> The insurance industry is special. They do everything possible to > convince people of the importance of having insurance and then > after purchase, do everything possible to deny the use of it.
Not to defend the lengths that the insurance companies go through to follow this to its logical conclusion, but it's good business sense (sell a service and then hope people don't use it or dissuade them from using it) and many industries make use of it. Cell phone plans are a good example as well. I'm paying for minutes and data whether I use them or not. The more I pay for and the less I use, the higher their profit goes. (I'm sure if Verizon had a way to dissuade me from using minutes or data that I've already paid for without losing me as a customer they'd do it). Same applies to things like gym memberships (there's a reason they push annual contracts rather than month-to-month membership). Insurance is supposed to be about risk transference to provide a safety net. As public corporations, however, their first duty is to their shareholders rather than the customers they're supposed to be protecting. The libertarian part of me thinks people should plan ahead as much as possible on their own by providing their own safety net and reducing risks, but the realist in me knows that not everyone has the means to cover expenses and things can happen through no fault of your own which would otherwise ruin people financially, so insurance is a necessity of modern life. When an insurance company's primary goal is no longer to protect its policyholders, bad things are sure to happen. It's a flaw in the system. I don't want to open a can of worms about the recent changes to health care and insurance, but I do believe that one of the good things that came from all that was to require health insurance companies to spend a certain percentage of their premiums on actual health care and issue refunds on anything over the limit (essentially, they didn't provide service that people paid for so they have to give a partial refund). I believe that many of the abuses we've been discussing about auto insurance (and the same can apply to other insurance as well) would be greatly reduced if the same rule were applied to insurance in other industries as well. There can be a profit motive, sure, I'm all for that, but when you're so greedy that you're actually fighting against your own customers to not provide the service they've paid for, you might as well be asking for your industry to become more regulated. Right now there is very little incentive not to deny claims by default or actively try to dissuade claims and pay out as little as possible. Sure there is customer satisfaction to consider, but the number of times a person needs to file insurance claims is relatively miniscule compared with other services we pay for. I make lots of phone calls in a day, but I think I've filed an insurance claim perhaps twice in my life. If Comcast high-speed Internet service goes down for a few hours, I hear about it from several people in a short time. I can count on one hand the number of times someone I know has mentioned their experience filing an insurance claim and how their claim was treated, etc. (aside from the list discussion here, or course). Each insurance claim is unique which further clouds people's ability to really take it all in and predict how they will be treated as a customer. As an insurance company, upsetting policyholders is not likely a large enough disincentive to prevent them from abusing those customers in any way they think they can get away with. An outside force may be necessary to reign in the industry and get it focused back on protecting their policyholders. -Justin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:353861 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
