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[King Zultan]

He was working there in the 90s and they were loading tucks, and I was under the impression that most of that stuff was them throwing it into the back of the tucks they were supposed to be loading.

[McTraveller]

That assertion in the COVID thread about how someone in the US supposedly "successfully" filed a claim against a car insurance company because they got HPV from activities in a vehicle.

I'm too lazy to look that up for validity, but I can't imagine how A) the car insurance company's lawyers could be so inept to lose that case, B) how a jury or judge could even think it's the car insurer's responsibility to cover liability for such a thing, and ultimately C) the mental worldview that would lead one to even consider in the first place that this falls under the coverage categories for car insurance.

[Frumple]

It seems to be a thing that actually happened, at least. The insurance company's lawyers seem to have fucked up before the proverbial race even started, by not getting involved when initially contacted about the issue.

So far as liability goes, well, it's harm (the other person involved was both aware and didn't inform the woman they had a STD) that occured inside one of their insured vehicles. That's apparently enough, and it's not like that's much of a stretch. Car insurance doesn't always just cover wrecks, y'know? This would pretty cleanly fall under harmful negligent behavior by the insured individual, while in an insured vehicle, which depending on the insurance policy may genuinely be covered.

e:I'm 110% behind a worldview that amounts to "fuck the insurance companies and make them pay out", though :V

[hector13]

The insurance companies are fine passing that cost on to their customers though, so perhaps not.

[pisskop]

insurance is reverse gambling.  It's a forced tax as well.

I disapprove of it, but its really more complex than that.

[Rolan7]

The insurance companies are fine passing that cost on to their customers though, so perhaps not.

They don't need an excuse to overcharge.  They already squeeze as much as they can from an essentially forced market, "pay or go without health care".

The concept of insurance comes from a good history of groups coming together to mitigate risk for their individuals.  Modern insurance with a profit incentive is completely perverse, and there's a reason health insurance is handled by nations outside one (and a handful) absolutely fucked up exceptions.

Edit:  Most obviously, USA health-insurance-for-profit has inflated prices of care to an absurd extent, and gained a stranglehold on our governing bodies through legalized bribes (campaign contributions/lobbying). 

[McTraveller]

I'm in the camp that believes insurance (even "for profit" insurance) can be a useful thing, but I agree that legally mandated insurance causes perverse incentives.

I can't get behind the idea that "negligent behavior in a car, but behavior is not dependent on the use of a car" means that it us under the purview of car insurance though.

I don't know if it's a legally valid argument, but if you would have ended up with the same result had the event not occurred in the vehicle, it should not be something for which car insurance should apply.  It's a stupid and dangerous precedent.

[MrRoboto75]

>US Healthcare is better because the consumer gets to choose in a market

>Its healthcare so 50/50 chance you need to choose right now or die, if it's an emergency you're going to the nearest ER

>There's maybe three doctors of any given specialty tops in your area, your insurance accepts one

>Literally no one involved can guess what the price will be until someone actually rings it up

>Insurance is tied to your job to limit the bargaining power of the worker

I'm in the camp that believes insurance (even "for profit" insurance) can be a useful thing, but I agree that legally mandated insurance causes perverse incentives.

Insurance is a big pool of money, health wise you'd have healthy people who contribute more to the pool than they'd take, and unhealthy people who take more than they contribute.  Mandate means that healthy people have to contribute when on average they probably wouldn't bother, but also insurance has to cover unhealthy people that would otherwise be a net negative.  Overall the price of insurance goes down.

In the US you have a bunch of small pools instead of one larger national one.

[Rolan7]

I'm in the camp that believes insurance (even "for profit" insurance) can be a useful thing, but I agree that legally mandated insurance causes perverse incentives.

Wowzers no, that is not the issue here.  Some kinds of insurance should be mandated because they protect others.  Liability car insurance is the most obvious example.  I do not have a right to strap in to my jalopy, careen into oncoming traffic, then shrug and declare bankruptcy.

Health insurance is fundamentally the same because hospitals will provide emergency care to the poor (bankrupting the poor in the process).  The costs still get paid, but by the hospital unlucky enough to provide the care, which is *stupid*.  It's much more fair if everyone is in a national health care system.

It's more fair, it provides a bargaining position with the out-of-control pharmaceutical companies, and it both reduces costs and improves outcomes by providing preventative care.  Preventative care reduces overall costs!!  Even for-profit insurance recognizes this, but they still nickle-and-dime us at every opportunity because they prey on the underinformed.

I was uninsured for years and it's only by pure luck that I wasn't bankrupted by a medical emergency.  For-profit insurance is fucking vile.  Even if we believe in the magical efficiency of the free market, that's a *bad thing* when it comes to health insurance.  Perhaps any insurance!  In insurance, that efficiency comes from denying valid claims and overcharging people for NECESSITIES.

Edit: I don't mean to go off at you McTraveller, it's the insurance "industry" I'm mad at.  To your point though, I do not think I should have the "right" to go without medical insurance.  That's literally gambling everything I own against catastrophe.

