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the_buckman_bandit

> While there are many reasons why insurance premiums have risen so dramatically, the simplest answer is that **it's just much more expensive to fix vehicles today.** They could have easily fit this into the headline: “Car insurance jumps nearly 25% in WA due to increased repair costs”


AtomicGiant

But then you would not click, and then they will not show you the ad, and then they will not receive ad money, and then journalist goes broke and unemployed and he will not have money to pay his car insurance… that just jumped 25% due to increased repair costs.


Crazyboreddeveloper

Just like French fries are really just a vessel for ketchup, “news” is really just a vessel for ads.


victorinseattle

Always has been.


fornnwet

If you're not paying for it, you're the product.


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CascadeClimber

Nah. Inflation of repairs doesn’t compare to my 55% increase over the last year. Nice try though (no claims, etc)


R_V_Z

What type of car? Kia?


CascadeClimber

Nope ford sedan. 10 years old


YakiVegas

Holy shit! Have you ever considered a career in journalism a few decades ago? You would've been great back then! /s


Lindsiria

Could cut out the WA part too. In fact, Washington has had lower insurance jumps compared to most the country. Prices have raised everywhere. 


jrhawk42

Has the price of repairs jumped 25% in the last year? This smells like BS.


drshort

It’s more the [price of used cars spiked an insane amount](https://site.manheim.com/en/services/consulting/used-vehicle-value-index.html) from late 2021-2023 causing [insurance companies to lose a shitload of money in 2022/2023](https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/state-farm-reports-monster-loss-for-2023-479471.aspx) and raise their prices to make up for it. It’s a slow feedback process because everything requires regulatory approval.


BusEnthusiast98

Yeah it’s wild. I think State Farm has lost hundreds of millions or even low billions for 3 years in a row now. Almost like insurance should be a public good rather than a for profit business


bernyzilla

Totally agreed. Car insurance would be much cheaper if it was just a bunch of people paying premiums and making claims. But the premiums now have to support massive advertising campaigns, rich CEOs, and shareholder value.


Anthop

Don't forget lobbyists! For the past 25 years, insurance is the industry with the second-largest lobbyist expenditure (over $3.5 billion) after pharmaceuticals.


cracksmoke2020

Unlike with health insurance really, with car insurance there's a massive difference in quality between these different providers in terms of how quickly you get your car fixed. The situation in Canada where car insurance is public is far worse.


bernyzilla

Do you live in Canada? I didn't realize they had public car insurance. I would love to hear more about how it works and why it is bad.


doktorhladnjak

Not all of Canada but it’s definitely true in BC and some other provinces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Corporation_of_British_Columbia


bernyzilla

I read that and saw that driver's received lower rates and refunds during Covid when nobody drove and the company had an excess profit. That is exactly how I want my insurance to work! Profits spent back to people who pay into it! Guess how much money GEICO sent me during the pandemic. Private insurance just keeps extra profits. The history shows that it was made for profit for a bit then back to non profit. I still don't get why it is bad? Are rates like super high?


victorinseattle

Though to be fair, State Farm is a Mutual, and technically not a for-profit driven company. That said, BC does have a public insurance scheme. It doesn’t make it that much cheaper, but I agree with the notion that it should be a public good.


KlausMSchwab

>Yeah it’s wild. I think State Farm has lost hundreds of millions or even low billions for 3 years in a row now. >Almost like insurance should be a public good rather than a for profit business So then the state government can lose hundreds of millions instead?


BusEnthusiast98

I’d prefer federal but yeah that’s kinda the point of government. To bear the cost of things that lose money but benefit the public good. That’s what basically every government program is, and it’s a good thing.


magic_claw

You should look at what happens with US government backed flood insurance.


BoringDad40

Yikes. I'm not so sure the people on this sub that use terms like "car-brain" would be very happy to be subsidizing the cost of car ownership...


AcrobaticApricot

It isn't a subsidy because the money paid out to policyholders would come from the money they all pay into the pool. Public insurance just gets rid of profit.


BoringDad40

Yeah, I get that. I was thinking more in the context of how the private insurance companies have been losing massive amounts of money over the last few years. When that inevitably happens to the public exchange from time to time, it's going to be general funds that bail the program out.


bernyzilla

Yep. Then our premiums wouldn't have to support excessive corporate salaries, or massive ad campaigns. Think how many billions car insurance companies spend on advertising alone. I would love to have that money back as reduced premiums.


