On every single professional sports game I’ve ever seen, every single show, every single channel. Isn’t this our fucking money you’re meant to give out should, god forbid, something happen?
Why is it even legal to do this? Blowing this money on CONSTANT, DUMB fucking little fucking cutesy fucking skits, not even trying to fucking pitch anything anymore, just burning money on TV and laughing at us while the fucking lemur does epic bants. it makes me so fucking sick, these people should be chained in the dungeons for the rest of their lives.
It’s illegal to not have car insurance so why the fuck do they think we need to see this constant fucking microwaved vomit fucking garbage every fucking second every fucking show every fucking channel??
thank you
a petition to ban marketing, advertising, and sale of personal information in general would be a good way to have a chance at shattering big tech and commercial crap all at once, but it’ll never happen 🙁
You do realize this is going to make a lot of “free” services no longer free. Greed follows the hand.
It’s funny how private companies can subsidise free services but somehow “society” would not be able to do it…
Before choosing your insurance provider, google the company and “combined ratio”. Anything over 100 and they are paying out more than they are making. Investors want to see a combined ratio in the mid 90s, so if you are not an investor maybe you want the ones with high CR? Or they might be wasting it I guess, but either way less savvy I suppose.
This is one of a thousand reasons why the entire insurance industry should be burnt to the ground
Surely they would be insured for that though?
They’d just find a way to make us pay for it.
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It should just be public. One big insurance company that covers everyone under one set of rules, with zero ad budget and total transparency to voters. Not a private company that can deny coverage and run off with profits. Not an elective product that only high risk people will get. Not a hassle that you have to sign up for and pay bills on. Just built into our taxes and public institutions. Period.
Unrelated, but I saw an ad for a cremation company on the TV the other day. They said they had a 4.5 rating on trustpilot, and I spent too long wondering who left those reviews…
Their primary goal is to make profit for investors. They kind of also sometimes help people.
They kind of also pay out on the services you pay them for, it’s not helping, it’s just an obligation they haven’t managed to dodge.
It’s almost like there should be a not for profit option, perhaps if there were some large group of people who worked for everyone, and we’re controlled by some sort of elected governing body.
I have had this fantasy. All health insurers be required to be 501©29. The non-profit definition for health insurers under the ACA.
A lot of insurance companies—arguably most of the ones used—are not for profit: American Family, COUNTRY, generally Blue Cross Blue Shield, Liberty Mutual, Northwestern Mutual, any other company with “mutual” in the name, USAA, Farmers, State Farm, Progressive, etc.
Hmm… part of me is not convinced that those companies aren’t benefitting in some way… I mean, the employees do have to be paid don’t they? What about the CEO? Is it just a passion project for them?
Yeah, obviously employees have to be paid like with anywhere. Those are business expenses. But at the end of the day, the amount of money they charge has to be equal to the amount it costs them.
You’re right about that, I’m more weirded out by the salaries of the CEOs compared to the other employees. According to google the CEO of American family has a salary of around a million a year so… someone is profiting from it.
The term non-profit just (to me) almost loses meaning when it makes people filthy rich but you’re right, they are the lesser evil for the time being.
Really? Do you have a source for that?
For which ones? Most are mutual insurance companies, where any profit has to legally be paid back to the customers.
That is awesome thanks! I was unaware.
One reason insurance ads are so stupid is that they are tightly regulated as to what they can actually say. They’re not allowed to make big promises. So you get lizards talking to car tires or whatever the fuck.
15 minutes could save you 15% or more. Or it could save you less. Probably less or none at all. The point is that it could save you 15%
Billions? Trillions? Ummmm, anyway…
The reason is because they aren’t idiots, it works or they wouldn’t do it. The issue with car insurance (and I assume this is what you are talking about since they bombard me also) is that it is a commodity. Let’s face it, they are all the same and heavily regulated by states. The only way they can grab customers is by the “plant our name in your head” method and that requires yelling at you constantly.
That said I HATE those ads. Geico has now been replace by Liberty Mutual as the most annoying company.
The question wasn’t why do they try, the question was why does society let them do it
Because society in general does business with companies they’ve already heard of.
Because acknowledging that we don’t need insurance advertised to us would require also acknowledging insurance shouldn’t be commodified to begin with.
Free speech. They used to ban drug ads and that got dropped.
Personally I’d rather see ads for lawyers banned.
Let’s put aside the many, many problems of insurance companies in reality and talk in terms of two parties acting in good faith for ease of demonstration.
Let’s take random person Alice who has insured her wrench set at Insurance Company X. Her wrench set is very important to her job and she only believes in high quality tools, so it is quite expensive. So expensive, that if something were to happen to it, she might not be able to replace it right away. Instead, she pays Company X for an insurance policy. Alice can afford to pay a little bit every month and so this is a good set up.
Uh oh, an impromptu stomp band raided Alice’s store and appropriated her wrenches as drumsticks. They’re ruined! Luckily, Alice is insured and Insurance Company X pays her for replacement wrenches.
