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
I am in a particularly hateful state about insurance. My brother is an insurance broker in another state. My other brother is a right wing cuck who thinks capitalism makes everything the greatest it could be (trumper too, btw). My wife has worked all her life to pay into all the things and last April she suddenly lost her vision and her job and her shitty doctor didnt know how to treat her vertigo for seven years and fucking told her that only Jesus can fix her and now she’s fucked, broke, and today is asking me if I want a divorce so I wont be responsible for her debts or suicide.
If any if you fucking MAGA shitheads are reading this: you’re goddamn right America is a shitty country and you fucking assholes are the reason why.
If my doctor told me that my situation now is up to god, I’d change doctor immediately and report them to the national doctors association in my country.
Hope you and your wife make the best of it nonetheless. So extreme listening to people who can’t demand or have the right to be treated for their issues!
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Because they make more money that way.
In order to stop them, you’d need a large percentage of customers go out of their way to purchase policies from companies with the lowest advertising budgets.
In order to stop them, you’d need a large percentage of customers go out of their way to purchase policies from companies with the lowest advertising budgets.
Or we’d need to recognize incorporation as the social contract that it was supposed to be, and start demanding public benefits in exchange for the companies being granted those privileges.
Merely restricting advertising is thinking extremely small compared to what they owe us, but hey, might as well throw it on the list anyway.
Fascinating read. what would be the economical impact if this was to return as charters with limited power and duration?
More public funding, less corporate interference in our government’s processes. We might actually find that Congress and state legislators listen to their constituents instead of conflicting corporate interests.
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.
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…
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.
You spelled “Extortion” wrong.
Car insurance ads are bad, but health insurance ads are worse. Every time I see one I wonder whose treatment got denied to pay for it.
It’s worse than that even. Most of those ads are for “Medicare Advantage,” a criminal scam that Congressional members of a particular political persuasion cooked up to allow corporations to be a middleman between you and your Medicare benefits. When clueless people call and sign up because they think they’re going to get free money, they end up getting fucked out of as much of their benefits as the company can extract, up to 20% according to the rules, but who pays attention to if they play by the rules? You probably guessed it. Oh and just as a cherry on top, once you sign up, you can’t change your mind and go back, you’re off Medicare for good.
Car insurance ads are vastly better for people, for the economy, and even for road safety than health insurance companies are for people.
Health insurance, as a market, is an externality.
Thanks to Obamacare, insurance companies are required to spend a high percentage of their revenue on delivering actual care. There is a limit to what they can spend on everything else. Thanks Obama!
They could still help more people if they weren’t buying billboards advertising something people are required by law to have.
What, are you just gonna not have insurance? Something could go wrong! You don’t wanna go bankrupt because of a health problem, do you? Also, we can’t guarantee you won’t still go bankrupt with our insurance, but you won’t have to pay for basic drugs! Maybe…
It’s not, that’s wby it only occur in USA
Lol #MAGA
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…
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.
I live in Canada and used to work as an adjuster and dated an American broker. There are many good insurers in the US, none of them advertise. Go to an honest broker and they’ll tell you about those boring good ones.
The differences in our systems were astonishing. Those advertised insurers let you go around with basically no coverage. I can’t believe your minimum third party liability amounts, especially considering the crazy medical costs in your country. It’s just over a tenth of the minimum we allow in my province, and we have socialized health care and more robust social safety nets. A serious accident will ruin you for life if you take that cockney lizard’s policy. He’s a scam artist from the mean streets of London.
My wife worked for an insurance company for most of a decade as the complaint liaison with the states regulating body on insurance.
Insurance companies in the U.S. come in two types.
Type A: Rely on repeat business and word of mouth to slowly grow their business. They pay out reasonable and fair amounts based upon the loss. They follow all applicable laws/regulations and operate in good faith. These companies are quick to reject people who have bad histories.
Type B: Rely on recruiting new customers constantly by excessive advertising or purchasing other smaller companies. Pay out well below the market on anything they can and flat out refuse claims until lawsuits start. These companies routinely break state and federal laws because the fines are less than the profits. These companies prey on the lower income, elderly, and poorly informed. The larger companies have hundreds of brands to give the illusion of choice to the consumer.
Any amounts of excessive marketing by and insurance company indicates that they are shit. Also research into who owns any the brand they are are marketing. If you recognize the parent company as advertising, they are shit.
That seems to line up with my reading of those heavily advertised, cheap policies. You pay for nothing then get left in the lurch, owing potentially millions. It should be illegal, it’s totally predatory.
I’m nowhere close to the insurance industry but I had sort of noticed from various stories.
The idea I had of what insurance is supposed to do seems to be based on how it works in Canada. If you want to take a big risk on losing your car, home, license or whatever then paying insurance even a high amount make sense.