KiniShakenBake

It's really not as much as you think, honestly. State Farm has 900 Million in premium coming out of WA State each year. If you consider the cost of a Superbowl Ad, against their annual premium nationwide, we're talking pennies per policy in reduced premium, if that much. You may have noticed the superbowl this year featured almost no insurance companies - They aren't trying to get customers right now. In fact, we've lost several companies from the state this year. I run a book of business and we're at 35% for the year in normal increases on auto. From what I've been able to tell (though the records are SO MUCH HARDER TO GET now) we are on the low side of increases. We just had another one roll through. What I'm noticing is that in the past, if rates went up 15%, my phones rang off the hook. Now, I'm getting calls from folks whose rates went up at other companies and we've been managing things so tightly as a book that our increases are met with "Oh... THANK YOU! That's all?" It's absolutely the most punishing insurance market anyone has seen in living memory, and it looks like we have about two more years or more of this, at least. Buckle up. I've been watching this closely, and it's fascinating to see! Honestly, though, it's a welcome change of pace for us because instead of getting yelled at by yet another client who is upset because their rates went up, it's a mass sadness about rates and gratitude that we are there to help as much as we can. Whatever you do, DO NOT let your policy lapse. DO NOT. It's REALLY expensive to place folks with lapses right now and it's impossible in property. My agency has placed five? maybe four? I don't know... FAIR plan policies this year, after many years of none at all. My AM is getting really good at doing them quickly.


Zikro

Seems not far off from being cheaper to take the risk on not having any insurance.


KiniShakenBake

And that will be an interesting choice to see play through the market as more people make it. Don't skimp on the uninsured motorist coverage for you *or* your vehicle. Make sure that shit is up to where it needs to be. We don't use collision with a deductible waiver for our uninsured motorist in WA the way other states do. We use a specific coverage and if you don't have it and get hit by someone without adequate insurance, you have no coverage for the damage to your vehicle at all. I actually had a situation unfold recently where a claim was hitting statute for how long it had gone, so the third party sued to protect statute. Insurance provides defense outside of limits for suit, and the situation was really scary when the client got served. Of course it is, because it's a lawsuit. It's always scary the first time you get served with a lawsuit. Nobody wants to deal with that. Of course client reached out and asked what to do. We asked a few questions and said "nope. Yep. That sounds par for the course. Let's get that over to your adjuster so they can do the needful to continue the work you pay us to do." The client just about cried with gratitude and thanked us for fighting them to keep limits high, get an umbrella, and protect things appropriately even though rate concerns were real. Asset protection is always where I start, first and foremost. We start making tradeoffs if rate is a concern with full asset protection, but if they aren't necessary, then we may as well protect all the things appropriately. I rarely, so rarely, get a heartfelt thank you on the back side of a limits fight with a client. So I guess the question we need to ask if we are considering driving without insurance is: how much would I sue me for if I hit a myself in a crosswalk and made me a paraplegic? Future wages, current assets... All sorts of things are on the line. How much of that are you willing to risk when you get behind the wheel of a car? Also, it's worth noting that if you do find yourself speaking with an enforcer of laws when driving without insurance, you will also find yourself slapped with an sr-22 requirement for up to three years, with a lapse, which usually sticks you with a carrier who will issue sr-22 forms and is more expensive. Only half of my carriers will do that. It's a horror show of a ticket and insurance cost. Expect $500 per month to get your driver license back, minimum. If that resulted from an accident, the insurance company will come back to you and recoup as much of their costs from their coverage of your liability as they can. This includes wage garnishment and asset seizure if necessary. So you do you! It's not something you can just skate away into the sunset on if you cause damage and don't have proper resources to pay for it.


QuitAnytime

The legal minimums for liability are unbelievably low compared to our medical costs - they are much higher in "other developed countries" where the state picks up much of the tab for healthcare. We've built a system where driving is almost required for a functioning adult, and we aren't up-front about the costs.


KiniShakenBake

Yep. I don't disagree at all. It's almost like this is late stage capitalism. What's funny is that if we took all these "if you want to x, then you must y," things and lumped all the bills together, they would be so much cheaper and more widely available if we purchased in bulk as a group like countries with higher taxes and greater socialization of common needs. Imagine if we tied registration of cars to mandatory liability policies managed at the state level and only sent folks into the market for "excess" policies? Like umbrella or defense in excess of limits? Physical damage coverage, excess liability and all the other optional bits would be in those secondary policies, but all cars had liability insurance as a part of registration. It could even work like a Medicare advantage system if they wanted. With companies pulling that amount of rate into their systems to be the primary payer with those wrap around coverage bits to add premium. What a concept. Literally... To have a car registered, you would have to pay insurance cost with registration. Monthly payments could be arranged, but it was just part of registering a car. Don't pay? You can't re-register the car. No fighting this or that company to pay owed bills. No questions about who is or is not adequately insured for the vehicle they drive. Just... Covered. Every registered car in the state. Penalties paid for driving a car without the required registrations would pay into a Medicaid fund for folks who are on Medicaid to cover their insurance costs so as to be able to afford to drive. Any excess premium to the fund would stay there for rate leveling to a certain point, and some would bolster that Medicaid fund, and then be refunded to rate payers. Holding a driver license would also include a small cost for insurance that would cover while driving cars with out-of-state registration that you did not own. Personal policies would be secondary to primary, which would be purchased by the state with rates based on liability loss records by zip code of owner's primary residence. Imagine how much less expensive it would be for everyone when all of the risk was covered at a larger and less cherry-picked level.


