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Mercury Spill

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Re: Mercury Spill

#241

Post by TorKlingberg »

jessaustin wrote: post #177
SteveGerencser wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went through a very similar experience when our car was being transported half way across the country. They driver somehow managed to roll his trailer on a freeway curve (his claim was high winds). His insurance company tried to claim act of god because "the wind did it". I'm still trying to figure out how the wind pushes over an open trailer with 2 sports cars on it. At least mine was 4 or 5 years old at the time…

Wow this thread has confirmed what I always suspected: shipping a car is a bad idea. I have actually pulled a car behind a U-haul through multiple states, but that was me, and I know how to pull trailers. A friend of mine in Hawaii was all set to ship his car from the mainland until I pointed out how little sense the math made.

Anecdotes on the Internet do not actually confirm much.

Re: Mercury Spill

#242

Post by DanBC »

eru wrote: post #189
chimeracoder wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 unders…

That's interesting. You are forced to mention any health insurance you might have?

That's not particularly unusual.

You're forced to mention any car accident you've had to your insurers, even if you didn't claim for it. (At least, this is true in UK, not sure about US.)

Re: Mercury Spill

#243

Post by avar »

Cakez0r wrote: post #219
rahimnathwani wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 prem…

> 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. Not necessarily. One of my friends had his parked car hit by a drunk driver while he was not in it. His insurance premiums still went up after claiming for the damage.

Even in that situation there's an element of avoidable "own risk" that could be priced into the premiums. Someone whose parked car gets hit by a drunk driver is more likely to:

- Not park their car in a garage overnight, exposing them to various damage to the car.

- Not park their car in a garage when they go downtown.

- Park their car near bars or other places statistically more likely to have drunk drivers around.

I'm not saying your friend did any of that and that it wasn't a complete freak accident, but on the scale of everyone that's being insured there's surely correlations like that that justify the premiums going up.

Re: Mercury Spill

#244

Post by w__m »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #236
jules wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move out of the US.

I'm in Poland. But I guess given how everything is international now, I doubt EU has it any better than the US.

If you're below middle class, large corporations (banks, insurance companies, media providers etc.) are most likely able to treat You as they please. While it's really hard to blame the less wealthy, given our history. I think this is worldwide: If you're not able to protect yourself, no one will.

Re: Mercury Spill

#245

Post by Ntrails »

nostromo wrote: post #41
ccvannorman wrote: post #14

It may have cost you $50,000 but you now have +50 karma on HN and rising. Some would say a bargain! ;-] In all seriousness, cool story, glad you're okay, and this makes me think "insurance" as a business needs to be re-thought entirely. How many times has it happened that insurance companies weasel out of paying? Objectively you might think THAT was their primary job.

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 isn't a scam, but market forces have caused what you describe.

If the insurer offers an "even" price to all people regardless of history, then it will lose business to a company that offers "No claims discounts". Therefore all of it's customers would he high risk driving prices up even further.

Essentially unless you are willing to outlaw all risk assessment and premium scaling you cannot prevent exactly what you describe. Note that the EU did this with regards to gender discrimination on car insurance premiums (insurers have simply found proxy variables which correlate highly to gender).

Re: Mercury Spill

#246

Post by davidcollantes »

When I was a child, me and my nephews (which are about my own age) used to go to the pharmacy to buy thermometers, and break them for their mercury. With time we accumulated enough to fill up a mid-sized crystal jar, I would say around 200 grams.

We played with that mercury a lot. We passed it between our hands, which later held treats we ate. We laid down on the grown, and pour it in our closed eyes, letting it drop on the side of our faces. The only thing we came short of doing was putting mercury in our mouth. No harm ever came to us as a result.

I would have cleaned the spill for free, if I get to keep the mercury. ;-)

Re: Mercury Spill

#248

Post by ghshephard »

jessaustin wrote: post #180
dhbanes wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fu…

From the context it seems likely that GP owns a condo, so bills like that would not be sent to property management. Also if anyone has an interest to lie it is mold remediation contractors whose entire business is built on exaggeration.

Exactly correct. It was my Condo, and if it was an exterior wall, then the Home Owners Association would be charged a "Special Fee" (We had recently dropped $100+K on repairing wall damage from a rain leak) - but ceiling damage would have been on me. To make matters worse, they were renters living in the upstairs unit, and when I contacted the owner, it turned out he was a lawyer, and initially all he said was, "If you have a problem, sue me."

Thankfully, the manager of our property management board was much more sane, had seen the space above bathroom vents, knew that it always looked funky (lots of moisture going up through those vents), and saved me $30K.

I guess my point was - given a choice, a subcontractor can always turn a minor clean up into a $50K project, but it's entirely possible, there is a $5K choice as well that the home owner might want to consider pursuing.

Re: Mercury Spill

#249

Post by unicornporn »

Does anyone get near aroused by this kind of web design? I love it and wish every site could be "dumbed down" to this kind of easy navigation and reading experience.

I know there are "reader views" in many modern browser, but I'd also like the site structure and navigation to be easier to overview. Sort of a WAP view for the twenty-tens.

Re: Mercury Spill

#250

Post by cronjobber »

runako wrote: post #144
hyperbovine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Profit…

If money has diminishing marginal utility (to the insured) then insurance can have both positive expected utility for the insured and positive expected profit for the insurer.
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