money, not to protect policy holders.
Suzan, you have no idea how much time I have spent helping friends of my Mother get the money they were owed from various insurance companies. After a hurricane they flood the region with “adjustors” who sole purpose is to deny claims or pass the buck. With the elderly they stall, hoping the policy holder dies before a claim has to be paid. They are no human, and I will never treat them as human. They are mildew in suits.
It’s the same here, or even worse. Flood victims (and fire victims still) with legitimate claims are being screwed hard by the Insurer’s and even the Gov, whilst frauds seem to have no problem getting money quickly. *shrug*
Anyway, every large company is (and many smaller are) the same. They exist only to make profit, and most exist to make obscene profits.
I understand making a profit, but the desire for the extreme profit with no acknowledgement of responsibility that pisses me off.
After all of the hits during the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, the property insurance companies posted huge profits because the shifted the risk to the re-insurance market, and then stiffed their policy holders. This was followed by obscene increases in premiums.
Most of the people I know who own their homes have stopped buying insurance, because it isn’t worth the paper the policy is printed on, and premiums have reached unsustainable levels.
For-profit insurance should be illegal. In fact, at one point in time it *was* illegal in at least some states, because the whole notion of insurance is incompatible with the profit motive. Then de-mutualization happened because, hey, shareholders can get lotsa money that way, right?
Anyhow: Insurance companies make a profit by denying payment, not by providing payment. That’s unlike every other business, which makes profit by providing a service, not by denying a service. Let’s face it, a mutual model (i.e., where the insurer is owned by the rate-payers and any profit is required to be returned to the rate-payers) is the only model that actually works in the face of this reality. Insurance is not, by its fundamental nature, capitalist, since capitalism is about providing a service to make a profit, while insurance is about denying a service to make a profit…
– Badtux the Mutual Penguin
I had Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance when it was still a mutual company in New York, and it was cheap and effective. Everyone who worked had it. All of the colleges included it among the fees for even part-time students. I paid the premiums myself when I was getting ready to move to California and it was on the same level as my car insurance. I may have gotten a deal because I bought my car, health, renters, and professional competence [malpractice] insurance from the same agent, but the monthly bill for insurance wasn’t much different than the cable bill.