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Mercury Spill

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Re: Mercury Spill

#131

Post by jjoonathan »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #107
Spooky23 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In other words, you agree completely. Grandparent never said that following the pragmatic path in this case would be morally defensible and almost certainly believes that it wouldn't be (except in the sense that the human capacity for rationalization is nearly infinite and so a person stuck in the situation would likely manage to convince themselves otherwise). I get the sense that the grandparent post was complaining that by allowing insurance companies to exclude events like this we've created a terrible moral hazard.

Re: Mercury Spill

#132

Post by jandrese »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #107
Spooky23 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a tough choice between being a scumbag and paying two years salary[1] out of pocket for something that was not your fault and that the insurance apparently doesn't cover because they are scumbags too.

[1] The median wage in the US per person is $26,695.

Re: Mercury Spill

#133

Post by irixusr »

deciplex wrote: post #86
chimeracoder wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if they're adjusting premiums such that they're net positive on every single account, does that mean they'll refund your money if you end the contract without ever having made a claim? No, because you're paying for the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your worst-case scenario has been mitigated, on the off-chance it happens . Even if there is no disaster, you still benefited from not having to worry ab…

I understand how insurance works, but you haven't really addressed what I'm talking about, which is that insurance companies often don't seem to understand how insurance works. You can't expect to make a profit off of every account - it defeats the purpose of an insurance scheme altogether. If an insurance company raises the premiums on a person after they make a claim, or drops them from coverage, even when the natu…

I would think Insurance companies understand their business better than most industries They don't expect profit from all their accounts, not a priori. However they choose to do business only with those account which they believe will be profitable. If They expect to loose money from an account, they'll choose not to do business with you.

We can debate if this is moral or not (some religions state it's not, i.e. the Amish as it is a form of gambling and discourages charity) but that's the game.

Re: Mercury Spill

#134

Post by jandrese »

ams6110 wrote: post #101
deciplex wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, it costs a lot to hire inspectors to go out to every property and determine that it was the water in the air, not the wind itself that destroyed the house so they aren't covered.

Re: Mercury Spill

#135

Post by irixusr »

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…

I hate to agree because what the insurance company did is nasty. But you're right.

Which is why I'm skeptical of the AMA requirements to cover certain recurrent health services (annual checkups, contraception). If they're unavoidable than its not insurance!

Re: Mercury Spill

#136

Post by dynomight »

grecy wrote: post #78

A friend of mine has a "mercury blob maze" [1] where you have a little blob of mercury trapped in a plastic container and you have to get it through the maze - it was fun to use at different temperatures, as the blob would want to break apart when hot, or not move at all when cold. Shaking it turns it into 300 blobs. Upon seeing it, my science teacher dad had some cool stories about playing with Mercury 20-30 years a…

I used to play with those (mercury blob mazes) at electronic/junk shops when I was a little kid. Currently I've got a small collecting of mercury switches and rather large jar of mercury in the basement... It's neat stuff.

Re: Mercury Spill

#137

Post by jandrese »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #116
mbroshi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're in the middle of Kansas and a big hailstorm comes up there isn't much you can do. There's nowhere to hide.

Re: Mercury Spill

#138

Post by jandrese »

grecy wrote: post #78

A friend of mine has a "mercury blob maze" [1] where you have a little blob of mercury trapped in a plastic container and you have to get it through the maze - it was fun to use at different temperatures, as the blob would want to break apart when hot, or not move at all when cold. Shaking it turns it into 300 blobs. Upon seeing it, my science teacher dad had some cool stories about playing with Mercury 20-30 years a…

Elemental Mercury isn't especially dangerous though. People freak out over the word "Mercury" but forms like that aren't bioavailable for the most part and are reasonably safe. I wouldn't go breathing the fumes for extended periods of time, but holding a pool in your hand in science class isn't going to kill you.

That's why it's a bit frustrating to read stories like this where the cleanup crew goes overboard and racks up tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills for a simple spill.

Re: Mercury Spill

#139

Post by jandrese »

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…

Oh in the 80s you say? Might want to check to see if you have polybutaline pipes in there. That's another one that's expensive to repair and not covered by insurance.
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