[McTraveller]

The problem with health insurance is it doesn't follow the canonical model for insurance.  Insurance is not useful for "guaranteed" expenses - you don't have insurance for that.  Insurance should only be for probabilistic expenses.

One of the issues with health insurance is that it combines "guaranteed" expenses like basic physicals and stuff with more rare events like injuries and chronic diseases.  I hypothesize we could fix a huge portion of problems with health care if we outlawed insurance for basic "family doctor" stuff and only allowed it for emergent or chronic care.  This way you could still have family doctors charge even $200 a visit or whatever, and it would be way cheaper for people who didn't want to buy catastrophic insurance; I mean if nobody in my family gets sick or hurt in a year, my insurance company still gets over $16000 a year in premiums (this is split about 70/30 between me and my employer).  So if I only had to pay $1000 a year for regular checkups, I'd come out way ahead.  I'd have to personally decide if it was worth $4000/person a year to hedge against some catastrophic health event.

Now note that it's way more expensive than homeowner's insurance; my homeowner's insurance is only about $1000/year.  This is basically an order of magnitude cheaper than health insurance.  Also note that homeowner's insurance (at least in my geographic area) is priced to be reasonable - people pay it even if they don't have to because they don't hold a mortgage because it's "cheap" - it's basically priced at losing an entire house once every 250 years or more - actual probabilistic events!  You couldn't save enough to "self insure" a house by not paying the premiums. And even over a lifetime, home insurance is still less than the cost of a new house.

Put another way: homeowners' insurance lowers the total cost to both individuals and society for dealing with loss of homes.

Health "insurance" though - in the US it is seriously messed up.  It's basically a lottery, which is not insurance.  The current US implementation of health care insurance does not lower total cost to society for dealing with health care issues - while it may reduce the cost for some individuals, the overall cost to society at large is much higher than it could possibly be without it.

----

In response to @Rolan7: I guess I don't agree that you should be forced to pay for insurance for the things you mentioned.  I think you should be forced into some kind of recompense scheme if you were found liable for something (there's actually some psychology to people being more reckless because they have insurance than they would without it).  I don't think that recompense should bankrupt you either.

For covering overall social costs - it should not be "insurance" but something else.  I'm ok with calling it public health reserves, or something.  But it is not "insurance"...  So I'm being picky with labels, yes.  Partly it's related to the above criteria, about lowering costs for both individuals and society as a whole.  It's like US car safety equipment mandates for things like rear-view cameras; the US as a whole is paying something like $25M per life saved from back-up accidents, even though it only costs $200 per vehicle or whatever.  So society as a whole is actually losing out on that exchange... even though it's not really that expensive per person, and it does indeed save lives.

[Lord Shonus]

That assertion in the COVID thread about how someone in the US supposedly "successfully" filed a claim against a car insurance company because they got HPV from activities in a vehicle.

I'm too lazy to look that up for validity, but I can't imagine how A) the car insurance company's lawyers could be so inept to lose that case, B) how a jury or judge could even think it's the car insurer's responsibility to cover liability for such a thing, and ultimately C) the mental worldview that would lead one to even consider in the first place that this falls under the coverage categories for car insurance.

The story making the rounds is grossly distorted, to the point of being close to a lie. Quoting somebody else who put it much more concisely than I can

I’ve posted about this in other threads and won’t go over everything again, but this article is shit. GEICO hasn’t been ordered to pay anything. There has been no determination of coverage and a federal court will make a ruling on that.

She and the man that gave her HPV went to arbitration pursuant to MO law and came to an agreement that she would pursue the judgment from his auto insurance and not him.

GEICO had no part in this action because they determined there was no coverage. They only became involved after she asked a state court to affirm the arbitration award. It did so. GEICO attempted to intervene to state that they should have been part of the settlement discussion over their payout, but the trial court and appellate court disagreed.

In the meantime, no court anywhere has said that this is covered by the GEICO policy nor have they been ordered to pay. The dude’s umbrella policy expressly excludes coverage for communicable disease. His auto policy does not, but it’s not very likely sex in the back seat is covered use especially when there was sex not in the car that could have been the source of HPV.

If GEICO determines it has any coverage obligation, it will settle with her up to the policy limit of $300k. She is not getting $5.2m out of GEICO.

[Egan_BW]

So, good old corporate propaganda about so called "frivolous suits", trying to erode one of the only things which keeps them in check?

[Iduno]

https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_rc5gj8k0ui1yj4qd2.mp4

Why isn't this the kind of thing we learn? As soon as he started doing it, I knew it would work, but nobody has ever told me about it before.

[wierd]

I recently adjusted my Geico insurance policy;

The vehicle insurance package also covers injury to persons riding in your vehicle.  EG, if you picked up your brother-in-law at the airport, and then you had a no-fault, but injury accident, which left him hurt.

Presumably, this "Contracted an STD inside the vehicle" angle, is just a derivation of that kind of coverage, much like building insurance covers persons harmed on your property. (Kids skateboarding on the loading dock, and then getting maimed horribly when they miss the jump, et al.)

[hector13]

I recently adjusted my Geico insurance policy;

The vehicle insurance package also covers injury to persons riding in your vehicle.

I don’t think that includes the kind of riding they were doing.