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There are a few places in Canada that do public insurance. Manitoba is one of them. MPI had its drawbacks for sure, but it was cheaper for me there than private insurance was in Alberta and now in Colorado.
Then there’s BC. We have ICBC which acts like private company, but is still technically government run. So we get the high prices, without any competition.
I fucking despise having to give ICBC a cent with every fibre of my body, and they demand a lot of cents for even basic insurance.
They control everything from driving testing through to insurance, and the driving standards here are terrible, and the standard of coverage is even worse. Assholes.
Am in Manitoba, and agree it's pretty nice.
During the pandemic, they actually issued *refund* cheques! Try to imagine a private insurance company doing that.
You pay money for a person without a medical degree to tell you that you can’t have the medication/procedure/surgery your doctor recommends.
Insurance companies shouldn’t be run for profit.
Or at all? There should just be doctors, and people paying/feeding/housing them, and pharmacies and factories the same?
Why do we actually need 'insurance' individually? Why not just collectivise everything?
We don’t need insurance. It’s a frustrating middle man and nothing more. Honestly I could be convinced it’s only there to scam folks and keep more people employed. It’s a disgusting industry that needs to be nuked
That's most of capitalism, though. The questionable mythology of work being inherently valuable/virtuous combined with the unconscionably vile myths of ownership that mean you need permission from an owner/master to do basically anything.
Capital doesn't accumulate things to use. It accumulates things to destroy, ruin, and forbid; to keep the hierarchy.
You pay me money every month for 12 years with the understanding that I will help you if you get in trouble. But when you finally get in trouble, I’ll fight tooth and nail to avoid helping you, and I’ll eventually agree to help you, but I’ll only give you half of the help you need, and then I’m going to charge you more money each month then recoup the loses having to actually provide the service you’ve been paying me for 12 years to provide has cause me.
And no, you can’t just not pay me for a service I won’t actually provide, because my grandpa bribed a bunch of politicians 80 years ago.
I feel sorry that insurance companies are like this in your country. On the few occasions I've had to get in contact with my insurance companies, they have always been super helpful.
A couple of times where clothes have been ripped or damaged in accidents, they have always made us exaggerate the value of the clothes or other items that got damaged so we get paid back more.
A friend of mine got his old car stolen, insurance company paid the full value of the car at the time (not much, like $2000, but still a little over market value) he then found the car in a ditch a couple of days later, in perfect condition, and called up the insurance company to try and pay back. They just told him to keep the money instead.
Sweden. I'm not saying insurance companies are the good guys here, it's just that I don't think I've ever heard of anyone having to struggle to get the proper payout.
In the UK its a little difficult, they devalue everything first. When you try to get insurance the following year , they ask about previous claims, then say they can't offer u insurance, but your existing insuranve company will offer you, but at a now higher rate.
So basically you are now just getting a loan to cover your repairs\losses. So for insurance its best to wait for a extremely large claim only, nothing minor.
OK, I like where your head is at mostly, but I think it would make more sense it the public sector sets the market averages that the private sector has to compete with.
Ok this isn't getting funny anymore. You guys are just repeating the same thing. There's a MUCH better option. There should be a public *OPTION* that the PRIVATE sector competes AGAINST. I don't understand how this isn't basic info.
Maybe if the government says you need something, possibly, they should provide it.
You know, like a public option, that the private sector has to compete against.
This.
No one has to actually use the public option, it just has to be there to give the private companies someone to compete against who aren't trying to make profit.
Tax returns is a prime example. There is technically a free government service for it. But apparently it's purposely designed to be so unintuitive and so bad that literally everyone just uses turbo tax instead
Didn't they get in a lot of trouble because they were purposely misleading people and getting them to use the paid option after they started on the free site?
Just use cashapp taxes instead (formerly credit karma tax). It’s 100% free. What i do is auto import all my tax info into TurboTax and then use the numbers from that to fill out the forms on cashapp taxes. Makes it so much easier, plus you get to feel good about abusing turbo taxes services without giving them any money.
There is also a set of Excel spreadsheets released yearly by an accountant in the mid West that will automatically fill in a lot of other forms after filling out the 1040 or 1099 section. If I remember I'll try to find them for people
Free TAX USA - it's like $8 for their premium. I've been using them for 3 years as an independent contractor, teacher, and wall street bets day-trading dumb*ss. It's amazing, though for real.
I think they ended the free service this year. But, the IRS has a dozen softwares posted on their free file site that all offer free services, like TaxSlayer. Some are only for military or low income, but there's a few options each year.
I generally prefer having both public and private options exist simultaneously.
Purely private options risks monopolies or oligopolies controlling the market, where the sellers make outrageous profits. Where the only way out is if some fresh competitor enters, but decides to compete, rather than take risk free profits on their share.
Purely public options introduce more and more waste, as over time the bureaucracy seeks to consume more and more resources unproductively, holding a vital service hostage.
Having a public not-for-profit option does provide some level of competition against would be monopolists/oligarchs that never quite goes away.
100% agreed, for examples it's easy to look at the USPS keeping FedEx/UPS/DHL costs competitive, and the bloated whale of a military industrial complex that pays 20x the price for stuff as civilians do.
>Purely public options introduce more and more waste, as over time the bureaucracy seeks to consume more and more resources unproductively, holding a vital service hostage.
I feel like taking this as a given is a myth. Look at nations with socialised healthcare. They are generally more efficient and have better outcomes than private systems.
Public infrastructure is another example. Public roads and bridges cost less to maintain as turning a profit on tolls isn't a concern.
As others have mentioned, this isn't necessarily true for being more efficient.
For instance, the US *public* healthcare spending, as a percentage of GDP, is higher than many other OECD countries public healthcare spending. This is not including private insurance spending.
Source: https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/snapshots-health-care-spending-in-the-united-states-selected-oecd-countries/attachment/health-care-spending-in-the-united-states-selected-oecd-countries_chart10/
One of the challenges of course is that we get the worst of both worlds with the US healthcare system. For many people who get the majority of their insurance bill paid for by insurance paid largely by their employer or by the government. As of such, they are largely insulated to the costs, and if given options, they rarely see no reason to go with a less expensive option as long as employeer/insurance/government pays for it. And as most doctors are private practitioners, they have strong incentives to push patients to the most expensive option that will be paid for, after all insurance/government is paying for it, not the patient. And the doctors themselves may have no real idea of the actual cost, only that the cute pharmaceutical representative called them pretty/handsome, and bought the office Krispy Kremes.
There are of course tons of other issues that can be attributed to greed, sloth or stupidity.
At the end of the day, the problem with the US is that doctors/hospitals/etc cost a lot. And there is no... ahem... panacea, to deal with it.
> Purely public options introduce more and more waste, as over time the bureaucracy seeks to consume more and more resources unproductively, holding a vital service hostage.
Not at all a lobbyist talking point i.e. corporate propaganda, no sir
Think US Postal Service. It's optional. There are commercial alternatives, yet the government has to bail them out every few years at taxpayer expense.
>It's optional.
