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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
478 points spking | 9 comments | 17 Jan 25 00:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.418s | source | bottom
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bluedevil2k ◴[17 Jan 25 01:50 UTC] No.42733208[source]▶
Like we see in California, when the government sets a price ceiling, insurance companies just leave. Same in Florida. If the free market truly was allowed run normally, the insurance rates in Pacific Palisades or on the Florida coast would be so high that no one could afford to live there. Is that a bad thing? If someone was living in a house near where they tested missiles, we'd call them crazy. At what point can we say the same about people building and rebuilding over and over in these disaster areas.
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underwater ◴[17 Jan 25 02:05 UTC] No.42733293[source]▶
Price caps always seem like such a transparent political move.
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mgiampapa ◴[17 Jan 25 02:11 UTC] No.42733332[source]▶
How about profit caps? I feel like government stepping in and being the insurer with a sufficiently large pool of risk to spread around lets them set a fair rate without the need to make a return or answer to shareholders.

To some extent this has helped with health insurance. Each year I get a check back from my insurer saying they didn't spend enough on my care vs my premiums.

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1. bitcurious ◴[17 Jan 25 02:19 UTC] No.42733377[source]▶
> To some extent this has helped with health insurance. Each year I get a check back from my insurer saying they didn't spend enough on my care vs my premiums.

This has baffled me ever since Obamacare was first passed - it seems that each year the insurance companies have an incentive to drive up the cost of healthcare, since that’s how they earn more money in absolute terms. Is it not so?

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2. nradov ◴[17 Jan 25 02:28 UTC] No.42733448[source]▶
That is so, to an extent. But it's balanced against employer demands to hold down medical costs because they pay most of the bills. If your HR department can save 5% on employee medical costs by switching from Blue Cross to Cigna next year they'll absolutely do it.
3. gunian ◴[17 Jan 25 05:33 UTC] No.42734403[source]▶
Any idea why Obamacare didn't follow the European model? Other than the freedom argument

People on HN always talk about European health insurance seems like an easier route than to murder people lol

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4. umanwizard ◴[17 Jan 25 06:22 UTC] No.42734633[source]▶
First of all there isn’t one “European model”, every country in Europe has its own system.

To answer the substantive point, it’s extremely difficult to pass substantial laws in the US due to the structure of its political system. The mandatory coalition of the president + 60% of the senate + 50% of the House of Representatives is a much higher bar than any other democracy. So laws aren’t written to be optimal policy, they are written to satisfy this extremely high coalition requirement — Obamacare in particular was very fundamentally weakened from some of the more expansive initial proposals to address the concerns of one or two senators and get them on board.

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5. gunian ◴[17 Jan 25 06:46 UTC] No.42734776{3}[source]▶
but people always talk about how insurance is guaranteed in europe something must be working if gunning down a CEO is pro the people wouldn't copying one of the European countries be even more pro the people?

what makes senators hate something that is pro the people? wouldn't that give them better ratings? I come from a dictatorship so sorry if this is a dumb question

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6. selimthegrim ◴[17 Jan 25 13:49 UTC] No.42737474{4}[source]▶
Senators have to spend $$$ to get elected
7. hb-robo ◴[17 Jan 25 14:57 UTC] No.42738148{4}[source]▶
There is an unlimited amount of potential financial gain from American politics, both in lobbying and campaign financing. It is also widely true that the candidate with the most money spent in a campaign is heavily favored to win the election, with the exception of the presidency which is more contested. Now consider that in the 2020s the richest people now have more money than God.

The short of it is that you can get anyone you want in office, to do anything you want even if it directly opposes their constituency, as long as you spend enough money on them to get them in office, buy their vote, and keep their PR afloat.

Gilens and Page (2014) found that "average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence" on American government policy: https://www.scienceopen.com/document?vid=e4797592-9d73-4f2b-...

Worth noting that this paper saw pushback for many years after the fact but measurably, its conclusion has been true since its release.

8. mercutio2 ◴[17 Jan 25 14:59 UTC] No.42738180{4}[source]▶
Murdering people is not pro anything.

The answer was already given: it was politically infeasible to pass a single payer variant in the US. And it’s not clear it would have been good even if it had been feasible.

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9. gunian ◴[18 Jan 25 01:39 UTC] No.42745009{5}[source]▶
Sentiments on Luigi seem to put him on the same level as Rosa Parks or Jesus Christ if not higher both on HN and Reddit but that is ancedotal

Could you say a bit more about the politics? this is very fascinating idk much about insurance or politics

This may be super simplistic but Europe, if you look at it at a high level, is as diverse as US states if not more because a lot of places have multi party systems instead of a two party system with comparable diverse interest groups and comparable GDP etc

What did they figure out to have insurance that the US can't? Or doesn't want to?