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Mercury Spill

jefftk.com

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141–150 of 374 posts

Re: Mercury Spill

#141

Post by dump100 »

fiatmoney wrote: post #67
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…

"Because of this, I avoid making any claims unless absolutely required." This is economically efficient behavior - and in fact you should set your deductible to the highest amount you can afford out-of-pocket, as insurance is really only efficient for amounts above that. You should be aiming towards insuring catastrophic loss - eg, a fire that burns your whole house down.

Insurance in my understanding is good for catastrophic events. If house burning down happen in 1 of 10000 homes in a lifetime, and all have taken insurance. For a small sum, you have ensured that you'll not be homeless, instead of each 10000 owners saving enough for a new house.

Re: Mercury Spill

#142

Post by mark-r »

DanBlake wrote: post #22

wow. I remember as a kid ~20 years ago playing with mercury (my grandfather was a dentist and had a 1lb bottle of the stuff for some reason) I think if I found mercury in my house I would literally just scoop it up and bring it to the fire department without thinking about any health hazards of it. Is mercury truely that bad that short exposure is that dangerous? I mean, I wouldnt eat the stuff (or breath it in for e…

I wonder how much mercury is emitted from a broken fluorescent bulb? I'm very glad to see LED bulbs as an alternative, I've probably bought my last fluorescent.

Re: Mercury Spill

#143

Post by dhbanes »

ghshephard wrote: post #130

I once had a ceiling leak of water from my upstairs neighbor. I called a contractor, and he broke open a segment of the ceiling where my vent was - and the entire gap between my unit and upstairs looked like something from Venus - terrifying colors/growths taking place. The contractor said that there was a massive mold infusion, and that we would need a hazardous material team to come clean it up, and we were looking…

Wait, so the property management company (which would be responsible for facilitating the mold remediation at the very least, or paying for it if they own the property or were liable for the issue in the first place) told you that mold was no big deal and your upstairs neighbors just need to caulk a little more around their bath tub (also the responsibility of the property owner) and that calmed you down?

Mold and fungi can certainly be harmful to humans. The interests of your landlords and property managers are not aligned with yours in this case.

Re: Mercury Spill

#144

Post by runako »

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 expected value of insurance is not automatically negative.

I'm curious how this math works. In my (quite likely incomplete) mental model of insurance, there are only a few terms: premiums, payouts, profits. It would seem that they have to balance. So if you pool risk, you are summing the payouts. Those payouts are covered by the sum of premiums. Any profit is the sum of premiums minus the sum of payouts.

Profits = Premiums - Payouts

Is this right so far?

Because then it seems that the expected value of insurance to the customer is the negated value of the expected profit of the insurer. Put another way: if the expected value of insurance is not negative, shouldn't the insurer raise premiums or exit the business?

Again, I know next to nothing about insurance and I'm asking to learn.

Re: Mercury Spill

#145

Post by nemo44x »

kornish wrote: post #42
ccvannorman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This after a study reveals more than half of Americans have less than $1k in savings. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that in extreme cases, most people would simply go bankrupt or starve. Something to think about when you root for certain laws and politicians..

Just to play devils' advocate, that's less than $1k _in a savings account_. Many people store cash straight in their checking accounts or have much more than $1k in stocks and bonds which aren't too hard at all to liquidate, and the figure you're quoting didn't account for that.

You're parsing wrong here. It means people don't have that much liquid. As in saved.

Re: Mercury Spill

#146

Post by pdabbadabba »

jandrese wrote: post #132
pdabbadabba wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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.

I find the intuition that the insurers are scumbags interesting (not that I don't share it, on some level). After all, in this case they also didn't cause the problem, don't own the house, and never agreed to insure the homeowner against that kind of risk. What am I missing?

Of course, its important to distinguish this situation from cases where the insurer did agree to cover it, but refuses to pay anyway.

Re: Mercury Spill

#147

Post by rahimnathwani »

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…

"In your friend's case, the fact that she had two claims adjusted her relative risk profile"

For car insurance it makes sense, as the risk is specific to the driver, so the number of claims tells you something about the insured's driving.

But, for home insurance, isn't it mainly about the property rather than the individual? And isn't that mostly about location and property type?

Will this continue to affect her premiums if she moves? Will it also affect the new owner of her home, even though they weren't party to the previous claims?

Re: Mercury Spill

#148

Post by gozo »

odonnellryan wrote: post #96
nathanb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. I don't know a lot of people for whom a surprise $50k bill would be "unfortunately" rather than "disastrously".

I don't think there are that many people. 50K is a lot.

I know plenty of people that live in $1MM apartments that doubled in value over the last 10 years. So while they might not be able to "spare" $50k, it's not that big a deal overall. Of course I know other people for which that would be a lifetime of savings.

Re: Mercury Spill

#149

Post by matthewmcg »

irixusr wrote: post #135
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…

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!

One correction: it is the ACA ("Affordable Care Act") not the AMA. The AMA is the lobbying organization for providers.

Also, most health insurance plans have always covered checkups, contraception etc. The ACA specifies that these should be covered without copayments and deductibles. This is intended to be an incentive for the insured to get these kinds of preventative procedures instead of waiting till more costly problems develop. This tends to reduce the total cost of care to be reimbursed and (in theory) should lower premiums.

Re: Mercury Spill

#150

Post by matthewmcg »

cldellow wrote: post #114
FussyZeus wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wow--that really is an extraordinary level of giving, relative to what they have earned. I suppose that's one way to cushion the effect of a financial shock--get used to living on only a fraction of your total income and donate the surplus when available.
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