Car insurance is relatively simple. I shop around, telling them how much coverage I want. They request my driving history, and give me a quote. At any time, I can shop around and change insurance policies without any problems. Once it’s time to collect payment, it’s a relatively simple matter. What makes health insurance so difficult, controlling, unreliable, and expensive? For example, with health insurance:
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Can only shop during a specific enrollment period
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Policies are so complex, the vast majority of the population can’t understand them
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It’s commonly provided in part by the employer because buying a policy otherwise is prohibitively expensive
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Insurance companies are notorious for denying payments
It is effective and efficient, just not for the consumer.
Can only shop during a specific enrollment period
With cars it’s relatively easy to determine if a particular collision occurred before or after you bought insurance. It’s also very hard to predict exactly when these commissions will occur. Consequently, it is not so easy to delay and only buy a policy when you already have a claim ready to go.
With many progressive diseases, it’s much easier to wait and only buy insurance if you think it’s going to be expensive, but haven’t been diagnosed with anything yet. That’s why health insurance has open enrollment periods.
Obamacare really fucked up the health insurance market. Open enrollment is because of Obamacare. Obamacare was written by the insurance lobby. They created a porous law and likely already had ideas to exploit it before it passed. And they have. It has been an incredible boon to them and Americans have suffered. Healthcare was NOT this expensive before Obamacare and insurance wasn’t this complicated and was more affordable too.
Obamacare is the biggest piece of regulatory capture in our lifetime, and in a time of rampant regulatory capture, that’s saying a lot. It also showcases why our 2 party system is just broken. When the so called left option can produce such a broken capitalist piece of legislation.
Open enrollment isn’t because of Obamacare. Your employer-provided health plan had open enrollment periods before the ACA.
You’re only partially right. There was a penalty for not having healthcare that was reduced to $0 where it has stayed since 2017. When that happened premiums shot up because healthier people decided to not get insurance. Considering health insurance is about pooling risk, healthier people left weren’t there to subsidize the relatively sicker folks. So, it’s also a problem of incentives
I don’t think you can blame it all on Obamacare. I vividly remember wondering “How TF do people with families afford this?!” when looking at the individual vs. family insurance at a job back in 2002. Premiums were skyrocketing then, and they’ve been skyrocketing ever since.
You think American car insurance is efficient and/or effective? Something tells me you’ve never had to use it then lol
Because the customer and user are not the same people and insurance is keeping the costomer happy. High prices mean I cannot afford to quit my job or retire early. I have to have a job to have any form of insurance at all. It is great for the hr department that buys my insurance. In theory I can buy my own on the market but that means the thousand dollars a month my employer is paying gets thrown away.
(easier for health insurance companies to double-dip this way)
I think, from the perspective of the insurance companies, the risk is greater for insuring people’s health than their vehicles. Also, people’s lives are at stake, so it’s basically just a complicated extortion market. I don’t know I think all the pharma and healthcare industries should be nationalized and all the healthcare workers conscripted. Can’t be worse than what we have now.
It can always get worse
How is nationalized healthcare in one of the wealthiest countries in the world supposed to be worse than what we have now?
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Maybe, but the U.S. does have some of the most expensive health system in the world, and the quality of care isn’t really better.
More expensive, worse care, and not available to everyone.
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And for some of our parts, the warranty outright sucks.
Because Americans care about cars.
Car insurance isn’t efficient nor effective. It’s a complete ripoff.
Go file a claim, see how much grief they put you through. Every claim I’ve ever made, I’ve had to file a complaint with the state insurance regulators to get my insurance company to reimburse me (and I’ve never been at fault).
Insurance is the problem for both cars and health. They artificially inflate pricing for both, because they get to determine what is paid and at what rates (especially for health care).
It’s why you hear stories of things like tylenol at the hospital being $10 a pill. Since insurance may only reimburse the hospital at 10% of the filed claim, the hospital increases the cost 10x. (It’s more complex that this, it’s why medical coding is a specific job now, finding ways to code things to get sufficiently reimbursed).
How do you file a complaint? I had frame swap that cost almost 20k a couple years ago after getting rear ended and my insurance said the diminished value was only 60 bucks. I never even cashed the check I was so pissed.
I agree that insurance companies are a scam, but it sounds like you had the work done before repairs and shops were agreed on? Insurance companies generally work like that…
I did not. I went to one of their “approved” shops and they paid them directly.
My sister lives in British Columbia, and from what I’ve heard, they have single-payer provincial government run car insurance (in addition to health insurance like the rest of Canada). It sounds awesome.
Now I think of it, it’s odd that British Colombia is nowhere near either Brittain nor Colombia
I have made two claims with my insurance and they paid without any pushback. I think that’s just your insurance company. I would highly encourage you to name and shame.
Yeah I’ve also had 0 issues with my insurance the two times I’ve used them.
Hell when I went to a repair shop I insisted on only OEM parts and the guy there said insurance typically wouldn’t replace that part OEM. But when I asked them about it they said they were happy to keep things 100% OEM.
I also had to get the state involved when the insurance agent just wouldn’t return my calls
Might be your company, I’ve had 3 not at fault and 1 at fault accident and I’ve never had any issues with the insurance company paying out. In fact, my insurance has always been super chill about it, and the two not at faults that involved another driver both had the opposing insurance company tried to screw around to get out of paying.
I’ve had 3 not at fault and 1 at fault accident
A number of states have moved to ‘no fault’ insurance, with the claim that it would save everyone money. Surprise, insurance rates go up, sharply, and insurance companies end up being less responsive to claims.
I also have to say I’ve had only good experiences with my current insurance provider (Amica) but I also pay a little more. My mom got an at fault accident in my car she borrowed when her car was in the shop and it was handled without complaint nor did they raise my rates.
But you’re still right about a lot of others. I’m almost certain GEICO or Progressive would have raised mine. I wish it was regulated such that my experience is the mandatory norm.
By tying insurance to employment (side effect of some economic policy) the option to shop around was removed. When people are already forced to use the insurance provided by employment so that they can afford it, there is no way for some other insurance agency to be competitive. Then it just got worse over the years.
The ACA attempting to make a competitive market was a half assed substitute for just going all in on single payer, but at least people with the jobs that don’t provide insurance have the possibility of affording it now so it is better. Just getting stabbed instead of being shot better.
You, don’t have any bargaining power regarding your health. Let’s say you broke a arm, a Mundane thing. You’re in pain, and would do anything to make it stop. Once they give you some morphine, you’re high and can’t take any reasonable decision.
Moreover, you can decide to thrash away a car, it happens all the time, you can’t do it with your life.
Can only shop during a specific enrollment period.
With most other insurance, it only pays out of something unplanned happens. With health insurance, there are medical issues that can be known about in advance of them being to be addressed. So you might know you have a heart condition that needs to be operated on soon, but not immediately. This is known as a medical precondition.
Before the ACA was passed, health insurance companies would always exclude medical preconditions. So, if you switched insurance while needing that heart operation, you would find that you weren’t covered and have to pay all the costs.
The ACA got rid of being able to limit coverage of medical preconditions, but it needed to provide a way for insurance companies to limit their exposure to people switching from a bad plan to an amazing plan that covered everything and would have to pay out immediately. To handle that, it made it a requirement for all people to get a minimum amount of medical insurance and to restrict when people could shop for insurance.
Dolla dolla bill
Because the human body needs way more maintenance and expertise to maintain.
