Insurance companies

A

Asguard

Kiss my dark side
Valued Senior Member
Im sure in the past i made a thead about this but i cant find it and i think its something i want to bring up again

Im currently watching sicko again

Now i would like to disclose that my partner works for a home and car insurance company (not going to disclose which one incase she gets in trouble).

Now im a firm beliver in Universal Health care but this isnt about that. I want to compare the atitudes of insurance companies

Firstly if this film is wrong about this please point out where because im assuming the testomony given to congress (if not all the rest) isnt staged

Now lets look at an Australian insurance company

Flood's are specifically not covered because the cost of the reinsurance is to high if the company wanted to add flood cover. Now there are massive floods in NSW and Queensland right now, so you would THINK that all these people are going to be disapointed and just told "not covered, sorry". You would be wrong, there IS a loop hole in the policy but its not used for the companies benifit, its used for the coustimers benifit. That loop hole is STORM damage. Floods arnt covered but storms are, so what does the claims assist and the client manages do? They make a claim for the result of storms in order to cover the claim

Another case i hear quite alot has to do with personal valuables insurance. One case in paticular of a man who had renued his policy but the PVS didnt start untill the new policy came into effect in march. What did my partner do when she saw he wasnt covered for his broken camera? She went to the boss and told the boss she wanted his cover retrospecivly activated from before the date of cover which her boss aproved. The tech surport wanted to charge him a percentage to bring the cover back and my partner said "no your going to do it for free" so they did.

Another example has to do with cyclones. There was a cyclone about to strike the NT so this insurance company put extra staff on early. Why? So that they could rush covernotes for people BEFORE the cyclone hit. If you call them one MIN before your house is hit they will cover you

Another example is a guy who had just bought a caravan. He was on his way home to insure it when something happened and the caravan fliped, it was a write off and he had no insurance on it. What did the company do? They made a back dated policy for him so that it was covered because he had 3 cars and his home and contence with them. All he had to pay was the normal preium and the exess

Now we look at the US medical insurance. Rather than going out of there way to cover people they seem to be spending huge amounts of money making sure they can get out of ANYTHING.

My question is why do you put up with it?

Edit to add one futher point: Insurance companies have a bad name here, i am begining to think that the bad rep actually has nothing to do with how australian companies work and everything to do with transfered hatred from the US
 
American companies only look at the profit ratios and bottom line. They are trying to make their stock holders happy by leeping costs low and profits high at the expense of other humans lives. Insurance companies once really did help but there were so many law suits and natural disasters that they had to pay out more and more which ment someone somewhere had to lose coverages somehow.
 
cosmic You do realise i was comparing it to the HEALTH insurance companies (i could have compared it to medicare but that would have been cheating:p)

how could there be a natural disaster that effected the health insurance industry THAT much????

unless your talking about the spanish flu??????????

But thats really a cope out. Firstly if your company refuses to pay out all the time then surly it SHOULD go out of buiness
Secondly we actually have a higher rate of litigation than the US
 
Many insurance companies have insurances in many areas such as life, health, property and auto. Whenever one part of that company gets hit the other parts suffer as well because they are all tied together by the parent company. There has also been many malpractice lawsuits that were awarded billions of dollars in damages over the past 30 years.
 
thats an interesting question

Well lets take one company say blue shild (i picked that one compleatly at random)

If your argument is simply going to be that the rest of the company is unprofitable so it has to be unethical please back that up? (especially as acording to MY sorce, sicko, they are making HUGE profits)
 
so it has to be unethical please back that up?
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It isn't that it is "unethical" its more like covering their asses. If Blue Shield had a billion dollar lawsuit it had to pay out plus lawyers fees that would eat away at the profit ratios overall. Somewhere someone is going to have to find a way to get that money back into their account in order to make a profit. Sometimes they will cut back on different types of claims, a broken arm as an example. Instead of covering a broken arm they will just stop that particular coverage to help defray expenses to make up for their losses in another area. Instead of giving MRI's to certain people that test will not be administered. Sometimes rates go up as well. Many companies won't cover certain things at all where in the past they did. Is that unethical, perhaps but again they are out for profits and if cut backs are required then they do what they have to. That insures their stock holders a profit as well as their CEO's and CFO's a nice paycheck.
 
ok so if you KNOW they are going to screw you then i have to ask the question, why would you pay? I have to wonder because inspite of what i think about the way things should be (hell my first choice if i lived under your system, would be to move to france), if i had to put up with this i would be putting all the money in the bank. After all when your not going to get anything back anyway why bother? Your just throwing away your money

We have private insurance in this country too, of course if they acted the way they did in the US here they would have there licence revoked. Thats why i didnt compare our private heath insurance to yours. Everything from there premiums to there actions are checked and double checked by the goverment here.

So how can do our unregulated insurance companies (like the one i quoted) NOT do this. They are more likly to be sued than a health insurance fund because they are the insurance companies that have "legal liability" atached not the health care ones
 
Some companies have gone broke. Many times people don't realize just how many cut backs have been done until theu are already in the hospital and ready for an operation only to find out that operation isn't covered any longer! Imagine that happening and it does. A good health insurance premium today will run over 1200.00 US a month for a single person with good health for good coverages but no dental. There are some companies that go with a group rate which brings that cost down to about half and half, half they pay and the other half you do.

There are laws now preventing any law suits over 250,000.00 US in pain and suffering in many states plus all medical expenses if the doctor is found guilty of malpractice. Instead of removing the bad doctors from their ranks they keep them on and then more problems develop. It is a losing proposition for everyone.
 
you know what it costs an Australian for that same level of cover? 1.5% of income taken as tax. Thats it, whatever 1.5% of your income is (even if its zero) will get you all the hospital treatment you need, as well as free GP treatment and $30 medication (outside the hospital system where even the medication is free)

But this isnt my point and what does medical malpractice have to do with a health insurance company? Thats the doctors insurance not "mine"

Of course your going to have lawsuits if you have paid for 20 years and they let your child die in front of you because they wont pay for say penicillin
 
I realize what you are saying. America had most companies paying for ALL of the insurance for their employees. Today that has changed and new ways to deal with health care are being delt with including government assistance. Americans have Medicare and Medicade for examples that pay for everything. That is for certain people who pay a small monthly fee for that coverage, about 50.00 US.
 
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