Single-Payer Auto Insurance

[SHRED]

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Why not?


I find it insulting that we have laws saying you must purchase auto insurance.
Unless of course you are wealthy and can be self insured.

I believe that If our government is going to require us to have auto insurance then they should have an affordable single-payer type national auto insurance.
To force us to pay retail prices from private insurance corporations is criminal in my opinion.
I realize we have "Insurance Commissioners" but I do not trust that the big lobby PAC money hasn't warped their views also.


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[rucky]

1. Why ruin such a great racket?

this is the free market at work, dammit! The government shouldn't involve themselves in anything that doesn't directly benefit corporate welfare.

[MadHound]

2. Have you ever been hit by an uninsured motorist?

Have you ever had to pay out of pocket for an accident, and damage that wasn't your fault? Have you ever had to pay for medical bills that were caused by somebody else? If you had, I think you would be changing your tune.

You see, there's a big difference between a person's good health and driving a car. The former is a right, the latter is a privlege. If you can't afford the insurance, you don't get to drive, it's that simple.

Having had to shell out a few thousand dollars for damage that wasn't my fault, I have absolutely no problem requiring people to have insurance in order to drive.

[SHRED]

4. having affordable insurance

means more people will be insured.

get it?

[RB TexLa]

6. or you can just buy the un/underinsured coverage

[MadHound]

9. Ah yes, get screwed out of money one way or the other

One way is a slow bleed, the other is all at once. Frankly I think that uninsured drivers should be treated like drunk drivers, jailed, license revoked, and forced to pay restitution.

For your own information, I do have uninsured driver coverage, however I resent having to lay out cash for it due to others complete irresponsibility.

[RB TexLa]

10. I agree with the resentment, Responsible people have to pay for

the irresponsible acts of others in most aspects of life.

[EST]

12. Good point--

One of the fundamentals behind the current system is the assumption that irresponsible people need to be forced to accept at least a minimal amount of responsibility for their actions or the lack thereof.

[MindPilot]

19. Pretty much all that does is reimburse your deductible

after you've found yourself in the surreal position of filing a claim against your own insurance company.
But it's silly to be without it since a recent stat I heard is roughly 40% of the people you are sharing the freeway with at any given time don't have insurance.

[MadHound]

8. Again, this isn't a right, unlike health care.

By you're logic we should have other such privileges subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Sorry, I don't buy it. Where are you going to get the money, especially if we get single payer health care? What, more borrowing?

Frankly I don't find auto insurance onerous these days. Back when I was younger and poorer, no, I couldn't afford it and found other means of transportation. No big deal.

[RB TexLa]

3. Very different. Causing property damage with an auto accident creates a direct

loss to another individual. Different than being sick without health insurance.

[OzarkDem]

7. True

Lack of health insurance results only in the death of the uninsured. No one else is harmed.

Maybe it would be better if uninsured people who can't get care suddenly went around committing crimes. That might get someone's attention and motivate everyone to get affordable health insurance for everyone.

[OzarkDem]

5. Health insurance is much more expensive

than auto insurance.

Please explain how a single adult making $8 an hour is going to be able to afford $500-$800 a month for health insurance?

Please also explain how a newly diagnosed cancer patient who is unable to work can afford same health care preimum.

Thx.

[EST]

11. What you say makes sense.

The real point should be no-fault, if insurance is accepted as the needed item.
Some states had, at least at one time, don't know their current status, a no-fault insurance system, where there was a more adult, responsible way of looking at the problem of making whole the injured party.

The biggest problem, as you point out, is that there are (as with ecological niches) always things growing anywhere there exists the resources to grow. And with people-created systems, anywhere there is a spigot of money, there will be someone there sucking on it and doing whatever it takes to protect that leak.

All insurance, anywhere it exists, has grown from a management system, dedicated to getting some healing applied to the damage someone inadvertently suffers, to a profit making way to extract riches from the system--performing functions that aren't really necessary--and a way to try to assign guilt.

Be prepared, if you see it as important enough to take it on as a goal, to spend most of your life getting it changed. Change is possible, but it will be the product of years of effort, not merely pointing out the obvious-to us-excesses and waste of the current system. Good luck! I've hollered about this for forty years with little result.

[jody]

13. You have the choice of not owning and using a car on public property. I believe a majority of car

owners support mandatory auto insurance for cars driven on public property.

[Froward69]

15. Not I

[Froward69]

14. Remember when They said rates would come down?

They didn't. so why believe rates would come down for health insurance?

[mainegreen]

16. So this is what your saying in effect:

The right to not have to die simply because you can't afford treatment can be reasonably compared to this: the .. right (cough)... to not have to pay for liability coverage on a car that you can afford because you can't afford the remarkably cheap liability coverage, unless you drive like a class A asshat?

I find that a wee bit of a stretch.

[MindPilot]

17. I masturbate to fantasies of being hit by someone with insurance.

In the half-dozen or so crashes I've been involved in my life, not one, not a single one involved anyone else who had insurance.

I agree with the poster that uninsured drivers should be treated the same way as drunks. In fact, I would go even farther and say that uninsured drivers are worse than drunks. A drunk is only irresponsible when driving drunk; an uninsured motorist is irresponsible every second of every day that he owns the uninsured vehicle.

Single-payer car insurance I don't think is such a good idea; it seems like the assigned-risk pool requirements work pretty well to make insurance available to everyone.

If you can't afford insurance; you can't afford a car. The two are inseparable.

Disclaimer: the subject line is hyperbole but we don't have an icon for that.

[papau]

18. Of course you can just get a bond to pay damages should you get into an accident - I

believe New Hampshire just requires some low amount like 5000 or 25000 - my memory fails as to the amount - but the alternative I believe still exists.

[scisyhp1]

20. No reason why not. In fact a single-payer auto insurance system

does exist in British Columbia, Canada, in the form of ICBC (Insurance Corporation
of British Columbia). Or at least it did when I lived there in 1998-2001. It is a
non-profit crown corporation, which handles both insurance and registration. The system
is very efficient and transparent, with vast majority of population supporting it. Only
car owners pay premiums, of course. Any profit made in a fiscal year must be given back
to policy holders next year in the form of lower premiums. One cannot get a registration
and liscense plates without being insured. The only down side - you are completely deprived
of all the joy and excitement of shopping for car insurance.