You've likely heard the old adage, "You can't live with them and you can't live without them." Typically applied by men toward women and vice versa, it describes the difficulties of cohabitation. Add insurance companies to that list.
There is life insurance, healthcare insurance, home owners insurance, automobile insurance, personal liability insurance, business insurance and credit insurance, just to name a few. You likely have one or more of these.
The industry has a language all its own, a glossary of terminology that could fill a small book. Things like, actuarial, aleatory contracts, basic limit, exclusions, indemnity, mutualization, voidable, will ride and the list goes on. Trying to read a contract will give you a headache.
The concept of insurance is as old as mankind. The modern notion of insurance can be traced back to the Chinese and Babylonians in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C.
The idea was simple: rather than one individual, say you or I, having to bear the full financial risk of a catastrophic event in our lives, such as a fire or flood, we would pool our money together, each of us contributing over time, to cover those in our group who suffered a disaster - it was shared risk.
If there were a thousand people in our group, the odds were that only a few would need the help, and with the participants continually paying their premium, there would always be money in the pot to cover the next unfortunate soul.
Humans, a most enterprising group of primates, saw that someone needed to hold this money, manage it, and make distributions when needed; voila! Witness the birth of insurance companies.
It was never the insurance companies that were taking risk; it's our money they are holding for us if needed. They were simply banking systems, a cash box if you will, and for their efforts they were entitled to a small fee.
Somewhere along the line, these money-holders became moneygrubbers, recognizing a golden-egg-laying goose. They started "selling" insurance, even to people who didn't need it, not selling it to those who did, and by developing all sorts of insurance schemes that compounded their profits, they built corporations with thousands of employees and paying their executives more money than anyone thought possible.
Services like the military, police and fire protection, healthcare and insurance should not be based on maximizing profits at the expense of the people of this nation.
By limiting their risk, a risk that doesn't technically exist for them because it's our money they are holding, they decreased the payout to policyholders by dropping certain types of coverage, or placing people in high-risk categories, increasing their profits even more.
By pushing more people into higher risk categories, or denying them insurance altogether, the industry continues to become one of the most profitable enterprises in the history of civilization.
The Los Angeles Times of April 5, 2006, reported that in spite of Hurricane Katrina, and other major storms, the industry raked in a record $44.8 billion in profits.
Forbes.com reports that Daniel P. Amos of Aflac (the one with the cute duck) made $27.97 million in 2006. Ramani Ayer of Hartford knocked down $21.50 mil. The top 10 CEOs in the industry banked a combined $156.13 million, much of which is likely rewards for not paying claims on policies. By denying claims, those premiums go into the pockets of the boys at the top.
This industry, like our medical care industry, should be a nonprofit service to our citizens. Services like the military, police and fire protection, healthcare and insurance should not be based on maximizing profits at the expense of the people of this nation.
Make all the money you want selling Hummers or throwing a baseball. None of those businesses affect the daily lives of the people.
If this sounds socialistic to you, it is. In case you haven't noticed, we have socialism all over the place.
The police and fire departments I mentioned, our military, the control of our food supply through the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration making sure the airplanes we ride in don't fall from the sky; these are all a socialistic approach to managing certain functions for the good of all the people in this country, not for the largesse of a few.
Personally, I don't want to turn my police and fire protection over to the likes of Blackwater, or Haliburton and I don't like my healthcare and other insurance being managed by a bunch of billionaires who are more interested in the bottom line than they are in my well being, especially when their salaries and bonuses are coming out of my premiums.
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