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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?

#161

Post by LorenPechtel »

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.

No. Hospitals will do what they have to *against immediate threats*. They will not do what's needed in the bigger picture if they are not paid. You don't get the chemotherapy etc if you can't pay.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#162

Post by bombcar »

fatbird wrote: post #112
HWR_14 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A reporter on the scene spoke to the homeowner, who said he didn't pay the fee because he thought he could just pay after, like happened previously. He literally thought he could get away with not paying unless a fire happened. It's a textbook case of moral hazard. I discussed the case a lot at the time it happened, and it never came out that he "forgot" to pay the fee. It was very clear at the time that he thought h…

People do the same with AAA - don’t pay to renew until you need a tow and pay the renewal over the phone. I think they’re a bit smarter now and make you pay for the years you skipped.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#163

Post by rayiner »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #143

Even with this information included. I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, t…

> I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, the fire department refused to accept money to put it out.

It's not just a question of money, but legal arrangements. Going into a fire isn't a game--it puts the firefighters and their equipment at risk. What does the firefighters' insurance contract look like? If one of the firefighters gets hurt, is their insurance going to cover it when the fire was outside the jurisdiction of that fire department? Insofar as this illustrates a "problem" it's not a "third-world" one, but a distinctly American one. Americans are the most legalistic people in the world, and reflexively accept the consequences of the legal state of affairs. In many other contexts, that's a strength, not a weakness.

> This whole "unincorporated land" execuse is a sad state of affairs. The whole "You're not with us, so it's not our problem" mindset is really why America is so low down on every single ranking in the world, except for military might.

Even Americans aren't so tribal as to hold grudges between towns and adjacent unincorporated land. The significance of the house being on unincorporated land is that it demarcates the legal boundaries of the fire department's jurisdiction. A public body acting outside its jurisdiction can have all sorts of consequences.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#164

Post by frosted-flakes »

bluGill wrote: post #150
frosted-flakes wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is trash pickup not bundled with property taxes? It's seems ridiculous to charge for it separately when every occupied home will generate a similar amount of trash.

Why should it be part of taxes at all? I've lived in places with city trash pickup, and places where you choose your own private company to get your trash (in the later some cheap people just drove their trash to the dump every couple months). The costs were about the same in the best case so long as the private people shopped around, and in the worst cases the city didn't shop around and so costs were a lot more.

Because with the information I was given above:

- every household gets trash collection service, no matter what

- every household must pay a flat fee for trash collection service, no matter what

Why charge it as a separate fee?

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#165

Post by robertlagrant »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #143

Even with this information included. I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, t…

> The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die."

The reason you think this may be because your preconceptions stopped you reading what was written. This is not what happened, and not what happens.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#166

Post by HWR_14 »

fatbird wrote: post #112
HWR_14 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A reporter on the scene spoke to the homeowner, who said he didn't pay the fee because he thought he could just pay after, like happened previously. He literally thought he could get away with not paying unless a fire happened. It's a textbook case of moral hazard. I discussed the case a lot at the time it happened, and it never came out that he "forgot" to pay the fee. It was very clear at the time that he thought h…

I had not heard that. Reports I saw at the time said he "forgot".

At any rate, in response to the story, the county changed it so paying when your house was already ablaze was a punitive but not impossible option. I believe it was $3,500 when they instituted it.

Which, frankly, seems like the proper way to handle the moral hazard.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#167

Post by bombcar »

flandish wrote: post #65
monkmartinez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s also a point where a structure is a total loss even if the “damage doesn’t look so bad from out here” at which point letting it burn as long as other buildings aren’t in danger may be the safest thing to do.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#168

Post by mbg721 »

vkou wrote: post #131
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it's an unconstitutional act. That is an interesting opinion, but at this point, both a conservative, and then a super-conservative, packed-with-federalist-society SCOTUS has disagreed with you twice on this issue (5-4) and then (7-2). It's about as written-in-stone as you can get in the United States. The courts think this is above-board, the executive thinks this is above-board, most of the public thinks its abov…

As I recall, the whole "call the penalty a tax" thing was Roberts' tortured justification for allowing it in the 5-4 vote. Nobody ever really believed it was a tax.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#169

Post by bombcar »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #147
munificent wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I think there is a difference between a remote place that is difficult to access and a place that is not entitled to use public firefighters' service. IMHO the former has no bearing on the latter. I am not judging the way things work in the US, just commenting that I don't think that population density is relevant here as the issue is one of right. Now, of course, if you live 100 miles from the nearest town it may we…

Much of the Midwest is sparsely populated but not unpopulated - you’re never more than a half mile from a house but never much closer than that. It can cause weird servicing issues.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#170

Post by bombcar »

nisegami wrote: post #48
fakedang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

By living on unincorporated land, they wouldn't have been subject to the tax that pays for the fire department (which would be county level or city level I'm guessing?)

City; counties only have states above them so there isn’t “out of county land” usually.
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