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Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

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Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#61

Post by comte7092 »

fakedang wrote: post #43
LarryMullins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever So will firefighters. They'll save your life to the best of their ability, no matter any contracts, payments, taxes, etc. Saving your house is another matter.

[flagged]

This is a place where people actively choose not to pay taxes instead of paying and receiving services.

“Unincorporated land” means that the landowners have chosen not to incorporate (create) a municipal (ie city/neighborhood) government.

It’s “rugged individualism”.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#62

Post by smnrchrds »

yardie wrote: post #19
gambiting wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever. I'm not sure I want the same "protect at all costs" attitude extended to buildings, but fire can definitely spread and even if they don't care about your property they might care about other places.

They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision. And they eventually put it out to prevent it spreading. Just not with the same fervor of preventing property damage.

> They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision.

I thought in the US, hospitals were only required to stabilize, not treat, non-paying patients. For example, if someone has cancer, they are not required to perform surgery or chemotherapy, just stabilize their symptoms at the moment.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#63

Post by vkou »

colechristensen wrote: post #57
vkou wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Obamacare penalty for not buying insurance was eliminated by Trump, because reintroducing the free rider problem is a cornerstone of GOP health policy. Reinstating the penalty is going to cost political goodwill, which is why the Dems aren't doing it. Regardless of whether the penalty is or is not in place, I wouldn't recommend being poor and sick, regardless of whether you are insured, or are freeloading.

It wasn’t the Trump administration but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which struck down the mandate as unconstitutional and being liberal and a supporter of health care reform I think they had a point. I can’t see in the constitution where the federal government has the power to force me to buy health insurance. I like my constitutional rights being protected even when the thing being compelled (me having insurance…

Trump's government repealed the individual mandate penalty, and then the court ruled ruled that in it's new form, it no longer qualified as a tax and was unconstitutional. (Not that this meant anything, since the legality of a fee of $0 doesn't matter.)

The court case as a whole argued that because the GOP changed the ACA in a manner that made part of it (the $0 fee) illegal, the entirety of the ACA should be made illegal.

The fifth circuit agreed with some of the arguments in the case (the fee one), but did not practically change anything about the ACA.

And then SCOTUS, surprising ~everyone, ruled that actually the whole of the ACA is constitutional.

Look at this timeline, and you tell me - who spent years trying to re-introduce the free rider problem, and to break the ACA? Congress, the president, and the plaintiff states... or the fifth circuit, which when presented with a singular, narrow question, ruled that a $0 fee (whatever that is) isn't a tax?

Now, as of 2022, we are in a world where the ACA has been thoroughly litigated, and is still here, with the free rider problem hanging like a millstone over its neck.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#64

Post by analog31 »

leetrout wrote: post #6

And here we are in modern times where we do, indeed, let buildings burn. > No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn > Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346

A friend of mine lived in a rural town with a weird mistake in its code, that let him build at the top of an extremely steep grade. The town said, legally we can't stop you (though they immediately fixed the code) but there's no way a fire truck can get up your driveway. Sure enough, his large detached shed with vintage cars in it went up in smoke, and the firefighters tried but couldn't get their truck up there.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#65

Post by flandish »

monkmartinez wrote: post #42
LarryMullins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever So will firefighters. They'll save your life to the best of their ability, no matter any contracts, payments, taxes, etc. Saving your house is another matter.

Number one priority on any emergency scene. Life safety... my crew comes first, but I have taken some serious risk to save people. Once the humans and animals are safe, everything else is less concerning. Risk a lot to save a lot. Most "things" can be replaced. My crew takes great pride in saving homeowners animals these days as we now have some tools to help post smoke/heat exposure (Cyanokit and O2).

Adding a second reply with same sentiment. I am also a firefighter, and my main “assignment” over the years has been search/rescue.

We’ll always risk to reward. But more and more the phase after life saving is trending toward “surround and drown” - not that I want to fight like detroit in the 2010’s, but yes we do make a call sometimes to stop risking when lives are all confirmed safe.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#66

Post by alex028502 »

pifm_guy wrote: post #10
nerdponx wrote: post #5

I didn't realize this was even an assertion that people made at all. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. People at the time must have known that fires in cities were extremely dangerous because they could spread over a great area. It's logical that insurers would want to work together to prevent all fires, purely out of self-interest to protect their insured properties, and then sue the pants off negligent and/or u…

But then what is the incentive for anyone to get coverage if they know that any fires will be put out regardless...? Unless the fire service is paired with insurance covering the cost of a rebuild? But I don't think the original fire services offered that.

> Furthermore, only buildings were insured – neither their contents, nor the lives of their occupants, were covered.

Yeah it sounds to me from the article like the insurance was for the rebuild, and the firefighting was something the insurance company did to reduce their payouts.

So I imagine if you didn't have insurance, you still were at more risk than if you did, similar to now, because the fire dept isn't going to save everything every time.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#67

Post by jtlienwis »

Maritime Law had a provision for salvors that saved ships in distress from sinking. If a salvor saved a ship from sinking, they were entitled to a percentage of the worth of a ship. Maybe terrestrial law needs something similar in the case of uninsured building on fire.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#68

Post by ghufran_syed »

gambiting wrote: post #13
yardie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story still makes the rounds, and the result is still the same. The family chose to live in unincorporated land. They turned down fire protection when the county offered it to them. They turned down fire protection when their insurer offered it to them. The fire department did what was required to save lives. Insurance can take care of the rest...oh, that's right.

Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever. I'm not sure I want the same "protect at all costs" attitude extended to buildings, but fire can definitely spread and even if they don't care about your property they might care about other places.

Not true. An emergency department in the US is obligated to provide life-saving care, as are EMS services and hospital doctors if the ER doc thinks you have an immediately life threatening condition . But a random oncologist has no obligation to treat you if you have a life-threatening cancer, unless you go to an ER and they determine that your condition is immediately life-threatening (say, a perforated bowel). Then the surgeon will treat you enough that you are not inmediately dying, but they are not obligated to say, remove an underlying cancer if it’s not causing immediately life threatening problems

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#69

Post by citilife »

gambiting wrote: post #13
yardie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story still makes the rounds, and the result is still the same. The family chose to live in unincorporated land. They turned down fire protection when the county offered it to them. They turned down fire protection when their insurer offered it to them. The fire department did what was required to save lives. Insurance can take care of the rest...oh, that's right.

Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever. I'm not sure I want the same "protect at all costs" attitude extended to buildings, but fire can definitely spread and even if they don't care about your property they might care about other places.

Then you protect the insured buildings, not really sure why it's an issue?

The same logic could apply to police... what if all the crime is coming from an unincorporated part of town? Do you just go and start policing it (kind of like an invading army occupying)? Or do you erect borders / station patrol cars near key locations?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#70

Post by munificent »

fakedang wrote: post #43
LarryMullins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever So will firefighters. They'll save your life to the best of their ability, no matter any contracts, payments, taxes, etc. Saving your house is another matter.

[flagged]

I suspect you would find services limited in the middle of the Arabian desert as well.

The United States is enormous and many parts of it are incredibly sparsely populated. For example, Niobrara County in Wyoming has a population of 2,467 and an area of 6,810 km^2, or a population density of 0.36/km^2.

For comparison, the Northern Borders province, the least dense province in Saudi Arabia, has as population density of 3.4/km^2, almost ten times more people per square kilometer.

People outside of the US really have no idea how empty much of the country is. I think there's an assumption that just because much of the land is livable (i.e. not desert, bare rock, etc.), it must occupied. But that's simply not the case here.

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