Comments on: Insurance in an un-free market

By: Elaine

Elaine — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 02:20:06 +0000

When my eligibility for COBRA health insurance expired the premium rose from $379 to $780 per month. If I chose to keep that same policy I would be paying over $10,000 per year for health and auto insurance alone. That figure is relatively low since my auto insurance is much cheaper in Santa Cruz, CA than when I lived in Bridgeport and New Haven, CT. That’s not counting all of the other insurance ‘payments’ that Mike listed above!

By: bonanzaman

bonanzaman — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:42:40 +0000

Insurance is just another form of banking invented by the ancient bankers.
Interest is collected in advance instead of arrears. Much better that way.

By: Joel Laramee

Joel Laramee — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:09:55 +0000

Thanks for this post, Mike. I agree that the current insurance mess is an opportunity to present something better. I hope to someday see non-state linked insurance organizations that specifically serve a metro region, like Philadelphia. I think the metro region is small enough that there could be a sense of “belonging” by the inhabitants, and sense of “neighborliness”, but big enough to have critical mass in terms of the required capital.

By: Mike Gogulski

Mike Gogulski — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:50:18 +0000

Joe: The credit card fees I’m talking about are charged by many card providers as insurance in case the cardholder dies or becomes incapacitated. On the occurrence of such an insured event, the cardholder or decedent cardholder’s estate is relieved of the debt via an insurance payout.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:57:44 +0000

The FSLIC was abolished in 1989 and its functions passed on to the FDIC. No family pays for FDIC insurance (not directly, at least). The FDIC-member banks pay premiums to the FDIC, which supposedly adds them to a fund (which incidentally is nearly bankrupt http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/08/as-of-friday-august-14-2009-fdic-is.html).

I don’t see how you can consider credit card fees as any kind of “insurance.” It’s bad enough that most health insurance policies (as well as Social security) aren’t insurance at all, as per Wikipedia’s definition: “Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium, and can be thought of as a guaranteed and known small loss to prevent a large, possibly devastating loss.”

By: Brad Spangler

Brad Spangler — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:21:26 +0000

I’m wondering how we could somehow crowdsource it. Instead of peer-to-peer lending like Kiva does, imagine peer-to-peer insurance. Instead of aggregating funds the way a conventional insurance firm does, it could perhaps aggregate *pledges* of funds later directly xferred peer-to-peer under contractually defined circumstances.

By: Chris Blizzard

Chris Blizzard — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:46:11 +0000

Socialised medicine is evil for one reason more than any other – it weakens the self-preservation instinct. Apart from smoking for many years (which I have now stopped) I took care to avoid injury and illness, and in 15 years made only two visits to the doctor.

A person such as me – that doesn’t want any insurance of any kind, medical, automotive or all the other pointless gambles – should be free to live their life, and then visit a treatment clinic with a pay-as-you-go tariff, to receive the care I require. If I cut my left arm, I’d stitch it myself. If I cut my right arm, I’d go to someone who wasn’t left-handed.

Restricting the free market is always bad.