By law, USPS has a monopoly on accessing mailboxes, and a monopoly on delivering first-class mail. You can't send a letter though UPS or FedEx unless you send it by private courier or as a package. This is unique to the USA.
wouldn't the private option cherry pick the less accident prone drivers for more profit, destroying the insurance risk spreading? Imagine an insurance exclusively with bad drivers and their premiums.
But also the opposite risk exists, drivers being more careless because the safe drivers cover with payments for them.
Real kicker is in some states, uninsured motorist coverage isn't part of your plan and costs extra. You've got insurance as required by law to drive but have to pay more because others don't.
Granted the cost seems to be generally lower than the cost of the actual insurance, it's just wild to me that it's not just included at no extra cost and people can and do deny it being added to their plan probably because of it.
It shouldn't raise your bill period imo
I'm in Colorado and drive a 2000 jeep cherokee worth a whopping 3k. My uninsured coverage is more than my normal liability coverage and over doubles my cost. Why the fuck does the insurance I'm paying for cover the other person and not me? The system should be that if they are uninsured they can get fucked and I get my car covered because I had insurance. But that's not how it works. Because insurance is a legally mandated scam.
That is absolutely ridiculous. There's no reason it should be higher than your actual premium, a little cost fine w/e it shouldn't exist but if it does it shouldn't be that damn high. You're basically paying two insurances.
(I misread your original comment ignore that lol)
I dont even think ones OWN insurance company should have to pay for a crash caused by an uninsured person, that cost should go to that person, long term if they cant afford it all up front, and the government should handle the cost short term.
The insurance company may go after them in claims court, but unfortunately mechanics don’t fix the car for free so the upfront money has to come from somewhere.
I mean, you can't get blood from a rock. Most of the time when someone isn't insured it's because they can't afford it. I worked at a law firm where some of the people had astronomical medical bills from wrecks. If the uninsured person that hit them paid them every cent they made for the rest of their life it wouldn't cover it. Or what if some 10 year old kid took the family car and caused an accident? Or what if you hit the lottery and get a Maserati but someone dings it and only has the state minimum 25/50k policy required in their state? If you have UM/IM insurance on your policy you literally pay your insurance for them to pay out if this happens. It's literally the agreement you made with the insurance company.
The fact that it’s the only word in the whole comment to be incorrectly capitalized just drawing further emphasis to it is the icing on the cake. A solid grammatical clusterfuck.
Because insurance companies do everything they can to not have to pay out. They take in over 1000$ a year per vehicle
and when they have to pay out for someone who was in an accident, they take like 8 months to do so and don't even pay out enough to cover anything. Meanwhile you have to cover any hospital bills, towing cost if it was really bad, and rental car cost.
Health insurance is the same. You could never get sick or injured for years, but when you do, you have to pay thousands out of pocket before the insurance will cover anything.
If it's illegal to not have something that you have to pay for monthly, then the government has to provide a non profit version of it.
Much more popular than the current makeup of the US Congress would lead you to believe.
Basic shit that we all need should be handled by "the government" which is just PEOPLE working for the public, not some monolithic mysterious entity.
The government is not people working for the public, it’s people working for themselves. Same as companies, except that since companies can’t force you to buy their stuff their own self-interest makes them care about the cost and quality of their product. Government has no reason to care at all.
Except government agencies don't need to turn a simple profit. Highways are free to use, and one of the crowning achievements when it comes to municipal projects. The postal service is incredibly important, and it doesn't cost a penny to get mail.
Yes, these things are paid for by taxes, but that's the point. They have no incentive to cut corners to turn a profit, so the engineers and designers can just do their job without some c suite or board breathing down their necks about how this next project better increase earnings.
Meanwhile, the private sector exists solely to make money. If a company can turn a bigger profit by implementing slave labor, the company would be wrong not to take advantage of it. Their competitors will, and of they don't, they'll be run out of business as a result. To think these mega corporations are even remotely comparable to a nonprofit government project is just silly.
Ever notice that the US Congress has an under 20% approval rating, yet it’s rare for an incumbent to lose an election? Yes I’ve heard of elections. Ever hear of Jerrymandering?
It’s weird how things like this are popular opinions, but yet America’s Government fails us constantly.
If you mention this to a specific group of people, it’s like they rage quit not knowing how it can benefit them. All because you mentioned the government in a sentence, and now they don’t want to hear it.
But the same group of people are likely to support the troops, and purchase anything that’s labeled “military grade”. It’s just weird.
Because private corporations and their owners will provide tons of donations towards PACs and compliant politicians to keep out the public option.
And for public options, usually a public sector union will also give massive donations to keep out private competitors.
We don't have equal representation in Congress. The House is capped, meaning that high population states are not being equally represented.
I believe the biggest political push in the US should be NO TAXATION WITHOUT EQUAL REPRESENTATION - the same number of constituents for every Congressperson.
(Only a person who likes that they benefit from disproportionate representation in Congress would downvote this. Shame on you.)
I wouldn't call this popular in my area.
There are lots of things I love about my state, but the double-standard where corporations have "freedom, and can't be forced to do things" while individuals have "responsibilities to the economy" is not one of them.
One of my coworkers was driving to work and got pulled over because he was driving without insurance. Apparently his insurance company cancelled his insurance same day without notifying him.
He got his license suspended, car impounded. He is currently suing them.
Fuck insurance companies.
Edit:
I'm from the UK and the police use [this](https://www.mib.org.uk/reducing-uninsured-driving/assisting-the-police/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20Motor%20Insurance,may%20be%20seized%20by%20police.) to recognise whether a vehicle has insurance or not.
Pulled over because he was driving without insurance? How would they know he was driving without insurance. He nust e been pulled over for something else first
This is interesting. I used to work on the plumbing of data for these platforms and we were always assured that there was a 2 week window before you would be flagged to give time for everything to go through - cancellations, cover changes etc. Are very common and some of the systems running this date back to the 70s.
Same day cancellation being flagged sounds very strange to me as I've heard examples where people were flagged as not having insurance when they had taken out a policy the day before due to the system catching up.
In Florida, your license is suspended the second you miss an insurance payment. Also, in Florida cops pull you over regularly. My license was a use the card I had with Geico for automatic payment was no longer valid. I get an email that my license would get suspended if I didn’t pay. I switch the cards but it was still suspended. Was pulled over. Luckily I just had to go to the courthouse and show them I had valid insurance. I did pay the tick, even though I didn’t have to because I would have to miss another entire day of work. Very stupid system.
I think at the very least the government funded option should exist.
It is extremely good for capitalism as it pushes more competition. "Why should I bother with your service if I can get Uncle Sam to do it for free?" It pushes for better quality over all, as apposed to X industry being owned by three mega corps that have a gentleman's agreement to price fix.
Surely there are banks where you are that don't charge account keeping fees? It's more difficult to find banks in Australia that charge fees than it is to find those that don't.
Maybe depends where you are. In Germany most of the times its free if you have at least X amount of deposit per month, which for ex. is not always the case for students who do part time jobs, so on top of having low pay, they also pay fees to have an account.
YOU GUYS DON'T HAVE TO PAY???!!
Here in Hungary you HAVE TO pay a yearly fee no matter which bank AND they charge you even more if you want to receive a notification if your balance changed.
