Rein in Insurance Costs
Insurance costs are through the roof. The USA insurance costs are the highest in the world. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but I will. Insurance companies are NOT your friend. They are for profit business. Simply put, their money coming in (premiums) must be greater than their money going out (claims). Simple right? Read that last sentence again. You see it now? They want your premiums, but don’t want to pay your claims. I think we all have our own horror stories around this, or have friends of family that do. It’s a disgrace and an assault on all of us as citizens. We get taken advantage of every day in every insurance industry.
Here’s just a quick example with respect to health care.
Health Care Insurance
Prescription drug prices to high? Thank our insurance companies and our pharmaceutical companies for that. Prices are marked up 278%! (details pulled from here)
The United States also has the most expensive health care in the world. Here’s a breakdown. (click for breakdown)
Not Just Health Care
Need car insurance insurance and live in the United States? You’ll pay more than your counterparts living anywhere else in the world. (car insurance prices by country)
Need home owners insurance? The good news is that the United States is not #1. (see here) We’re currently ranked #4, but as the tables show in the link above, we’ve been moving up. We were #10, then #9, then we jumped to #4.
Where Do We Go From Here?
So what can we do about insurance costs? Where do we go from here? Well, that’s a great question. There are literally tens of trillions of dollars tied up in this type of business. 8.5 trillion of that is in the hands of US insurance companies (US insurance assets)
The only thing I can think of at the moment is to force this industry into being non-profit. Like federally insured financial accounts, they’ll need to retain a certain % of cash and assets on hand to cover the policies they write, but we must remove the profit objective to rein in the costs of insurance.
Being retired I can tell you without a doubt insurance policies are my biggest expense. Health, auto and home insurance costs make up, by far, the largest expenses I have in retirement. This business model is a sham and an insult to all.