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Mercury Spill

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Re: Mercury Spill

#101

Post by ams6110 »

deciplex wrote: post #68
nostromo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is such a scam. A friend of mine made two claims within about five years: once for water damage and once for a burglary. The insurance company agreed that she was covered. So they paid her and then dropped her. No big deal, right? Wrong. Once you've made a claim or two against your insurance, it can be very hard to get any new insurance company to cover you. She finally did find a new insurer, but the price…

Insurance has got to be the best business to be in. In what other industry is the business model "take people's money and don't do shit"? Plus, in a lot of domains people are required , by law, to get insurance. It's great.

take people's money and don't do shit

That's not what they do, though. They are in business to make money, yes -- but they don't always. A bad hurricane season and they can (and do) lose billions.

Re: Mercury Spill

#102

Post by jcadam »

ubernostrum wrote: post #4
tomlock wrote: post #3

I wonder how many of these spills go unreported! In high school one of my classmates told me how he used to crack open thermometers and play with the liquid. I don't know if it was mercury or not, but it seemed to be, and he was completely unaware of how toxic it was.

My mother told me that when I was very young (too young to remember), I was sick and she stuck a thermometer in my mouth to take my temperature. And I promptly bit the end off it, and had to be rushed to the hospital to have my stomach cleaned out of mercury.

I did that as a small child. I have a vague recollection of it. Pretty sure I wasn't rushed to the hospital. My mother was mostly upset I ruined the thermometer.

Re: Mercury Spill

#103

Post by danieltillett »

chimeracoder wrote: post #52
nostromo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is such a scam. A friend of mine made two claims within about five years: once for water damage and once for a burglary. The insurance company agreed that she was covered. So they paid her and then dropped her. No big deal, right? Wrong. Once you've made a claim or two against your insurance, it can be very hard to get any new insurance company to cover you. She finally did find a new insurer, but the price…

> She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way up -- negating her original claims. This isn't a scam at all. That's exactly what you'd expect from insurance. Insurance isn't there to save you money. In fact, the expected value of an insurance plan is always going to be negative on an infinite time horizon[0]. The whole point of an insurance plan is to smooth risk : instead of the small possibility o…

While I agree with you that you should only insure the risk you can’t carry yourself there should be a profitable business opportunity insuring individuals that have been dropped by other companies provided the reason from the drop is not predictive of future risk.

Re: Mercury Spill

#104

Post by unclebucknasty »

ubernostrum wrote: post #92
Empact wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, an alternative model enabled by technology is mutual / cooperative insurance in which the policyholders not only own the company but also govern the release of funds. This way incentives are aligned - the insured want the insurance to act fairly, even with respect to others, so that it will be there for them. It would be something like gofundme but on a subscription basis, with up or down decision-making by subs…

I'm pretty happy with my (mutual) auto coverage. In fact, right now I'm getting around on a rental car courtesy of my policy, while my car is being repaired; I'll be out of pocket about $250 total for around $2000 worth of damage to the car (tl;dr -- driving home a few nights back, didn't see a traffic cone that had rolled out into my lane and ran over it at 50mph, which is not good for some of the things on the unde…

You sure they won't claw back that claim in the form of raised premiums?

Re: Mercury Spill

#105

Post by jcadam »

FussyZeus wrote: post #93
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #12

> Call it $50k total? Jesus fucking Christ. So I guess the lesson here for the average homeowner is "if you find a mercury spill, don't tell anyone or you'll lose your home"? Also: > They were using a Jerome meter, which can only measure down to 3000 ng/m3 when the safe indoor limit is 300 ng/m3 Huh? Why would a mercury-abatement crew use a mercury detection meter that can't actually detect hazardous levels of mercur…

Exactly what I was thinking, I'd consider myself pretty financially solid but $50k would ruin me. I'm assuming the OP was doing renovations of some kind already and had the cash on hand, or at least the majority of it.

My response to a surprise $50k repair to my home would be to call the bank and say "House is yours, man. Keys are in the mail."

