What's really crazy is that apparently some people have the idea that mercury is an 'investment' and will voluntarily keep jugs of it in their home: http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/Attachmen...
Mercury Spill
111–120 of 374 posts
Re: Mercury Spill
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It really feels like less insurance and more government mandated protection money; Car insurance is different from other forms of insurance. The reason car insurance is mandatory is because otherwise, if you hit someone or damage their property with your car and they successfully sue you, they could very well end up with nothing (if you're broke). With insurance, that person is guaranteed to get a payout, because t…
Only liability insurance is mandatory, and that would never cover your hail-damaged car, so this seems like a specious argument. You're not required to have collision and comprehensive coverage if you don't feel it's worth it.
I think that is exactly his point. The government doesn't make you get insurance that would cover hail damage to your car. It only makes you get insurance that will cover you when someone sues you for injuring them and damaging their property.
Re: Mercury Spill
#113Maybe the lesson is to save. There's a huge number of very unlikely risks. Too many risks to carefully avoid them all. Something unexpected will happen. Insurance can help, but as the articls shows, not always.
Seriously. I don't know a lot of people for whom a surprise $50k bill would be "unfortunately" rather than "disastrously".
I assume they are not silly enough to buy a house then right?
Re: Mercury Spill
#114> 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.
OP could just cut back on their charitable giving.
And, perhaps that's what they did: http://www.jefftk.com/donations
Re: Mercury Spill
#115As a kid I often played with mercury used in a blood pressure monitor. Spilling it on the table and mesmerized by its look and feel. I am not sure what damages that might have caused to my brain now that I know its toxic!
Re: Mercury Spill
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll throw my hat in the ring. Recently had a car totaled when getting it shipped cross country. Apparently because it was an "Act of god" (a hailstorm, with what looks like fist-sized-rock-hail in that every piece of glass and most trim on the car had holes in it, although I'd argue the insurance was for the idiot driver who didn't pull over or cover his load.) the insurance company refused to do squat. The car was…
Insurance companies cannot credibly cover acts of god, aka correlated risks, because they happen to too many people all at once. It's not a simple matter of "fixing" insurance for those matters. NPR's Planet Money had a good discussion: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/03/353030214/bedbu...
Someone drove his car into a hailstorm unprotected. That's not an act of god.
Re: Mercury Spill
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 insura…
> 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...
Health insurance is actually very different[0]. The flow of money with medical billing is really, really complicated, which is why we end up with a system that's so confusing that even most physicians and clinicians don't really understand it.
Hospitals are generally not legally allowed to have higher rates for insured patients; this is actually why the sticker price for uninsured patients is so high. Hospitals use those high prices as a starting point to negotiate lower prices with insurers. (As an uninsured patient, you can almost always get the hospital to knock off 90% of a large bill for this reason; they really don't care what you pay, and they'd rather negotiate a smaller bill with you than have you default).
I could go on a long rant about the indirection of the medical billing system and all the problems it leads to, but I'll save that for another time.
> 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.
Yes, this is fraud. (It also happens to be a pretty bad example of fraud, since it's probably going to end up costing you more money, but it's still fraud).
[0] Strictly speaking, health insurance isn't really 'insurance', even though we talk about it and price it like it is, because one of the primary functions has nothing to do with smoothing risk.
Re: Mercury Spill
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
(3) clean it up with a dustpan :-D Seriously, mercury is not dangerous unless inhaled or ingested. Suit up with a cheap hazmat and gloves and clean away...
Yeha, I'm a bit dumbfounded about the calling of the fire dept, the reaction and so on. I would have just figured out where it was coming from and cleaned it up myself with some gloves and a dustpan.
And if you miss any, your young daughter is going to find it. Seriously isn't something you want to mess with.
Re: Mercury Spill
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wonder how they share this information. Is it a private database service they are all subscribed to?
I just edited my comment to add that. It's called a CLUE report. Every claim you make goes into your report and it's shared amongst all insurers. https://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs26-CLUE.htm
Thanks. This explains a lot of things I heard related to claims that I have wondered about in the past.
Re: Mercury Spill
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 insura…
That's very strange. Not saying it didn't happen to you, but to my knowledge, most medical professionals charge insured patients much LESS than insured ones, because insurance companies negotiate special rates.
My wife had to have an intensive surgery a few years ago. The total bill amounted to over $100,000. Insurance negotiated it down to $25,000 or so, and then paid 90% of the balance. That's pretty typical of my experience.
I see no reason that you couldn't tell the doctors that you are uninsured, negotiate it down on your own, pay the bill, and then submit it to insurance for reimbursement.