Higher insurance premiums for the overweight

[Tannin]

David, it's got nothing whatever to do with moral judgment; it's assessment of risk, pure and simple. Insurance companies could not operate at all without assessing risk.

When, for example, you drive a flash BMW, they look at the maximum payout they might have to make ($100,000, let's say) and add a bit on for that. Then they look at the overall record of BMW drivers accident risks (do they have more accidents per year than Mercedes drivers or Volvo drivers?) and add a bit more. Then they look at the age and sex of the driver, ask whether you have a record of car accidents, and finally look at the suburb where you live (as this has a big influence on the risk of theft). They come up with a number which reflects the overall risk they face of having to make a payout of a certain size and adjust the premium accordingly. In the case of a BMW, it's quite high, 'coz the risk is high. Its the same with every other car, every other driver. To do anything else would be madness because it would mean asking Toyota and Subaru and Hyundai drivers to pay extra just to keep the BMW premiums low, and once you do that, people driving Toyotas start dropping out of insurance altogether 'coz it's too expensive and not worth the cover they get.

It's the same with house insurance, business insurance, life insurance, every sort of insurance. With health insurance, we make special rules that insurance companies are not allowed to refuse you cover (with car insurance, they are free to walk away if they reckon you are just too bad a risk), and that they are free to vary premiums only by a small amount. This results in gross distortions, with low-risk people paying lots extra to insure high-risk people. Now with "bad luck risks" - people born with a medical issue, for example - we as a society choose to wear the extra cost. Proud Pies, for example, has posted here about having a condition which requires ongoing payouts and healthy people like you and I have to pay the extra to cover that. (Either via taxes or increased premiums, it makes no real difference which of the two.) That's fine: no decent person would object to it: I certainly don't, I fully support it. Any one of us here could have been born in PP's shoes, and something similar could happen to any one of us next year or next week.

However, there is a huge difference between supporting someone with a long-term illness which was just luck of the draw, and supporting some fat, lazy slob who eats McDonalds every day and does nothing whatever to maintain his health. Why the hell should you pay extra so that Mr Slob can wreck his health and your budget?

[Culprit]

The self righteous preaching to us all about what you should and should not have. Fat people now, next will be skinny people. Then Black People. This is the Nazi's all over again. What a disgrace, talk about dividing the country.

Type 2 Diabetes is a problem with Indigenous people so under this proposal they should pay more for their premiums. Where do you draw the line?

I cannot believe you are sticking up for Insurance companies that have done nothing but sucked money from generations of Australians and when they need help they give them stuff all back.

Tannin, start telling us how good the American health system is. Check your wallet before your pulse is the best way isn't it? What an utter disgrace this Country is turning into. It's all about me. No wonder the younger generation are so selfish.

[Tannin]

^ Meaningless rantings. The vast majority of fat people are fat because they eat too much and don't exercise, and they need to pay their own way, not leech on the rest of society. Trying to pretend that sloth and personal neglect is the same thing as being Black is a disgusting tactic and you should be ashamed of it.

[pietillidie]

[think positive]

You might wanna check that stat, how many are in wheel chairs cos they are too fat to walk?

We are not that far behind the states.

I think it' would be awfully hard to put into practice. But the plan has merits.

Huh quite funny really, it's already in effect to a point. We had some super company hassling us about changing hubby's super to them, and a life insurance policy. They drove us nuts, ringing sending crap out. So I said ok, how much is my hubby worth? They gave me a sum, I said hmm, he has cancer, when can I collect?

They didn't ring back

I suppose they could make it like car insurance, if your drink driving, your policy is void!!

Memo to self, sober up before getting that busted toe fixed!

[David]

[London Dave]

[Culprit]

[Wokko]

[David]

^ Don't you think there's something unethical in taking what's essentially an apartheid policy? What if, say, all white people were given an exemption but black people weren't? No issues there?

[think positive]

[pietillidie]

There are three aspects to "insurance" which are getting mixed together in this discussion.

One is private insurance. Yes, private companies can do what the hell they like within the law.

The second is insurance underwritten by the state at large.

The third refers to the overlap between them, particularly when private insurance is supported by government incentives. Moreover, insurance is also subject to the law of the state, and beyond that general public opinion, meaning it is never really a private island.

To further confuse the issue, business always strives to play down the benefit it gets from the state, and vice-versa.

So if you lot don't define which aspect of insurance you're talking about, then you'll keep talking at cross-purposes.

Also, people are trying to turn certain ways of doing things in certain areas (e.g., auto insurance), into general principles. This is enticing, but highly misleading. For a start, old practices might be wrong or out of date. But, more likely, they evolved as part of a system which makes sense only as a whole.

That is, citizens might be able to bear the risk of say auto insurance individually, but they wouldn't be able to if they also had to bear the risk of health insurance. In other words, you have to consider the overall balance of the system, not cherry pick certain aspects of it and arbitrarily make those aspects the guiding logic of the whole.

[Wokko]

[David]

[Wokko]