Comparitively in the US, particularly in healthcare you seem screwed whether you get insurance or not. Americans get the freedom to pay hundreds of dollars a month, just to have to pay a minimum of more thousands if something does happen. In Canada, we don’t have universal dental yet and a full checkup, xray, cleaning and fluoride without insurance is about 600 CAD or ~440USD. I don’t know how much dental costs down South…
Yeah, insurance is a fundamental, necessary piece of civilization and has existed since before Hammurabi. But it has also been abused by profiteers since then too, and it’s not always easy to tell the difference. In a cut-throat, free market, capitalist driven economy, the incentive is to cover nothing for high premiums. A scam, essentially. Add a law where corporations are people and unlimited political donations is free speech and you’ll have enourmous pressure put on politicians to keep the insurance industry unregulated (except making buying it mandatory). Thus Geiko is allowed to exist. Lower premiums, but you are essentially uninsured for anything more than a minor fender bender. Paying premiums for nothing. This is bad for everyone involved in an accident except the insurance companies.
In a cut-throat, free market, capitalist driven economy, the incentive is to cover nothing for high premiums. A scam, essentially.
Wouldn’t that deter potential clients from purchasing your products though and go with the competitor who actually offers better terms?
Not if you have an anthropomorphic lizard telling you to buy theirs
Shit, I’m not from the US, but now I’ve realized that their ads are so pervasive, I’ve seen them before as well. And now I also realized that we have a Canadian equivalent.
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Luxury bones. Same in Canada. Also eyes are Luxury organs.
I don’t know anything, and to avoid complications, what kinds of legal minimums does Canada require?
Here in BC we have a minimum of $200,000 liability insurance. We don’t separate based on property or injury, 200k covers all. But only low income drivers stop at 200K, $3Million is the most common liability amount. If you end up accidentally crippling a kid, you will require every penny that 3million. We don’t advertise our insurance at all. Insurers must have a reserve on hand to cover every single outstanding claim plus 10 million, I’m not sure what those numbers are in the US, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were much more lax. The Insurance Act of BC is a beautiful piece of legislation with the insured’s best interest in mind, not the insurer’s shareholders.
The amount the company must maintain on hand depends on the state. In some states it’s less than 1% of the policies written. Most of the time they only hold enough out of their premiums to cover an average of 2-3 years of claims.
The reason it’s so low is because of federal disaster relief when something big happens. The insurance companies advocate for it to be called a federal disaster. Then the government steps in and foots part of the bill. The poor are usually left losing everything.
Thank you!
At one point around the enaction of Obama-care there was a dude with a combover that came around to our office to tell us that “yes, healthcare costs are high in America, but I’m here to tell you that insurance companies are not the problem.”
So here he is: a guy lying to himself about his hair loss with a full-time job going around to different companies saying how insurance companies are not the problem…surely he couldn’t be lying, a waste, or a lying waste.
I wonder if there’s a correlation between wigs and weasel jobs like salesmen or estate agents.
If you can lie to yourself you can lie to anyone.
One of these at a time, that’s how it all works.
That’s why I purchase a plan from a company that doesn’t advertise.
Not sure what the issue is here, but this may be a US-centric problem…?
Here in Australia, insurance companies are required to demonstrate sufficient means to cover the risk they carry on their books. We have a government body (APRA) that regulates and routinely audits this (along with other requirements).
What the company spends on coffee, furniture or marketing has no bearing on this - those are expenses for them to manage after they satisfy the above requirements.
It’s not about being able to cover their liabilities, but charging ridiculous rates partially due to the fact that they also need to pay multimillion dollar advertising budgets. Or worse, bring the price down by giving shockingly low coverage that is somehow still legal.
Worse still, our healthcare system relies nearly solely on private health insurance… and yes they do it too. See: MetLife Stadium
It’s not about being able to cover their liabilities
I’m referring to OP’s assertion that “Isn’t this our fucking money you’re meant to give out should, god forbid, something happen?”.
I don’t disagree that the insurance industry is a cottage industry, largely built on/supported by FUD, but that wasn’t the point of my reply.
One of the unethical behaviors that is becoming all too common, is for an insurer to deny by default. Then if you want the reimbursement you’re owed, you have to fight for it, and not ebpveryone knows how or is willing to.
Oh I’m sorry, being impaled on a metal pole is a pre-existing condition, so you don’t deserve coverage for it anyway! Also two hearing aids is experimental and not coveted! Mmmkay go fuck yourself byyyeeee.
I’m assuming you’re in the US.
Do non profit or cooperative insurance companies exist? They would seem like a less evil option if available.
They do.
There are, but a lot of them usually require something to qualify for their coverage and aren’t as large as national companies. The smaller companies usually don’t have as large an appetite for risk, and will therefore only provide discounts to less risky drivers.
Can you share some names of them? To help me get started researching them
Farmers, State Farm, Liberty Mutual, Thrivent, USAA, Blue Cross Blue Shield, American Family, Nationwide, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance#United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_inter-insurance_exchange#Examples
There are two reasons
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The market is saturated. Everybody pretty much already has insurance and they only shop for it when they have a reason to. So you want them to have your company’s name on their mind when the time comes. The biggest source of new customers are people who switch from someone else.
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GEICO was having name recognition problems when it transitioned from covering government employees exclusively.(Government Employees Insurance Company) This is where the lizard mascot came from. It was a huge success and other insurance companies followed suit. What we have now is a sort of arms race where all the major companies spend ridiculous amounts on advertising, but nobody wants to scale back for fear of being buried by their competitors ads.
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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.
Yes, but spending the money creates more of an incentive and more pressure to figure out how to skimp on payouts
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.
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.
