StametsScams upon Scams
y0kai [he/him]Then if you are in an accident or something happens to your car, they’ll try not to pay out and even if they do, they’ll make you pay even more every month, regardless of whether the accident was your fault or not. Oh and you have to have it where I live or you’re breaking the law.
bizarrolandWhere I live, you can choose to not have it as long as you take $50,000 and put it into a bank account and secure it and not touch that $50,000 as long as you are driving without insurance.
GiveOverIt doesn’t really matter either way. If you have 50k cash or a 50k insurance limit. The other party can settle for 50k or they can try to get more through sueing you. If they get a judgement for more than 50k (likely after years) then you have to pay, but if you don’t have a million dollars, they aren’t getting it anyway. From there they can agree to a payment plan or try to garnish wages or place line.
Sounds wild to me. In UK the third party liability insurance limit is usually in the millions.
It’s the difference between minimums and maximums. In most American states you have to have $50,000 worth of liability insurance to legally drive, which covers the majority of financial consequences for accidents.
That being said, now that cheap cars are $35,000 brand new, it might be a smart thing if you’re an American driver to have $100,000 or $125,000 worth of liability insurance to keep yourself from going bankrupt.
The extra $100 a year for that coverage would totally be worth it if you ever have to use it.
Also they will arbitrarily decide how much your car was worth. Did proactive maintenance and no accidents? Cool, now it’s assessed to be the same as if you had six unrepaired fender benders and kept raccoons in the back seat.
RhaedasSingle payer insurance of any type pulls from a far larger pool than any company could have, lowering the individual cost and allowing a bigger risk coverage. But... what about all those insurance companies (of all types), as well as other industries that rely on the increased costs? How will they survive? /s
Boomer Humor Doomergodinsurance, home and auto
And the biggest one: health
True, sorry, I’m fortunate enough to live in a single payer Healthcare country. Although it desperately needs reform, vision and dental aren’t really covered
can’t look at bad teeth if you don’t have any eyes!
caseyweedermanDon’t forget the medication itself!
FredselfishI work in auto insurance and 100% agree. Shocks my coworkers when don’t think auto insurance shouldn’t be all about profit.
Home insurance should absolutely NOT be government wrong. That’s just government sponsored building in flood zones at that point
Flood insurance largely is only government run, it’s far too costly for private companies. The flood insurance program started paying for people to not rebuild
And it’s a great example of an incredibly stupid and wasteful government program.
WhiteOakBayouI self insure. I keep my state minimum and pay what I would pay in collision to myself in an interest bearing acct until I reach the replacement cost of the vehicle. Took a while the first time but after those first few years it has been worth it.
The minimum coverage of my state covers that. I’m required to carry liability insurance
Only a few years? What’s the math on that? I looked into it and the minimum was 20k. When I looked at it I think it would take around 40 years to break even on premiums. It’s not about the replacement cost of the vehicle but about damages that you could be liable for. If you’re liable for a hospital bill, that minimum won’t go far.
The state minimum insurance for me is liability which covers all damage to other people’s vehicles and injuries. What I insure myself for is damage to my vehicle. It costs $220 for full coverage and $20 for liability. I pay myself the $200 until it reaches the depreciated value of the car. After the first car I had enough money to buy in cash and just keep the fund going. I still pay the $20 a month to GEICO because it’s required but I now can replace my vehicle in case of a wreck. After 5 years that $200 is $12k. All the gamble was on the first car after that not a problem as long as I don’t try to buy a new or luxury vehicle.
The biggest thing with auto insurance isn’t covering your car, it’s covering the cost of whatever you hit sueing you.
Your car may only be worth $3,000, but if you hit a pedestrian and they require a dozen surgeries and are wheelchair bound for life, you bet you’re ass you’re getting sued for a few million in medical costs.
In a reasonable country, those medical costs would be free, but since they’re not you need some sort of protection against once accident bankrupting you in civil suits.
Why is car insurance so expensive in all the other countries then?
#ItsAScam
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Repair costs for two vehicles outside the US is probably just as expensive as a doctor’s visit for a single person inside the US.
Real answer: in most other countries you can be punitively sued, ex: if a person wants to recoup the emotional damages from being crippled. You can also, depending on the country, be made to cover the cost of services provided by the medical system if you were found to be at fault (I don’t know how often that happens for an individual vs. a large company, but that’s how the rates were explained to me by a UK colleague)
Plus there are things not covered by healthcare, and loss of income etc
In addition to what everyone else said, property damage is a big part of it as well.
Let’s say you run into a building and knock out a load bearing wall. Or plough through a business or government office. It’s not impossible to rack up a couple million in damages if you crash bad enough.
Third party liability for my policy is a few million last time I checked, if you somehow cause a heavy truck to crash or damage a piece of infrastructure you can run into those figures pretty fast.
pelespiritI never really thought about that before. That’s probably why america hasn’t had healthcare for all, the insurance companies are lobbying (bribing) the shit out of the republicans.
I DETEST both-sides-ism, but yeah actually in this case, both sides are being bribed and blocking true progress, just the paid off Democrats have been doing it more quietly by slow playing and avoiding real single payer solutions when the party actually has power.
When was the last time they had enough power to pass anything like that? It would take a 2/3 majority.
Health insurance companies are lobbying the shit out of both parties. Car insurance companies would love universal healthcare. It would drop their outlays which would increase their profits.
Maybe you’re right and I’m wrong, that would make sense.
In a reasonable country, public insurance would charge your auto insurance to recover costs. The harms and risks of car ownership don’t need further subsidies
ianhclark510I love the idea is the only thing justifying one racket is another racket
One car insurance company where I live operates kinda like this. USAA.
Every subscriber is a member. Every year, after they pay operating costs, they take the money left over from premiums and put it into accounts distributed across all the members. When you reach a certain age you can withdraw the money accumulated in your account.
There are a lot of them like that called “mutuals” which are just insurance cooperatives. If you’re American you can probably get your insurance through one, although they aren’t as popular.
The difference is that (in theory at least), insurance will pay your full costs, regardless of how much you’ve already paid in. You can sign an auto insurance on one day, pay in 100$, then get into a 20k$ crash the next, and get the entire costs covered.
A retirement savings fund is capped by how much money you’ve put in it. You can never take out more money than you’ve put in (+interest/portfolio growth).
Depends. You can also deposit so much to the DMV instead for them to hold in place of insurance. In California it’s $75k.