Increasingly worthless Federal Funny Money – and increasingly hard-to-find decent-paying jobs – have put an economic choke-hold on millions of Americans, compelling them to cut back on everything that’s not absolutely essential.
Too bad they can’t cut back on insurance – which for most of them is as far from essential as Federal Reserve notes are from sound money.
[amazon asin=B000HHKXD0&template=*lrc ad (left)]Insurance is a terrible deal for most people. A financial sink-hole that grows wider and consumes more with each passing day (and each newly “adjusted” premium).
No doubt this is why it has been made mandatory.
First car – now health.
Most people have, of course, been duped into believing otherwise – that insurance is essential – via the inculcation of fear. A whole industry (a mafia, actually) is predicated on it. Scare the crap out of people; convince them that catastrophe is right around the corner and inescapable.
The fallacy ought to be obvious.[amazon asin=1581607415&template=*lrc ad (right)]
If it’s true that catastrophe lurks – and is inescapable – insurance companies would go broke instead of rendering us broke.
Unfortunately, this simple deduction is not obvious to most people. Even though it’s right in front of their noses each time they pay a premium – for years on end.
Insurance is one of the greatest scams going – to a great extent, because it’s a scam you can’t say no to. Vegas is crooked, but you don’t have to go there. A back-alley card game is fixed, too – but no one makes you participate.
With car insurance – and now, Obamacare – you must participate.
Or else.
[amazon asin=1559501898&template=*lrc ad (left)]This is essential. Take away the marks and the “house” makes no money. Imagine a card game in which the only people playing could not ante up yet were entitled to saycall. Now think about car and health insurance – with the only people voluntarily signing up being those who fully expect to cash in.
Grab a piece of paper. How many years have you been paying for car insurance? In that time, how many claims have you filed? I will go out on a limb and guess you paid a lot more for insurance than the insurance paid out to you. Many – probably most people – will discover they paid so much in over the years that had they been involved in an accident, they could probably have paid for the repairs out of pocket.
If they still had the money, of course.
And what if you never have an accident? People have been conditioned – by the insurance mafia – to regard this as a near-[amazon asin=1933392797&template=*lrc ad (right)]impossibility yet it’s just the opposite. Most people never have more than a fender-bender accident – and it is not all uncommon for good drivers to go their entire driving lives without ever being involved in a significant wreck.
It has to be this way – or else the numbers would work against the insurance mafia, rather than against you.
Most “accidents” are not random events that just happen. They happen – for the most part – as a direct result of factors under one’s control. Control those factors, and the risk of being the cause of a serious accident falls to very small. In which case, car insurance is a bad bet. Just as health insurance is a bad bet for a healthy 25-year-old. (Or for that matter, a healthy 45 year old.)
Certainly, accidents happen. But most “accidents” aren’t. Just as it’s no “accident” that obese/sedentary people who live on fast food tend to die sooner – and to develop diseases such as hypertension and diabetes that are largely avoidable if one maintains a [amazon asin=B002M3SPJ6&template=*lrc ad (left)]reasonable body weight, eats moderately and exercises regularly.
Smart people know this, of course – and would skip car insurance when they still could – and said no thanks to health insurance when that was still possible.
Better to just put some money aside – and drive attentively and competently (with the strong inducement to do so being the knowledge that you’ll pay for it – directly – if you’re not attentive). Probably, nothing will happen. If it does, you’ll have the money to pay for it. If not, you’ll have the money to pay for other things.
For the same reasons, why would anyone other than a Forrest Gumpian innumerate pay $300 a month for health insurance and then a $30 co-pay on top of that when a routine physical might cost $300 once? Using health insurance to pay for ordinary check-ups, stubbed toes, the sniffles – and so on – is as ridiculous as using car insurance to pay for oil changes and tune-ups. At least they haven’t gotten around to forcing us to do that yet.[amazon asin=B002OSJE26&template=*lrc ad (right)]
But probably, it’s on deck.
After all, why not? People expect Obamacare to “cover” everything – so why shouldn’t their car policy, too? Never mind the obvious – that when things are made “free” by government fiat, they tend to become both scarce and expensive.
In criminal cases, the basis of any investigation is cui bono – who benefits?
Who benefits from making insurance something you can’t elect to skip? If insurance is so wonderful, so essential, does it not follow that most people would eagerly sign up without being forced to? And if most people must be forced to sign up, does that fact not tell us something about the value of insurance?
How come it is not necessary to mandate that people buy ice cream? Or clothes? Or toothpaste?
People – stupid people – claim that mandatory insurance (both car and health) lowers cost by dint of spreading the cost around. Has it not occurred to them that any business that can force you to buy its product or service has virtually no pressure bearing down upon it to reduce the prices it charges? That such cartels become insolent and tyrannical precisely because they can – precisely because you have no choice? Have you ever heard of a business that charges less when it can get away with charging more?
Ever?