Re: Mercury Spill

#106

Post by canow »

vermontdevil wrote: post #56
nostromo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is such a scam. A friend of mine made two claims within about five years: once for water damage and once for a burglary. The insurance company agreed that she was covered. So they paid her and then dropped her. No big deal, right? Wrong. Once you've made a claim or two against your insurance, it can be very hard to get any new insurance company to cover you. She finally did find a new insurer, but the price…

No shit. What's the point of buying insurance then? I had septic tank back flow into my basement due to a design defect that was put in PRIOR to my purchase of the house. Insurance paid up then dropped me. Second insurance doubled the premium stating I'm a high risk. I was like WTF? This was a design defect that has been fixed. It's not like I'm a slob and let the house fall apart. It's a relatively new house. What's…

Health insurance is somewhat the same too... Hospitals and Dentists have special rates for insured patients (much higher)... you can end up paying the same as an uninsured patient... Which is why I was getting hospitalization-only insurance, but with Obama-care, I can't do that anymore.

Also, I have been told that it might be illegal to claim that you are uninsured, pay the bill and then get reimbursed by your insurance company to avoid surcharges... not sure if that is true.

Re: Mercury Spill

#107

Post by pdabbadabba »

Spooky23 wrote: post #82
nostromo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is such a scam. A friend of mine made two claims within about five years: once for water damage and once for a burglary. The insurance company agreed that she was covered. So they paid her and then dropped her. No big deal, right? Wrong. Once you've made a claim or two against your insurance, it can be very hard to get any new insurance company to cover you. She finally did find a new insurer, but the price…

The bigger scam is that getting the insurance claim denied will probably still either raise his rates or drop him altogether. This is a pretty extreme case of a household hazmat issue. 99/100 times, the pragmatic answer is to maintain deniability, make it as safe as possible and get out if necessary.

> ...the pragmatic answer is to maintain deniability, make it as safe as possible and get out if necessary.

Seriously? Pragmatic, yes. But am I reading you correctly? It sounds like your suggestion is to simply sell the house to someone without telling them about the mercury, exposing them to danger, and then prepare to lie about knowing it was there if they do discover it (hopefully not the hard way) and come after you.

I mean, nice to make it "as safe as possible," I guess, but you still seem prepared to expose people to conditions that are, nonetheless, totally unsafe in order to get out of paying to fix the problem. (Not to mention the fact that now they have to pay to fix the problem.)

Re: Mercury Spill

#108

Post by sooper »

function_seven wrote: post #5

Yikes. I'm glad my house was built in the 80's. No asbestos, no lead in the paint, no mercury hiding out in my ceiling. How dangerous was this contamination, though? I know mercury evaporates, and that it is an air quality concern, but given its location and assuming normal levels of indoor air movement, is it worth $50k to abate it? I tend to be skeptical of mold issues, for example, but I also imagine that mercury…

Now we just have to worry about the formaldehyde and VOCs that modern products emit...

Re: Mercury Spill

#109

Post by chimeracoder »

hyperbovine wrote: post #99
chimeracoder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way up -- negating her original claims. This isn't a scam at all. That's exactly what you'd expect from insurance. Insurance isn't there to save you money. In fact, the expected value of an insurance plan is always going to be negative on an infinite time horizon[0]. The whole point of an insurance plan is to smooth risk : instead of the small possibility o…

What? The point of insurance is to pool risk . The expected value of insurance is not automatically negative. Look up the term "actuarially fair". Yes, there is moral hazard in insurance and it is sometimes necessary to exclude bad actors to prevent markets from unraveling, but to not to the extent which has become common in many sectors. Your whole post reads like an specious apology for bad behavior in the insuranc…

> The point of insurance is to pool risk.

The point of insurance is to smooth risk, not to pool it. Pooling risk is not the point of insurance as a product; it's the mechanism by which that product (risk smoothing) becomes feasible as a business model.

> Look up the term "actuarially fair".

There's really no need to condescend by telling me to look up basic terminology; I am quite well-versed in this topic.

I didn't bring up moral hazard in this post, because it actually isn't necessary to explain why insurance has a negative expected value (which is equivalent to the statement that premiums are always non-zero[0]). It sounds like you're confusing a few different concepts here.

[0] Moral hazard is generally addressed by deductibles, not by premiums.

Re: Mercury Spill

#110

Post by mietek »

fsavard2 wrote: post #70
jpatokal wrote: post #47

So people would use a mercury seal to put pressure on the water, allowing the system to run hotter without boiling. I didn't quite follow this part. Where in the system does the mercury go, how does it add pressure, and does it have anything to do with Wikipedia's description of using mercury in glass-to-metal seals? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to-metal_seal#Mercury_se...

This page describes that system, I think: http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-water-h... (the "Honeywell Heat Generator")

Wow. If there’s anyone deserving the title of a hacker, it’s the author of this page.
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