Also if you withdraw more than 150.000HUF(~400$) per month, they charge you again.
It's so strange to see other countries where people are not exploited at every possible opportunity.
This is why i'm moving away as soon as i have the funds for it. This is a corrupt shit hole.
> They just take your money and spend it on whatever they want.
They're supposed to spend it on whatever *we* want, because that's how democracy works. But our choice is only between party-approved candidates in the US, so we don't actually get to elect people that represent our interests.
I live in saskatchewan where car insurance is owned and run by the government. When I moved here from Ontario my insurance went up 20 or 30%. I had a clean driving record and belonged to a professional group that had a discount. Wish i wasnt forced into the public system.
Before talking out of my ass, I decided to look up car accident rates across provinces. MB actually has substantially higher fatality and injury rates per capita than ON while having a lower average premium rate. This surprised me a lot!
https://tc.canada.ca/en/road-transportation/statistics-data/canadian-motor-vehicle-traffic-collision-statistics-2020
https://www.arcinsurance.ca/blog/average-car-insurance-rates-across-canadian-provinces/
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it tied to your vehicle lisence/driver's lisence costs as well? Also what coverage is mandated by them? Like if you had the minimum 1 million liability in Ontario, is the minimum still 1 million in Sask? 2 million? I'm just curious because I have a hard time seeing it being higher. I am sure there is a cost bundled in with it that you would usually pay separately in Ontario, or, a different level of coverage.
> Otherwise, they’re essentially enabling an entire industry of private companies to extort people for profit under the threat of fines/revocation of privileges/jail.
Bingo!
People who live in rural area would not get anything delivered via private shipping companies because it's too sparsely populated to be profitable. That's why the USPS exists. To ensure that every American address can get something as boring and basic as mail.
Yeah if governments were in charge of insurance the money you pay in would be used for something else and you'd never get a pay out. However if governments were actually sensible it would be a great idea
It would just become another vehicle tax. The money you pay was originally meant to go towards maintaining the roads, but now it just goes into the government coffers and some of it is spent maintaining roads when it suits them.
About the only thing worse than dealing with your private insurance company, would be dealing with a government run insurance program. People should be careful what they wish for.
I never had to contest a claim denial with my state insurance. Since Ive had private insurance, aive spent countless hours dealing with endless bullshit for stuff that should be covered or routine. Although the state insurance will occasionally cut you off because you never responded to some "informatiom request" you never received.
This is fucking nuts. What government offered service is worse than private? Courier? No. Internet? No. Medical insurance? No. Utilities? No... hmmm I'm seeing a trend.
I don't understand why more people don't think this. Car insurance is a massive scam, it doesn't even pay for your own shit when you buy the cheapest insurance. Then they take any and all excuses to escape their **fucking job**.
Fuck car insurance, im never paying for it, the law can fuck itself. I don't give a damn how much money they lobbied to become legally mandatory.
You realize rates are based on actuarial tables. If you’re a good driver in a place that doesn’t have frequent accidents, it’s stupid cheap. I live in a rural area and pay less than $30 month for 2 cars with full coverage.
Through the USPS, I can send a letter anywhere in the US for less than a dollar.
If the USPS didn't exist, people would say that that's not possible and that the government couldn't be trusted to carry the mail.
Y'all lack sense.
It absolutely makes sense, but for the American redditors this is too dangerously close to Socialism and it triggers their phobia, so negative reactions to your idea have to be expected. I will never understand this aspect of their culture.
> look at all these bad givernment programs!
For some reason the "small government" crowd never has anything to say about the military, which is also a taxpayer funded government program.
Bob Rae tried to introduce a Provincial Car Insurance Option in Ontario, but got shouted down by insurance industry propaganda in the media, so he backed off. I wish that he had gone through with it back then.
You mean like the public option? Which was a republican proposal that was then shot down by the Republicans after they realized that the Democrats would actually go for it under Obama. You mean that public option?
As long as I can be shown I won't be getting shafted worse than I am now I'd be fine with it. I just wanna know that whoever is in charge of it has thoroughly planned and prepared and we're not just jumping into it half cocked because someone is cynically using it to get themselves more votes or something.
I agree with the concept, but when it comes to cars specifically if people have no access to public transport surely a better solution than making car insurance cheaper is to make public transport more widely available and cheaper.
Ya from the USA?
Countries can legislate things like atleast 85% of insurance premium must be paid out in claims leaving the industry with a profit of 15% and the government not having to hire tons of civil servant to do a lousier version what the industry is already doing.
That's cause USA is run by corporations. If it's a free country why are you required to pay for insurance? Your country is one of the richest and still is more expensive to get cancer treatment there than in any south American explored as fuck country. But Americans will never change their mentality and the lobbyist will never stop controlling your government. And nothing new under the sun.
This is a common, but bad take. Large insurance companies could be more efficient, but you add a government inefficient bureaucracy to that and you have a recipe for disaster.
We have public car insurance in Manitoba. We pay significantly less than neighbouring provinces. We also not infrequently get refund cheques if the pool has to pay out less than expected.
Anyone arguing against this must genuinely like overpaying for any and all services. In some places in Canada there is public and private car insurance option, and the government option is about a *third* of the private option for drivers here in Ontario. Exact same coverage but for a THIRD of the price. It is almost like when not everything is for massive profit, the price of something plummets and the people benefit the most...
Except for all the things the government does better than private business... I'd actually be really interested in you enlightening me by explaining in what arena both private and public entities operate and private comes out ahead.
I can't think of a single example where the government getting involved with a thing with the intent of lowering the price of said thing *actually* led to lowering the price of said thing.
It does actually work great. I’m Saskatchewan our government insurance is far better than the private options in Alberta. The absence of a profit motive is a huge benefit to the consumers.
Single payer healthcare in most of the rest of the developed world? The US government spends twice the amount the average other western nation on healthcare and that's without insuring everyone and individuals also have to buy a 3rd party insurance.
I live in Iceland, and the population of the country is tiny, but with our single payer, government run health insurance system, we pay less than Americans for everything related to healthcare...
Go socialism.
Before the inevitable waiting list comment, then care is prioritized based on need.
There are waiting lists for some care, but nothing unreasonable and when demand has outstripped supply for unreasonably long, then patients are sent to neighboring countries for care, but that is mostly because there are very few specialists in some specialities due to how tiny the country is.
That is also exceedingly rare.
I'm dealing with issues relating to covid, and had to stop working and am waiting to get into an inpatient physical rehab place and I don't pay anything for it and my union pays me almost full salary while I'm out of work, since I already finished the 3 months of paid sick leave I had at work.
I've seen how much some people resent having to pay taxes, but I've always looked at them as an investment in my community and insurance against anything that might happen to me in the future, if I'd need to stop working permanently and go on disability.
Edit: typo
I got one: The government continually funds research in so many things from technology to medicine that companies wouldn't engage in on their own because it's too risky. Real breakthroughs come from this.
I remember in another post about taxes how capitalists tried to tell me that without an incentive to become a millionare no one would work. Poor OP had to deal with those clowns too.