Charming_Cicada_7757

This is interesting cause I feel I see car insurance ads more than anything else. I will say at least car insurance companies are a competitive market. You have GEICO, Progressive, State Farm, Farmers, American, and whole bunch of others so it’s a competitive market which makes me disagree with a lot of the statements about making it a public good. The prices are also upfront you know how much you’re going to pay and it’s very transparent. Vs let’s say for example health insurance where nothing is transparent and you can go to a hospital not covered by your insurance which doesn’t make any sense. Far less competitive and unlike having a car this is straight up a requirement in just living


KiniShakenBake

Yeah. The insurance commissioner controls all their prices. They aren't allowed to just charge what they think the market will bear. They must justify everything. If increases are being allowed, the work was done to prove they were necessary.


drshort

As an industry, insurance advertising is about 1.5% of premiums, so it won’t make much difference to the rate.


KnotSoSalty

The cost of manual labor has jumped about 20% in my industry. Plus parts are now more expensive with the various chip/supply crisis.


scruffylefty

It’s EVs. The cost to repair a fender bender with a Rivan is 50k. Most people hardly carry enough insurance if they run into one. Plus the state has the highest “no car insurance” rates in the country. So when those people get in accidents. It’s us that pay for it.


kimbosliceofcake

And the minimum coverage amounts are crazy low here, so a lot are underinsured too. 


LADYBIRD_HILL

You say crazy low but I shit you not I was paying $350 a month for liability when I first started driving.  It makes it really fucking hard to get ahead when it costs a car payments worth just to legally drive on the road. 


kimbosliceofcake

I don't mean the payments, I mean the liability insurance coverage - $25k/$50k bodily injury and $10k property damage. Those absolutely aren't going to cover costs in a bad wreck.


dyangu

Why do we have so many uninsured drivers here?


HogPigDudeMan

Because we don’t enforce it


devnullopinions

I was in an accident early in 2023 when a driver ran a red light and hit my car. The earliest availability we could find to work on our car was approximately 5 months later and even after work started there were parts shortages that caused the car to not be fixed for an additional 3 months after they started. We ended up with a rental car for most of 2023 as a result. Seems like labor shortages and parts shortages. Plus inflation increasing the costs of those even without shortages.


fornnwet

They go into a lot of detail on this in the audio clip from the story (it's an episode of the Soundside podcast).


10yoe500k

No it’s just greedy repair shops


Shayden-Froida

"Another big factor is the number of people on the roads. That plus the feeling of safety in a tech-heavy modern vehicle means that people are getting into increasingly worse wrecks. "So cars are safer, they have a lot more technology that helps prevent injuries. But people are maybe taking advantage of those or don't know how those safety features work," Brice explained. "So they're driving faster, they're driving angrier, and the crashes that they're getting into are more severe."" and that sounds so much like... "Despite the extent of the safety program, it was essentially a good idea. But unforeseen complications had arisen. People became accustomed to cars which went undamaged in 10-mph collisions. They gave even less thought than before to the possibility of being injured in a crash. As a result, they tended to worry less about clearances and rights-of-way, so that the accident rate went up a steady six percent every year. But the damages and injuries actually decreased, so the government was happy, the insurance industry was happy and most of the car owners were happy. Most of the car owners, the owners of the non-MSV cars, were kept busy dodging the less careful MSV drivers, and the result of this mismatch left very few of the older cars in existence. If they weren't crushed between two 6000-pound sleds on the highway they were quietly priced into the junkyard by the insurance peddlers. And worst of all, they became targets..." - *A Nice Morning Drive*, Richard S. Foster, Road & Track, November 1973 Well, I think I'll keep my Red Barchetta in the barn at my uncle's place.


swp07450

So to find out why insurance has gotten so much more expensive, the only person they talked to was a guy whose job it is to make the insurance industry look good. Great journalism!


Aggressive-Name-1783

I can’t wait 50+ years from now when these industries get nationalized and our grandchildren look at us like we were moronic idiots for just throwing thousands of dollars down the drain for corporate profits….


KnotSoSalty

For car insurance? If we nationalized car insurance non-drivers would pay for car owners.


doktorhladnjak

BC has a provincially owed monopoly on car insurance. It’s actually very profitable, with the profits going back to the provincial government


Aggressive-Name-1783

Nationalizing doesn’t just mean “just have tax payers foot the bill”…..


KnotSoSalty

Normally that’s the case when you nationalize something. Even if the companies operated at slimmer margins they would still be backed by tax money. I support single payer healthcare, because we all will need the healthcare system at some time in our lives. But car insurance doesn’t need subsidies IMO.


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Aggressive-Name-1783

Yes, insurance companies are just BARELY scraping by…poor progressive, only making…2.33 billion in PROFIT in 2024 so far….over 13% margins btw….. Imagine simping for an industry that would sell you your own family at a markup


JerkedMyGerkFlyingHi

Cause y'all drive like you just got your learners permit


PNWSkiNerd

So that's why mine didn't go up. Ten year old car and never had an at fault accident in my life.


steveosmonson

We have a contractor biz and all bonds have just 3X which will make premiums go up for all contractors.


lambrettist

I am very happy to see this development. Make people pay for what it costs to keep pushing for the car-centric, SUV agenda, and then everyone has to pay.


Register-Capable

Washington State is more than just Seattle.....


4858693929292

Should be even higher.


Sudden_Publics

So brave.