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this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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I live in Canada and used to work as an adjuster and dated an American broker. There are many good insurers in the US, none of them advertise. Go to an honest broker and they'll tell you about those boring good ones.
The differences in our systems were astonishing. Those advertised insurers let you go around with basically no coverage. I can't believe your minimum third party liability amounts, especially considering the crazy medical costs in your country. It's just over a tenth of the minimum we allow in my province, and we have socialized health care and more robust social safety nets. A serious accident will ruin you for life if you take that cockney lizard's policy. He's a scam artist from the mean streets of London.
My wife worked for an insurance company for most of a decade as the complaint liaison with the states regulating body on insurance.
Insurance companies in the U.S. come in two types.
Type A: Rely on repeat business and word of mouth to slowly grow their business. They pay out reasonable and fair amounts based upon the loss. They follow all applicable laws/regulations and operate in good faith. These companies are quick to reject people who have bad histories.
Type B: Rely on recruiting new customers constantly by excessive advertising or purchasing other smaller companies. Pay out well below the market on anything they can and flat out refuse claims until lawsuits start. These companies routinely break state and federal laws because the fines are less than the profits. These companies prey on the lower income, elderly, and poorly informed. The larger companies have hundreds of brands to give the illusion of choice to the consumer.
Any amounts of excessive marketing by and insurance company indicates that they are shit. Also research into who owns any the brand they are are marketing. If you recognize the parent company as advertising, they are shit.
That seems to line up with my reading of those heavily advertised, cheap policies. You pay for nothing then get left in the lurch, owing potentially millions. It should be illegal, it's totally predatory.
I'm nowhere close to the insurance industry but I had sort of noticed from various stories.
The idea I had of what insurance is supposed to do seems to be based on how it works in Canada. If you want to take a big risk on losing your car, home, license or whatever then paying insurance even a high amount make sense.
Comparitively in the US, particularly in healthcare you seem screwed whether you get insurance or not. Americans get the freedom to pay hundreds of dollars a month, just to have to pay a minimum of more thousands if something does happen. In Canada, we don't have universal dental yet and a full checkup, xray, cleaning and fluoride without insurance is about 600 CAD or ~440USD. I don't know how much dental costs down South...
Yeah, insurance is a fundamental, necessary piece of civilization and has existed since before Hammurabi. But it has also been abused by profiteers since then too, and it's not always easy to tell the difference. In a cut-throat, free market, capitalist driven economy, the incentive is to cover nothing for high premiums. A scam, essentially. Add a law where corporations are people and unlimited political donations is free speech and you'll have enourmous pressure put on politicians to keep the insurance industry unregulated (except making buying it mandatory). Thus Geiko is allowed to exist. Lower premiums, but you are essentially uninsured for anything more than a minor fender bender. Paying premiums for nothing. This is bad for everyone involved in an accident except the insurance companies.
Wouldn't that deter potential clients from purchasing your products though and go with the competitor who actually offers better terms?
Not if you have an anthropomorphic lizard telling you to buy theirs
Shit, I'm not from the US, but now I've realized that their ads are so pervasive, I've seen them before as well. And now I also realized that we have a Canadian equivalent.
Luxury bones. Same in Canada. Also eyes are Luxury organs.
I don't know anything, and to avoid complications, what kinds of legal minimums does Canada require?
Here in BC we have a minimum of $200,000 liability insurance. We don't separate based on property or injury, 200k covers all. But only low income drivers stop at 200K, $3Million is the most common liability amount. If you end up accidentally crippling a kid, you will require every penny that 3million. We don't advertise our insurance at all. Insurers must have a reserve on hand to cover every single outstanding claim plus 10 million, I'm not sure what those numbers are in the US, it wouldn't surprise me if they were much more lax. The Insurance Act of BC is a beautiful piece of legislation with the insured's best interest in mind, not the insurer's shareholders.
The amount the company must maintain on hand depends on the state. In some states it's less than 1% of the policies written. Most of the time they only hold enough out of their premiums to cover an average of 2-3 years of claims.
The reason it's so low is because of federal disaster relief when something big happens. The insurance companies advocate for it to be called a federal disaster. Then the government steps in and foots part of the bill. The poor are usually left losing everything.
Thank you!