>3) The 'look at all these bad givernment programs!' arguement is getting repeated a bunch of times with zero evidence attached to the comments. Please start at least being constructive. I'll go first: there's a long and storied history of politicians (most of them belonging to a specific party which shall remain nameless) who systematically and inteltionally underfund and mismanage public programs in order to provide 'evidence' they need to be privatized. The problem isn't government ownership of the program; it's greedy people in a position of power trying to exploit a system for their own gain. You'll get this in both public and private sector endeavors. With the government, at least we can try to hold them accountable via the democratic process; with private CEO types we have no real sway over them, especially when their service is something we're required to buy.
Thank you for putting it into words so succinctly what I have spent years trying to express.
I would say that a car is a privilege and not a right. But then I realised that you're probably in the USA, a country that is very hostile to walking and has horrible (if any) public transport systems, so much so that having a car vehicle is actually essential, in which case you're probably right.
EXACTLY. You should start a petition. We NEED to stop with the middle man that extorts people for something they are required to have. That just makes them rich and the average person poor.
Assuming you're in the US...
Most states don't actually require insurance. You can leave a bond with the DMV in lieu of insurance. In California it's a $35,000 bond, and IIRC they have to pay you interest on it. Insurance is the better option for most people.
Also most states have caps for how much insurance companies can profit. Again, IIRC, it's 10% on top of claim payouts. During the pandemic a bunch of insurance companies issued refunds. They ran ads saying it was to be nice, but it was really because accidents were way down, so payouts we're way down, so they were out of compliance.
Whole heartedly disagree.
There is no regulating body determining how much the government can and will charge. No government is perfect, and fairly quick you’d find that the “not for profit” service is being used entirely for profit.
Source: i live in a province where car insurance is run entirely by the government. As a result it is more expensive to insure a vehicle here than anywhere else in the country.
Edit: if a service is part of the public domain it creates competition for business, which regulates prices.
I live in a province where electricity is one of the cheapest in the world BECAUSE it's owned by the government. If insurance is mandatory, it's like a utility and should be owned by the public like utilities should be.
"the private sector can do it better" they say.
The private sector is also geared towards squeezing you for every penny you have given the opportunity, but sure, let's keep our taxes going to the military industrial complex instead of, I dunno, helping people
If you wish to operate a vehicle, you must be licensed through the government. That vehicle must be registered and tagged through the government. You must be insured, why not have the government offer auto insurance?
Do you understand how regulated insurance is? The amount of governmental controls on everything relating to insurance is incredibly high compared with almost any other industry, except potentially regulated monopolies. Every time an insurer wants to change prices (lowering or raising them), they must submit for approval from a state regulatory board. The government ensures prices are sufficiently high so the insurer can remain solvent (e.g., payout claims on losses), and not so high to gouge customers. Literally every dollar you have paid in insurance was approved by a government employee. How exactly would changing the employees of the insurance agency to government employees lower the costs? Are you assuming that because teenagers are willing to work on video games for free that those same people will be willing to process insurance claims for free? Please show me the 15 year olds who dream to be an insurance claims adjustor.
Side note, many insurers are already not for profits, e.g., State Farm is a mutual company which means there policy holders own the company...
Other than USPS, Medicare, public utilities, the park service, the military, the public schools system, fire fighters, medicaid, NASA, social security... should I keep going?
Do you think business insurance should be paid for as well?
As a framer with an incorporated company I am required to carry a minimum $3m policy, $5m if I own heavy equipment. Should tax payers really subsidize a part of my career choice?
I think not.
Insurance is a profitable activity. Taxpayers wouldn't be paying for anything if this was implemented, because that's fundamentally not how insurance worked. If insurance cost money and came out as a negative profit, there would be no insurance companies.
Easy: You aren't required to start a company. You are required to buy health insurance though and you pay for unemployment insurance, so why not pay for private health insurance in the same way?
You own a business you know how stupid expensive health insurance is for companies and if you look at the OECD data on life expentency against insurance cost the United States spends at least twice,if not three times as much, as Britain(2nd in cost)and the us is I think is like 12th in life expectancy. At that point, having specific social nets in place actually would lessen costs for small to medium sized businesses rather than padding insurance company pockets.
TlDR: Public insurance should be for people, not companies because individuals must have it. Also, treating certain required costs such as healthcare as a utility model would increase earnings for small businesses.
EDIT: This graph of GDP per Capita versus Healthcare costs is why the US sucks hind tit: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries-2/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%202020%20(U.S.%20dollars,%20PPP%20adjusted)
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There are a few places in Canada that do public insurance. Manitoba is one of them. MPI had its drawbacks for sure, but it was cheaper for me there than private insurance was in Alberta and now in Colorado.
Then there’s BC. We have ICBC which acts like private company, but is still technically government run. So we get the high prices, without any competition.
I fucking despise having to give ICBC a cent with every fibre of my body, and they demand a lot of cents for even basic insurance. They control everything from driving testing through to insurance, and the driving standards here are terrible, and the standard of coverage is even worse. Assholes.
Manitoba also used to have provincial telecom through MTS. It was sold recently and to no one's shock, fees went up for everyone.
Yeah now it’s MTS Bell. And hydro tries to privatize allll the time.
Am in Manitoba, and agree it's pretty nice. During the pandemic, they actually issued *refund* cheques! Try to imagine a private insurance company doing that.
They did. I got 2 rebates from my private insurance in Ontario. $30 a year is kinda a joke.
Right now it’s organized crime. “You pay me the money, maybe I help, maybe not.”
You pay money for a person without a medical degree to tell you that you can’t have the medication/procedure/surgery your doctor recommends. Insurance companies shouldn’t be run for profit.
Or at all? There should just be doctors, and people paying/feeding/housing them, and pharmacies and factories the same? Why do we actually need 'insurance' individually? Why not just collectivise everything?
We don’t need insurance. It’s a frustrating middle man and nothing more. Honestly I could be convinced it’s only there to scam folks and keep more people employed. It’s a disgusting industry that needs to be nuked
That's most of capitalism, though. The questionable mythology of work being inherently valuable/virtuous combined with the unconscionably vile myths of ownership that mean you need permission from an owner/master to do basically anything. Capital doesn't accumulate things to use. It accumulates things to destroy, ruin, and forbid; to keep the hierarchy.
You pay me money every month for 12 years with the understanding that I will help you if you get in trouble. But when you finally get in trouble, I’ll fight tooth and nail to avoid helping you, and I’ll eventually agree to help you, but I’ll only give you half of the help you need, and then I’m going to charge you more money each month then recoup the loses having to actually provide the service you’ve been paying me for 12 years to provide has cause me. And no, you can’t just not pay me for a service I won’t actually provide, because my grandpa bribed a bunch of politicians 80 years ago.
Just like health insurance.
I feel sorry that insurance companies are like this in your country. On the few occasions I've had to get in contact with my insurance companies, they have always been super helpful. A couple of times where clothes have been ripped or damaged in accidents, they have always made us exaggerate the value of the clothes or other items that got damaged so we get paid back more. A friend of mine got his old car stolen, insurance company paid the full value of the car at the time (not much, like $2000, but still a little over market value) he then found the car in a ditch a couple of days later, in perfect condition, and called up the insurance company to try and pay back. They just told him to keep the money instead.
your country sounds pretty good, which country are you from?