Unfortunately for Company X, Alice needed new wrenches before her monthly payments would exceeded the price of the wrenches. So how did they have the money? Well, they have more customers than just Alice. They use some of the money that they get from others to help buy the wrench set in the same way some of Alice’s money is used with other problems as a way to socialize the losses.
As you might guess, this requires more people. More people contributing at once means a bigger pool of money that can cover bigger individual losses when the time comes. As such, Insurance Company X uses a portion of the money they get to recruit more users and thereby make their system work better.
But also greed. Lots and lots of greed.
Don’t forget the part where Insurance Company X calculates the maximum amount of damages they could be liable for from marauding flash mobs for a given affected area then raises the rates on all of their customers in an even bigger area to compensate so they can never lose money on Alice’s wrenches.
Source: I’m a mathematician who spent a summer working in the office of a roofing company and I literally watched homeowners insurance companies do it.
Also the billions they make in profit is not going to compensate anyone. And the billions they invest on share markets and lobbying to make the society more like they want is definitely not to the benefit of the society either.
Yeah, I wrote elsewhere that I wish medical insurers were required to be 501©28 (I think that was the number). It specifically states that they are not allowed to lobby or fund political organizations/candidates.
Not trying to speak up for any insurance company and will never say that the example is a good reflection of reality. Just showing a rough outline in how advertising and recruiting customers -could- be beneficial to the policy holder. It is as much a reflection of reality as a stick man is an anatomic model for study.
Although what you write is correct, you somehow made it sound like a Ponzi scheme 😅
I thought we were being invited to a commune.
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On every single professional sports game I’ve ever seen, every single show, every single channel. Isn’t this our fucking money you’re meant to give out should, god forbid, something happen?
While there’s certainly no redeeming feature to be found in the advertising industry, I feel like you might be missing the point of insurance. An insurance does not safe-keep “your” money. You pay insurance for a service, you then receive the service and your money is gone, spent, as if you had bought groceries. The service you receive is what is called “coverage” but what is more easily thought of as “immunity against bankruptcy due to X”, X being the insurance case. That’s what you buy.
Figuring out how to best allocate the money is up to the insurance - it’s their money, after all.
The only issue with that is their prices go up if their costs go up. Kind of like how grocery stores claim that theft causes prices to go up. It is their money, though it does feel bad paying them.
Yes, but spending the money creates more of an incentive and more pressure to figure out how to skimp on payouts
i absolutely disagree. the way insurance works is you all pay into it and they use that money for claims. it’s literally our money.
i absolutely disagree. the way insurance works is you all pay into it and they use that money for claims. it’s literally our money.
Again, you do not “pay into” anything. There’s no pool or fund or growing personal account. You buy a service. There is an exchange of goods and services here. As you receive the service, the money ceases to be yours.
Whether or not other people file claims with the insurance doesn’t matter, just like it doesn’t matter whether or not the baker buys new furniture after selling bread to you. They’re not paying the furniture store with your money, they’re paying the furniture store with their own money that became theirs as soon as you relinquished it to them in exchange for the bread.
i hop between geico, progressive, and allstate. after the 6month bait deal ends i just call and move over to the next competitors 6 month sweet deal.
It’s easy to maintain, just 3 tabs on my browser and now you don’t even have to talk to a person.
i learned after graduating in 2006 and walking face first into 2008s bullshit. if they want to hot potato lumps of debt, ill just hot potato competing services.
If you’re in the USA I would suggest using Amica for your insurance. They are great, and I’ve never seen an advertisement for them!
I’ve seen a ton
I’ve never seen an advertisement for them!
I may have seen one just now.
It’s not, that’s wby it only occur in USA
Lol #MAGA
I was wondering the same thing this weekend after watching an absurd number of insurance commercials on each football game.
Can someone list few reputable insurance companies other than the Gecko, Emu and Flo?
Mahomes and maauto
Corporation must grow, must consume. In capitalism, if you’re not growing you’re dying.
Business is binary. You’re a 1 or a 0. Alive, or dead.
Advertising. They make it seem like the best thing since sliced bread so if someone is considering changing providers, that company comes to mind. The more they repeat it the more likely people are to think of it when considering options. It doesn’t work on everyone, but this tactic has enough supporting data for them to keep dumping money into it.
To answer your question about why they are allowed to do it, I would imagine there are little to no regulations on how much is spent on advertising campaigns. It all depends on what a business can afford to spend. Since insurance companies are all about denying coverage, I’d imagine they have quite a bit to dump into advertising. I haven’t looked into it that much, but it looks like they can also claim these as business expenses and get tax write-offs. It wouldn’t be surprising if they tacked on other expenses to the advertising budget and claimed those as write-offs as well.
another one of those write-off business expenses is the tremendous amount of money spent lobbying to keep regulations regarding advertising (and other unseemly business practices) at bay.
