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5 comments on this story
The government requires that I buy auto insurance in order to drive a car. I need to drive a car because public transportation in Arizona is unsuitable 90 percent of the time I need to get from one place to another in a timely way (for purposes of, oh, employment and community events that either begin before bus service begins or after it ends).
Mandatory auto insurance pads the pockets of insurance companies. The two times that someone has run into my car (I have never caused an accident), neither party had insurance. My insurance had to pay for repairs to my car. My insurance rates went up, so I pay more for my insurance because I have had to use insurance to repair what others have caused. And we all pay higher rates to compensate for those who flaunt the law and then are slapped on the wrist by the state (the girl who caused an accident who nearly totaled my car had two failure to yield citations in 10 months and both were wiped off her record when her mother belatedly paid for insurance, after accidents in both cases).
Right now, health care insurance companies are free to charge whatever they want, raise rates, deny coverage to whomever they want for practically any reason and even ban people with “pre-existing conditions” (like my high blood pressure) from getting AFFORDABLE health care.
Such a bad idear, that mandatory health care. Let’s just keep making insurance companies richer and richer with mandatory auto insurance and the health care system as it exists now. By the way, have you gotten in line to see a specialist lately? How long do you have to wait?
Mandatory auto insurance is a strange thing.. You can have your vehicle towed if you don’t have it, humongous fines, license suspension. If you are Muslim, Mennonite, you can be kicked out of the religion if you have it (these are some of the religions that ban the purchase of insurance.
If all the insurance companies stopped selling health insurance (they are not required by law to sell it), then we would be fined for not buying a product that does not exist.
Dr Maril (for the NAII insurance people) did a survey in Arizona (poor region), that showed 44% said they could not buy food or pay rent due to mandatory auto insurance. If an indigent’s money for food evaporates, what does he do? He goes on food stamps. The Montana DPHHS did a survey (at my request), that showed that in Billings, MT, 12 of the 96 food stamp applicants said auto insurance was a reason for needing food stamps. That equals 30,000 over the last 20 years in Montana. I assume the reason that the National Association of Independent Insurers did the survey is because the insurance industry does not want to insure high risk drivers.
In South Carolina, they passed a law that anyone with a driver’s license, that walked into any insurance office, had to be sold liability insurance. What happened? Ninety per cent of the insurance companies stopped selling liability insurance.
One does not need a 20,000$ vehicle to get to work. A 1,000$ vehicle will do the trick. And nobody has a right to drive on the highways (that includes the driver of a 20,000$ vehicle.) If one chooses to drive a 20,000$ vehicle (which he does not need), on a highwiay (where he has no right to drive), maybe they should protect their own vehicle, rather than try to force mandatory auto insurance on the indigents and have an extra 2 million on food stamps for the next gazillion years. Don Birkholz
A cartoon that stimulated some discussion! :-)
“Right now, health care insurance companies are free to charge whatever they want, raise rates, deny coverage to whomever they want for practically any reason and even ban people with “pre-existing conditions” (like my high blood pressure) from getting AFFORDABLE health care.”
AJFlick nailed it right there. As kinglaura16 wrote, everyone would like to have health insurance. The question is affordability. If your company pays all or most, you don’t care what it costs. If you are self-employed or unemployed, insurance company price-gouging (and more on that later) can be a matter of life and death.
I live in Japan and for many years have had a health insurance policy with BUPA, a large and reputable British firm. I have a major medical policy because I don’t want or need to pay the premiums for coverage that would give me coverage for every niggle. It’s still expensive, of course.
But here’s the thing: BUPA offers two options: one, global coverage including the U.S.A.; two, global coverage excepting the U.S.A. If I want coverage in the States (i.e. for when I travel there) I double my premiums. And BUPA does that because the cost of delivering health care in the States means they have to.
So I get a travel insurance policy (a big thing here in Japan and obtainable at low cost from a vending machine at the airport) when I travel to the States.
[mtroyal, FYI the main cost of auto insurance is not related to the value of the car you drive; it’s liability insurance covering you if you injure/kill yourself/others. And that, of course, is the main public cost when drivers are uninsured, and the reason the state mandates coverage.]
FYI Roberto de vido,don’t know how you got the impression from my letter that liability insurance is related to the value of the car one drives, I never in the letter indicated that insurance is related to the value of the car one drives. There are 5 paragraphs in my letter, which paragraph is this in?
Don Birkholz
Easy there, Big Don. Boy, everyone on these here Innernets is so damn TOUCHY!
You ranted about $20,000 cars (that’s paragraph 5, for your reference), and I guess your logic train just confused me.
One thousand pardons.