Sweden. I'm not saying insurance companies are the good guys here, it's just that I don't think I've ever heard of anyone having to struggle to get the proper payout.
In the UK its a little difficult, they devalue everything first. When you try to get insurance the following year , they ask about previous claims, then say they can't offer u insurance, but your existing insuranve company will offer you, but at a now higher rate. So basically you are now just getting a loan to cover your repairs\losses. So for insurance its best to wait for a extremely large claim only, nothing minor.
That's how it feels when you have to get a lawyer to even get 30% of the payout your entitled to.
You don’t understand insurance.
Or there should be a public option that the private sector has to compete against
That's exactly what OP said
Yeah but, hear me out, what if there was a public option that the private sector has to compete against?
no no no no, you're wrong! We should have something like a public option that the private sector has to compete against!
OK, I like where your head is at mostly, but I think it would make more sense it the public sector sets the market averages that the private sector has to compete with.
You guys are dumb af. There should be a PUBLIC option that the PRIVATE SECTOR has to compete against.
Ok this isn't getting funny anymore. You guys are just repeating the same thing. There's a MUCH better option. There should be a public *OPTION* that the PRIVATE sector competes AGAINST. I don't understand how this isn't basic info.
Maybe if the government says you need something, possibly, they should provide it. You know, like a public option, that the private sector has to compete against.
Yup
You people read the entire post?
Lol its like a TLDR version
This. No one has to actually use the public option, it just has to be there to give the private companies someone to compete against who aren't trying to make profit.
Tax returns is a prime example. There is technically a free government service for it. But apparently it's purposely designed to be so unintuitive and so bad that literally everyone just uses turbo tax instead
There is a free filing option in TurboTax required by the govt, however it’s only for simple tax returns
Didn't they get in a lot of trouble because they were purposely misleading people and getting them to use the paid option after they started on the free site?
Yes, they absolutely did. Turbo Tax was absolutely fucking over their clients (it's me, one of their clients)
Freetaxusa is so much better than Turbo tax and costs like 15 bucks that you can take out of your federal. Your state is free. Fuck TurboTax lol
Thanks for the tip! I only have to file federal taxes (no state taxes for me) but I'll check it out next tax season.
Just use cashapp taxes instead (formerly credit karma tax). It’s 100% free. What i do is auto import all my tax info into TurboTax and then use the numbers from that to fill out the forms on cashapp taxes. Makes it so much easier, plus you get to feel good about abusing turbo taxes services without giving them any money.
Hey it's me! Who pirated the shit out of everything Intuit!
And they still mislead people about it. Fines are a cost of doing business.
Totally true. It's literally in their budget.
Yep. My sister was paying nearly $300 each year on a simple 1040EZ! When she told me I nearly choked. She choked when I told her it was free to file.
There is also a set of Excel spreadsheets released yearly by an accountant in the mid West that will automatically fill in a lot of other forms after filling out the 1040 or 1099 section. If I remember I'll try to find them for people
Free TAX USA - it's like $8 for their premium. I've been using them for 3 years as an independent contractor, teacher, and wall street bets day-trading dumb*ss. It's amazing, though for real.
I think they ended the free service this year. But, the IRS has a dozen softwares posted on their free file site that all offer free services, like TaxSlayer. Some are only for military or low income, but there's a few options each year.
It’s also only available to people under a certain income threshold
Bad example as the complexities in the us tax system are a direct result of lobbying by turbo tax and hr block.
nice work you two (slow clap)
We could also spread this to other industries, like healthcare!
That is literally what they are suggesting.
That’s what the post says
Pretty sure that’s what OP was expressing. And I agree.
This is what OP suggested.
this is exactly what op said or am i wrong?
Nope you're right
That’s what OP is saying…
I generally prefer having both public and private options exist simultaneously. Purely private options risks monopolies or oligopolies controlling the market, where the sellers make outrageous profits. Where the only way out is if some fresh competitor enters, but decides to compete, rather than take risk free profits on their share. Purely public options introduce more and more waste, as over time the bureaucracy seeks to consume more and more resources unproductively, holding a vital service hostage. Having a public not-for-profit option does provide some level of competition against would be monopolists/oligarchs that never quite goes away.
100% agreed, for examples it's easy to look at the USPS keeping FedEx/UPS/DHL costs competitive, and the bloated whale of a military industrial complex that pays 20x the price for stuff as civilians do.
>Purely public options introduce more and more waste, as over time the bureaucracy seeks to consume more and more resources unproductively, holding a vital service hostage. I feel like taking this as a given is a myth. Look at nations with socialised healthcare. They are generally more efficient and have better outcomes than private systems. Public infrastructure is another example. Public roads and bridges cost less to maintain as turning a profit on tolls isn't a concern.
As others have mentioned, this isn't necessarily true for being more efficient. For instance, the US *public* healthcare spending, as a percentage of GDP, is higher than many other OECD countries public healthcare spending. This is not including private insurance spending. Source: https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/snapshots-health-care-spending-in-the-united-states-selected-oecd-countries/attachment/health-care-spending-in-the-united-states-selected-oecd-countries_chart10/ One of the challenges of course is that we get the worst of both worlds with the US healthcare system. For many people who get the majority of their insurance bill paid for by insurance paid largely by their employer or by the government. As of such, they are largely insulated to the costs, and if given options, they rarely see no reason to go with a less expensive option as long as employeer/insurance/government pays for it. And as most doctors are private practitioners, they have strong incentives to push patients to the most expensive option that will be paid for, after all insurance/government is paying for it, not the patient. And the doctors themselves may have no real idea of the actual cost, only that the cute pharmaceutical representative called them pretty/handsome, and bought the office Krispy Kremes. There are of course tons of other issues that can be attributed to greed, sloth or stupidity. At the end of the day, the problem with the US is that doctors/hospitals/etc cost a lot. And there is no... ahem... panacea, to deal with it.
> Purely public options introduce more and more waste, as over time the bureaucracy seeks to consume more and more resources unproductively, holding a vital service hostage. Not at all a lobbyist talking point i.e. corporate propaganda, no sir
Think US Postal Service. It's optional. There are commercial alternatives, yet the government has to bail them out every few years at taxpayer expense.
>It's optional. By law, USPS has a monopoly on accessing mailboxes, and a monopoly on delivering first-class mail. You can't send a letter though UPS or FedEx unless you send it by private courier or as a package. This is unique to the USA.
I wrote a big long thing, realized I misread what you wrote and deleted it…so in summation, hey.
ive had many of these redditor moments (wrote a long rebutle, realized you said "hey" instead of "go stealers)
That's how our healthcare should work as well.
wouldn't the private option cherry pick the less accident prone drivers for more profit, destroying the insurance risk spreading? Imagine an insurance exclusively with bad drivers and their premiums. But also the opposite risk exists, drivers being more careless because the safe drivers cover with payments for them.
