Many insurance companies need to make a percentage of denial for claims filed. Otherwise, they don't make much money. Not enough to satisfy their greed.
Recently one of the families in our neighborhood was dropped by Allstate insurance because they had filed too many claims. A whopping 4 claims, in which 1 was an attempted car theft in the middle of the night were they broke the door handle and cut through the convertible top, the other was because the had been side-swiped by an 18-wheeler on the highway. Another was because of their teenage son getting into a fender bender because one of the highways here in under major construction.
Are they to blame for having accidents? I agree that there is much you can do to prevent accidents, but sometimes the other person driving does not do much to prevent a collision.
Aren't they supposedly in “good hands” with Allstate? I guess not. All these commercials go on about how they have accident forgiveness and how they stand by you when you need them. I guess what they really mean is that they'll stand by you as long as you don't call them too much, make them fill out too much paperwork, and of course, make their bottom line less than what their used to.
I think that we sometimes forget on how insurance companies work. Yes, they want to provide a good product, but they are also in it to make a profit. And sometimes less than great drivers get the shaft because the insurance companies are losing too much money in claims filed by them. Now, they could raise the premium but they won't take the chance. I think some companies DO start off with a caring and genuine product, but over time, especially with company growth and greater profits, it becomes easier to forget why they started their own insurance company in the first place- to be different than those other “big greedy insurance companies.” It gets easier to cheat someone when you don't have to see them face-to-face; the owner would probably sell policies in the beginning and would have a part to play in the customers' satisfaction. But with company's expansion, the owner grows farther and farther from the customers and makes it easier to create policies that cheat the customer and easier to enforce because they hire agents that are just “following company policy.” You can't get angry with the agents- they didn't make the policy (and they have to make a living too.) And you will probably never get to meet the owner or CEO because they are far too busy to speak to one of their millions of policy holders. They could afford to lose one customer but when you pose a threat by preventing new and convincing other policyholders to switch to another company, then they may be willing to talk.
It's not all the car insurance fault the Health care insurance companies are also trouble because they exclude people with serious illnesses who are the people that need it most. For example, in the movie Sicko, the company finally approves a little girl's ear transplant (that was deemed “experimental” to be done on both ears) when the parents threaten to get Michael Moore involved in exposing their company's ethics. Michael Moore may be a hot button in the public sphere but the people speak for themselves; he interviews people that live in France and say that their job lets them have sick leave without all the fuss that we have here in the U.S. (my old employer did not even accept Dr.'s notes and we would be written up when you were late). They show how the doctor still comes to your home to make house calls and they even give you cab money when you go to the hospital. And in Canada, where they really don't pay anything, according to the movie, to get medical help the people seem to enjoy a better quality of life. I'm not saying that Canada or France is perfect, no country is perfect, but that also means that the U.S. is not perfect. In fact, I think all these countries and others could learn something from each other. It surprises me that we are such an advanced country and consider ourselves a leader of the world and we still don't have adequate health care.
It really sickens me to be somewhere where you pay the premium but don't get all the benefits that are promised. And in the Medicare field (I used to be a Medicare insurance agent for one of the largest insurance companies in the world), they reject people with ESRD (End-Stage Renal Disease) because they have that condition and the routine dialysis would simply cost too much to pay for. I remember hearing these people on the phone: “Please, I have no money and I can't find another company that would cover me.” Most of the time the people would be crying or at least trying to hold it back. That experience made me realize that there really are a lot of crimes and very much injustice happening in the world of healthcare. These people did not know they were going to get the disease, and if you ever seen the movie John Q. now you know that they really just get a pill in the mouth and a foot in the ass to get them out the door.
I think there are 2 possible alternatives to this problem. One would be to set aside the money that we would be paying in insurance premiums every month and that would be your medical savings for any procedure you may need in the future. I realize that it would be building up very slowly, but if you start young, you may have a good amount of money saved up when you're older and more likely to need some medical help. The other is to be rich.
