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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?

#101

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

vkou wrote: post #63
colechristensen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Trump's government repealed the individual mandate penalty, and then the court ruled ruled that in it's new form, it no longer qualified as a tax and was unconstitutional.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 il…

calling insurance a tax is about as strong an indication of regulatory capture as I can think of.

It should have never been a tax specifically because it's an unconstitutional act. Calling it a tax is the letter vs the spirit of the constitution.

If you and others like yourself want to ensure everyone has health insurance then __make it mandatory for the state to pay for it__. Anything else and you're just taxing the poor for being poor.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#102

Post by jjeaff »

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…

The plaintiffs in the case were several gop attorney generals. Related cases were also carried out by the Trump admin. And several courts had previously upheld that the ACA was constitutional because it does not force you to buy health insurance. It actually just imposed a fine if you didn't and that fine was considered a tax, which Congress has constitutional authority to levy. The GOP forum shopped to get in front of a rubber stamp republican judge.

Additionally, the whole point of these cases was not simply to get rid of the penalty. The idea was to get rid of the penalty so they could go back to the supreme court and again claim that the mandate is unconstitutional because now there is no "tax" associated with it.

I don't know where things are at now, but it seems unlikely to go anywhere now because it would be difficult to argue that buying insurance is required at all at this point. So we are left with the backup gop strategy of hoping that disarming the mandate will simply bankrupt the program. At least until republican voters wake up and realize that the program is miles better than what we had before.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#103

Post by jjeaff »

djbebs wrote: post #25
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.

There is no free rider problem.

Of course there is. You aren't denied service at a hospital even if you don't have health insurance. That is a free rider problem.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#104

Post by someweirdperson »

chadash wrote: post #18
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.

But people complain about this too. No one seriously talks about not treating people in the ER with gun wounds, but Obamacare explicitly introduced the mandate that you get insurance or pay a penalty to address this very issue. Everyone is entitled to a basic level of care, but the mandate says that you should have to pay for it.

"Gun wound" as in a wound caused by (actively) using a gun, or a bullet wound, typically caused by someone else using a gun? I could understand the former (like excluding accidents while skiing, skydiving, whatever), but excluding the latter seem pretty cynical.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#105

Post by jefftk »

Arainach wrote: post #59
jefftk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dantheman was proposing agreeing to pay the full cost (tens of thousands of dollars), not just the advance fee ($75).

How do you calculate the "full cost" of having staff on call 24/7, well maintained equipment that's regularly inspected, building inspectors to verify that fire code is being met to keep usage down to sustainable levels, and so on? The full cost isn't $10k in salary and gasoline and foam, it's millions.

My city spends ~$20M/y on the fire department [1] and has ~300 structure fires and ~14k callouts annually [2]. The cost for a marginal fire is definitely not millions; even if you only divide $20M by 300 you get $70k and that ignores the tens of thousands of other calls they take.

[1] https://stories.opengov.com/somervillema/published/BhSqQ0eG2

[2] https://www.mass.gov/doc/2020-county-profiles/download

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#106

Post by stickfigure »

hristov wrote: post #89

Sorry but I do not believe this. The paper rings a lot of alarm bells. It provides very little evidence for the actual thesis it is trying to prove and provides ample evidence that seem related to the thesis it is trying to prove but in fact it does nothing to prove it. Thus, the paper provides plenty of evidence that insurance companies helped each other to fight fires at sites insured by their fellow insurance comp…

There's a significant percentage of people (even here on HN) that believes "Facebook sold personal information to Cambridge Analytica and they used this information to win the election for Trump".

My prior is that people repeat good stories somewhat independently of their truth value. Older stories that are hard to verify are more suspect. I think we should default to skepticism.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#107

Post by HWR_14 »

yardie wrote: post #7
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

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.

The family accepted fire protection from their insurer and claim they forgot to pay the $75 fee, not declined to do so. It's possible they opted out, it's also possible it was an oversight. Certainly, the more human thing would be to make opting in/out more explicit and handle a late payment by sending it to collections (or reminder notifications) instead of just turning service off.

Or do you have any evidence they actively opted out of the $75 payment?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#108

Post by SamBorick »

hristov wrote: post #89

Sorry but I do not believe this. The paper rings a lot of alarm bells. It provides very little evidence for the actual thesis it is trying to prove and provides ample evidence that seem related to the thesis it is trying to prove but in fact it does nothing to prove it. Thus, the paper provides plenty of evidence that insurance companies helped each other to fight fires at sites insured by their fellow insurance comp…

The article specifically says:

Originally writing in 1692-3, Daniel Defoe noted that the firemen were “very active and diligent” in helping to put out fires, “whether in houses insured or not insured”.[33] Insurance companies’ instructions to their firemen were clear – they were to attend and help extinguish “all” fires. [34], [35]

What specific issue with this do you have? Do you disagree with the content of “Of Assurances”, in An Essay upon Projects? Or the Union Fire Office Board Minutes?

Or did you just not read the article?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#109

Post by turtledragonfly »

jtlienwis wrote: post #67

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.

With private fire brigades, there was sometimes a monetary reward for being first to the scene. Sounds like a good incentive, right? But it resulted in competition between companies, to the point that they would sabotage each other. The article itself has some examples, and there are similar ones from United States' history.

I imagine some similar issues have happened at sea, but it seems harder to take advantage of and make profit on, since it probably wasn't too common for ships with expensive cargo to sink. And even if they did, it would be hard to guarantee getting there in time. Whereas in a city, fires are a pretty regular occurrence.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#110

Post by lolinder »

hristov wrote: post #89

Sorry but I do not believe this. The paper rings a lot of alarm bells. It provides very little evidence for the actual thesis it is trying to prove and provides ample evidence that seem related to the thesis it is trying to prove but in fact it does nothing to prove it. Thus, the paper provides plenty of evidence that insurance companies helped each other to fight fires at sites insured by their fellow insurance comp…

> Usually commonly held widely believed oral histories emerge for a good reason. So if it was commonly believed that insurance companies let un-insured buildings burn, then it is likely to be true at least part of the time.

Yes, oral histories emerge for a reason, but that reason doesn't have to be "because it was literally true". There are countless oral traditions that are complete nonsense! Urban legends existed 200 and 2000 years ago just as much as they do today, and no historian would ever claim that you should take every oral history at face value.

> Also, lets look at the source -- he is an "archive and heritage consultant", i.e. someone that solicits money for his research. Is he getting paid for this article? Is he writing this in the hopes that he will advertise his services for insurance companies?

He was paid by a prominent YouTuber to find out whether a video said YouTuber made several years ago was incorrect[0]. That doesn't scream "conflict of interest" to me.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wif1EAgEQKI

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