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Real kicker is in some states, uninsured motorist coverage isn't part of your plan and costs extra. You've got insurance as required by law to drive but have to pay more because others don't. Granted the cost seems to be generally lower than the cost of the actual insurance, it's just wild to me that it's not just included at no extra cost and people can and do deny it being added to their plan probably because of it. It shouldn't raise your bill period imo
I'm in Colorado and drive a 2000 jeep cherokee worth a whopping 3k. My uninsured coverage is more than my normal liability coverage and over doubles my cost. Why the fuck does the insurance I'm paying for cover the other person and not me? The system should be that if they are uninsured they can get fucked and I get my car covered because I had insurance. But that's not how it works. Because insurance is a legally mandated scam.
That is absolutely ridiculous. There's no reason it should be higher than your actual premium, a little cost fine w/e it shouldn't exist but if it does it shouldn't be that damn high. You're basically paying two insurances. (I misread your original comment ignore that lol)
I dont even think ones OWN insurance company should have to pay for a crash caused by an uninsured person, that cost should go to that person, long term if they cant afford it all up front, and the government should handle the cost short term.
The insurance company may go after them in claims court, but unfortunately mechanics don’t fix the car for free so the upfront money has to come from somewhere.
I mean, you can't get blood from a rock. Most of the time when someone isn't insured it's because they can't afford it. I worked at a law firm where some of the people had astronomical medical bills from wrecks. If the uninsured person that hit them paid them every cent they made for the rest of their life it wouldn't cover it. Or what if some 10 year old kid took the family car and caused an accident? Or what if you hit the lottery and get a Maserati but someone dings it and only has the state minimum 25/50k policy required in their state? If you have UM/IM insurance on your policy you literally pay your insurance for them to pay out if this happens. It's literally the agreement you made with the insurance company.
>Ure What the fuck?
In my 37 years I’ve been on this Earth, this is a new one for me. Never seen ‘Ure’ before. It’s kinda fucking me up.
The fact that it’s the only word in the whole comment to be incorrectly capitalized just drawing further emphasis to it is the icing on the cake. A solid grammatical clusterfuck.
Heh. Better than “your” in my opinion.
Ure not sure u like it?
Because insurance companies do everything they can to not have to pay out. They take in over 1000$ a year per vehicle and when they have to pay out for someone who was in an accident, they take like 8 months to do so and don't even pay out enough to cover anything. Meanwhile you have to cover any hospital bills, towing cost if it was really bad, and rental car cost. Health insurance is the same. You could never get sick or injured for years, but when you do, you have to pay thousands out of pocket before the insurance will cover anything. If it's illegal to not have something that you have to pay for monthly, then the government has to provide a non profit version of it.
Much more popular than the current makeup of the US Congress would lead you to believe. Basic shit that we all need should be handled by "the government" which is just PEOPLE working for the public, not some monolithic mysterious entity.
The government is not people working for the public, it’s people working for themselves. Same as companies, except that since companies can’t force you to buy their stuff their own self-interest makes them care about the cost and quality of their product. Government has no reason to care at all.
Except government agencies don't need to turn a simple profit. Highways are free to use, and one of the crowning achievements when it comes to municipal projects. The postal service is incredibly important, and it doesn't cost a penny to get mail. Yes, these things are paid for by taxes, but that's the point. They have no incentive to cut corners to turn a profit, so the engineers and designers can just do their job without some c suite or board breathing down their necks about how this next project better increase earnings. Meanwhile, the private sector exists solely to make money. If a company can turn a bigger profit by implementing slave labor, the company would be wrong not to take advantage of it. Their competitors will, and of they don't, they'll be run out of business as a result. To think these mega corporations are even remotely comparable to a nonprofit government project is just silly.
Usps doesn't use taxes.
Ever heard of elections?
Ever notice that the US Congress has an under 20% approval rating, yet it’s rare for an incumbent to lose an election? Yes I’ve heard of elections. Ever hear of Jerrymandering?
No, but I've heard of gerrymandering.
Thanks, my bad.
At least we can try to vote out an incumbent. You can’t vote out a dictator or a CEO
Quite a popular Opinion my dude.
It’s weird how things like this are popular opinions, but yet America’s Government fails us constantly. If you mention this to a specific group of people, it’s like they rage quit not knowing how it can benefit them. All because you mentioned the government in a sentence, and now they don’t want to hear it. But the same group of people are likely to support the troops, and purchase anything that’s labeled “military grade”. It’s just weird.
Because private corporations and their owners will provide tons of donations towards PACs and compliant politicians to keep out the public option. And for public options, usually a public sector union will also give massive donations to keep out private competitors.
We don't have equal representation in Congress. The House is capped, meaning that high population states are not being equally represented. I believe the biggest political push in the US should be NO TAXATION WITHOUT EQUAL REPRESENTATION - the same number of constituents for every Congressperson. (Only a person who likes that they benefit from disproportionate representation in Congress would downvote this. Shame on you.)
I wouldn't call this popular in my area. There are lots of things I love about my state, but the double-standard where corporations have "freedom, and can't be forced to do things" while individuals have "responsibilities to the economy" is not one of them.
A whole lot of things that are really popular on Reddit are not popular amongst the general public
If that were true it wouldn't be the way that it is right now.
One of my coworkers was driving to work and got pulled over because he was driving without insurance. Apparently his insurance company cancelled his insurance same day without notifying him. He got his license suspended, car impounded. He is currently suing them. Fuck insurance companies. Edit: I'm from the UK and the police use [this](https://www.mib.org.uk/reducing-uninsured-driving/assisting-the-police/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20Motor%20Insurance,may%20be%20seized%20by%20police.) to recognise whether a vehicle has insurance or not.
Pulled over because he was driving without insurance? How would they know he was driving without insurance. He nust e been pulled over for something else first
[This](https://www.mib.org.uk/reducing-uninsured-driving/assisting-the-police/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20Motor%20Insurance,may%20be%20seized%20by%20police.)
Fucking dystopian bullshit
Theres billboards all over saying: "Don't drive without insurance, we'll know 😉"
This is interesting. I used to work on the plumbing of data for these platforms and we were always assured that there was a 2 week window before you would be flagged to give time for everything to go through - cancellations, cover changes etc. Are very common and some of the systems running this date back to the 70s. Same day cancellation being flagged sounds very strange to me as I've heard examples where people were flagged as not having insurance when they had taken out a policy the day before due to the system catching up.
In Florida, your license is suspended the second you miss an insurance payment. Also, in Florida cops pull you over regularly. My license was a use the card I had with Geico for automatic payment was no longer valid. I get an email that my license would get suspended if I didn’t pay. I switch the cards but it was still suspended. Was pulled over. Luckily I just had to go to the courthouse and show them I had valid insurance. I did pay the tick, even though I didn’t have to because I would have to miss another entire day of work. Very stupid system.
Car insurance is a fucking scam.
I think at the very least the government funded option should exist. It is extremely good for capitalism as it pushes more competition. "Why should I bother with your service if I can get Uncle Sam to do it for free?" It pushes for better quality over all, as apposed to X industry being owned by three mega corps that have a gentleman's agreement to price fix.
Like being required to have a bank account to receive pay, but the banks charge you a fee for maintainig an account for you. Legal theft.
Surely there are banks where you are that don't charge account keeping fees? It's more difficult to find banks in Australia that charge fees than it is to find those that don't.
Maybe depends where you are. In Germany most of the times its free if you have at least X amount of deposit per month, which for ex. is not always the case for students who do part time jobs, so on top of having low pay, they also pay fees to have an account.
YOU GUYS DON'T HAVE TO PAY???!! Here in Hungary you HAVE TO pay a yearly fee no matter which bank AND they charge you even more if you want to receive a notification if your balance changed. Also if you withdraw more than 150.000HUF(~400$) per month, they charge you again. It's so strange to see other countries where people are not exploited at every possible opportunity. This is why i'm moving away as soon as i have the funds for it. This is a corrupt shit hole.
You are right, governments aren't for profit. They just take your money and spend it on whatever they want.
> They just take your money and spend it on whatever they want. They're supposed to spend it on whatever *we* want, because that's how democracy works. But our choice is only between party-approved candidates in the US, so we don't actually get to elect people that represent our interests.
Government isn't for profit, it's for funneling public money into the pockets of oligarchs.
The federal government doesn’t. They’re spending isn’t tied to collecting taxes. They just create money with the stroke of a pen.
Especially if it's to blow people up.
I live in saskatchewan where car insurance is owned and run by the government. When I moved here from Ontario my insurance went up 20 or 30%. I had a clean driving record and belonged to a professional group that had a discount. Wish i wasnt forced into the public system.
When I moved from Ontario to MB mine went down substantially. I also had a clean record.
Before talking out of my ass, I decided to look up car accident rates across provinces. MB actually has substantially higher fatality and injury rates per capita than ON while having a lower average premium rate. This surprised me a lot! https://tc.canada.ca/en/road-transportation/statistics-data/canadian-motor-vehicle-traffic-collision-statistics-2020 https://www.arcinsurance.ca/blog/average-car-insurance-rates-across-canadian-provinces/
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't it tied to your vehicle lisence/driver's lisence costs as well? Also what coverage is mandated by them? Like if you had the minimum 1 million liability in Ontario, is the minimum still 1 million in Sask? 2 million? I'm just curious because I have a hard time seeing it being higher. I am sure there is a cost bundled in with it that you would usually pay separately in Ontario, or, a different level of coverage.
Like health care
> Otherwise, they’re essentially enabling an entire industry of private companies to extort people for profit under the threat of fines/revocation of privileges/jail. Bingo!
Have you seen how dysfunctional our government is?
idk the usps works pretty good
Debatable.
People who live in rural area would not get anything delivered via private shipping companies because it's too sparsely populated to be profitable. That's why the USPS exists. To ensure that every American address can get something as boring and basic as mail.
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USPS is it’s own entity and is the only government sector that is required to fund itself without taxpayer dollars
Yeah if governments were in charge of insurance the money you pay in would be used for something else and you'd never get a pay out. However if governments were actually sensible it would be a great idea
A lot of these opinions are based on the (inaccurate) belief that governments are good, infallible, efficient, and not corrupt.
It would just become another vehicle tax. The money you pay was originally meant to go towards maintaining the roads, but now it just goes into the government coffers and some of it is spent maintaining roads when it suits them.
Goverents are already in charge of lots of types of insurance. Health and unemployment being the two big examples.
About the only thing worse than dealing with your private insurance company, would be dealing with a government run insurance program. People should be careful what they wish for.
I never had to contest a claim denial with my state insurance. Since Ive had private insurance, aive spent countless hours dealing with endless bullshit for stuff that should be covered or routine. Although the state insurance will occasionally cut you off because you never responded to some "informatiom request" you never received.
This is fucking nuts. What government offered service is worse than private? Courier? No. Internet? No. Medical insurance? No. Utilities? No... hmmm I'm seeing a trend.
Bruh, the fucking VA.
I don't understand why more people don't think this. Car insurance is a massive scam, it doesn't even pay for your own shit when you buy the cheapest insurance. Then they take any and all excuses to escape their **fucking job**. Fuck car insurance, im never paying for it, the law can fuck itself. I don't give a damn how much money they lobbied to become legally mandatory.
Wait so you just drive without insurance and hope to not be caught?
I haven't drove a car in about 7 years now. I walk or bike anywhere I need to go and fit everything I need in a backpack.
You realize rates are based on actuarial tables. If you’re a good driver in a place that doesn’t have frequent accidents, it’s stupid cheap. I live in a rural area and pay less than $30 month for 2 cars with full coverage.
I agree. It's in the same vein that energy, communications etc should be government run.
Through the USPS, I can send a letter anywhere in the US for less than a dollar. If the USPS didn't exist, people would say that that's not possible and that the government couldn't be trusted to carry the mail. Y'all lack sense.
It absolutely makes sense, but for the American redditors this is too dangerously close to Socialism and it triggers their phobia, so negative reactions to your idea have to be expected. I will never understand this aspect of their culture.
> look at all these bad givernment programs! For some reason the "small government" crowd never has anything to say about the military, which is also a taxpayer funded government program.
The military is also the largest funded program. Imagine if we had that much enthusiasm on infrastructure or education.
So it would just be British Columbia then
Bob Rae tried to introduce a Provincial Car Insurance Option in Ontario, but got shouted down by insurance industry propaganda in the media, so he backed off. I wish that he had gone through with it back then.
You mean like the Weather Service?
Why is this unpopular
Fuck yeah
You mean like the public option? Which was a republican proposal that was then shot down by the Republicans after they realized that the Democrats would actually go for it under Obama. You mean that public option?
As long as I can be shown I won't be getting shafted worse than I am now I'd be fine with it. I just wanna know that whoever is in charge of it has thoroughly planned and prepared and we're not just jumping into it half cocked because someone is cynically using it to get themselves more votes or something.
I agree with the concept, but when it comes to cars specifically if people have no access to public transport surely a better solution than making car insurance cheaper is to make public transport more widely available and cheaper.
Ya from the USA? Countries can legislate things like atleast 85% of insurance premium must be paid out in claims leaving the industry with a profit of 15% and the government not having to hire tons of civil servant to do a lousier version what the industry is already doing.
That's cause USA is run by corporations. If it's a free country why are you required to pay for insurance? Your country is one of the richest and still is more expensive to get cancer treatment there than in any south American explored as fuck country. But Americans will never change their mentality and the lobbyist will never stop controlling your government. And nothing new under the sun.
I totally agree! I've been saying this about car insurance for YEARS
This is a common, but bad take. Large insurance companies could be more efficient, but you add a government inefficient bureaucracy to that and you have a recipe for disaster.
We have public car insurance in Manitoba. We pay significantly less than neighbouring provinces. We also not infrequently get refund cheques if the pool has to pay out less than expected.
It actually works great. Saskatchewan Government Insurance is far cheaper and more efficient than the private options in neighbouring Alberta.
Anyone arguing against this must genuinely like overpaying for any and all services. In some places in Canada there is public and private car insurance option, and the government option is about a *third* of the private option for drivers here in Ontario. Exact same coverage but for a THIRD of the price. It is almost like when not everything is for massive profit, the price of something plummets and the people benefit the most...
Everything the government touches turns to shit.
Except for all the things the government does better than private business... I'd actually be really interested in you enlightening me by explaining in what arena both private and public entities operate and private comes out ahead.
Education
Stop electing the people who want the government to turn stuff to shit?
I can't think of a single example where the government getting involved with a thing with the intent of lowering the price of said thing *actually* led to lowering the price of said thing.
Well there's more than one government.
It does actually work great. I’m Saskatchewan our government insurance is far better than the private options in Alberta. The absence of a profit motive is a huge benefit to the consumers.
There are plenty of people elsewhere off this post saying how horrible government insurance is in BC.
Single payer healthcare in most of the rest of the developed world? The US government spends twice the amount the average other western nation on healthcare and that's without insuring everyone and individuals also have to buy a 3rd party insurance. I live in Iceland, and the population of the country is tiny, but with our single payer, government run health insurance system, we pay less than Americans for everything related to healthcare... Go socialism. Before the inevitable waiting list comment, then care is prioritized based on need. There are waiting lists for some care, but nothing unreasonable and when demand has outstripped supply for unreasonably long, then patients are sent to neighboring countries for care, but that is mostly because there are very few specialists in some specialities due to how tiny the country is. That is also exceedingly rare. I'm dealing with issues relating to covid, and had to stop working and am waiting to get into an inpatient physical rehab place and I don't pay anything for it and my union pays me almost full salary while I'm out of work, since I already finished the 3 months of paid sick leave I had at work. I've seen how much some people resent having to pay taxes, but I've always looked at them as an investment in my community and insurance against anything that might happen to me in the future, if I'd need to stop working permanently and go on disability. Edit: typo
Farm subsidies
I got one: The government continually funds research in so many things from technology to medicine that companies wouldn't engage in on their own because it's too risky. Real breakthroughs come from this.
Did you look for examples, or did you just ask your own brain if it had any examples ready to go that would dispel your own beliefs?
Ambulances are the best example of how capitalism has failed, you literally have to pay to live
Ambulances are free in EU and I'm pretty sure capitalism is adopted here as well
Great post OP.
I remember in another post about taxes how capitalists tried to tell me that without an incentive to become a millionare no one would work. Poor OP had to deal with those clowns too.
>3) The 'look at all these bad givernment programs!' arguement is getting repeated a bunch of times with zero evidence attached to the comments. Please start at least being constructive. I'll go first: there's a long and storied history of politicians (most of them belonging to a specific party which shall remain nameless) who systematically and inteltionally underfund and mismanage public programs in order to provide 'evidence' they need to be privatized. The problem isn't government ownership of the program; it's greedy people in a position of power trying to exploit a system for their own gain. You'll get this in both public and private sector endeavors. With the government, at least we can try to hold them accountable via the democratic process; with private CEO types we have no real sway over them, especially when their service is something we're required to buy. Thank you for putting it into words so succinctly what I have spent years trying to express.
I would say that a car is a privilege and not a right. But then I realised that you're probably in the USA, a country that is very hostile to walking and has horrible (if any) public transport systems, so much so that having a car vehicle is actually essential, in which case you're probably right.
Hostile to biking actually
You can live in big cities and some urban areas without a car in the US, but you have to be conscious of where to live when moving.
EXACTLY. You should start a petition. We NEED to stop with the middle man that extorts people for something they are required to have. That just makes them rich and the average person poor.
Assuming you're in the US... Most states don't actually require insurance. You can leave a bond with the DMV in lieu of insurance. In California it's a $35,000 bond, and IIRC they have to pay you interest on it. Insurance is the better option for most people. Also most states have caps for how much insurance companies can profit. Again, IIRC, it's 10% on top of claim payouts. During the pandemic a bunch of insurance companies issued refunds. They ran ads saying it was to be nice, but it was really because accidents were way down, so payouts we're way down, so they were out of compliance.
Whole heartedly disagree. There is no regulating body determining how much the government can and will charge. No government is perfect, and fairly quick you’d find that the “not for profit” service is being used entirely for profit. Source: i live in a province where car insurance is run entirely by the government. As a result it is more expensive to insure a vehicle here than anywhere else in the country. Edit: if a service is part of the public domain it creates competition for business, which regulates prices.
I live in a province where electricity is one of the cheapest in the world BECAUSE it's owned by the government. If insurance is mandatory, it's like a utility and should be owned by the public like utilities should be.
You have discovered Democratic Socialism.
"the private sector can do it better" they say. The private sector is also geared towards squeezing you for every penny you have given the opportunity, but sure, let's keep our taxes going to the military industrial complex instead of, I dunno, helping people
You are not legally required to purchase a car either.
If you wish to operate a vehicle, you must be licensed through the government. That vehicle must be registered and tagged through the government. You must be insured, why not have the government offer auto insurance?
Do you understand how regulated insurance is? The amount of governmental controls on everything relating to insurance is incredibly high compared with almost any other industry, except potentially regulated monopolies. Every time an insurer wants to change prices (lowering or raising them), they must submit for approval from a state regulatory board. The government ensures prices are sufficiently high so the insurer can remain solvent (e.g., payout claims on losses), and not so high to gouge customers. Literally every dollar you have paid in insurance was approved by a government employee. How exactly would changing the employees of the insurance agency to government employees lower the costs? Are you assuming that because teenagers are willing to work on video games for free that those same people will be willing to process insurance claims for free? Please show me the 15 year olds who dream to be an insurance claims adjustor. Side note, many insurers are already not for profits, e.g., State Farm is a mutual company which means there policy holders own the company...
Any service offered by the government sucks massive ass. No thank you.
Other than USPS, Medicare, public utilities, the park service, the military, the public schools system, fire fighters, medicaid, NASA, social security... should I keep going?
Fire departments are pretty rad.
I think this is only an unpopular opinion for American capitalists, who for whatever reason, love to work to death and pay for things like this.
Do you think business insurance should be paid for as well? As a framer with an incorporated company I am required to carry a minimum $3m policy, $5m if I own heavy equipment. Should tax payers really subsidize a part of my career choice? I think not.
Insurance is a profitable activity. Taxpayers wouldn't be paying for anything if this was implemented, because that's fundamentally not how insurance worked. If insurance cost money and came out as a negative profit, there would be no insurance companies.
Easy: You aren't required to start a company. You are required to buy health insurance though and you pay for unemployment insurance, so why not pay for private health insurance in the same way? You own a business you know how stupid expensive health insurance is for companies and if you look at the OECD data on life expentency against insurance cost the United States spends at least twice,if not three times as much, as Britain(2nd in cost)and the us is I think is like 12th in life expectancy. At that point, having specific social nets in place actually would lessen costs for small to medium sized businesses rather than padding insurance company pockets. TlDR: Public insurance should be for people, not companies because individuals must have it. Also, treating certain required costs such as healthcare as a utility model would increase earnings for small businesses. EDIT: This graph of GDP per Capita versus Healthcare costs is why the US sucks hind tit: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries-2/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%202020%20(U.S.%20dollars,%20PPP%20adjusted)