Batten down the hatches! Prepare for stormy weather… After a multitude of hurricanes battered the American soil insurances companies are readying to cover… themselves.
Today, you would not dream to live without insurance. Health, car, fire, flood, travel, pet insurance… Name it, there is an insurance for it. But what exactly is ”insurance”? According to various dictionaries, it is defined as follows:
“A practice or arrangement by which a company or government agency provides a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a premium.”
Everything looks great on paper, until disaster hits. That’s when you discover the notorious “fine print” tucked at the end of a lengthy document… it tells why you won’t be compensated fairly and squarely.
No matter how long and how much you paid, the insurance company will find plenty of reasons for denying coverage or raising your premium.
I have been with the same car insurance company for 31 years. I never had an accident. Two years ago, while pulling out of our mutual parking spots, my neighbor and I rear-ended each other. A casual fender bender. Despite my long stretch of accident-free years, my premium immediately jumped up.
What about all those accident-free years? Isn’t worth something? Sorry mate, it does not count!
To me, an insurance policy is like a Ponzi scheme, where the operator constantly collects money from new investors to pay old investors.
It is a calculated gamble. The insurance company gambles that it won’t have to pay you anything for a long time (preferably forever) while pocketing your money.
But if coerced to pay, it will find be a multitude of reasons to penalize you.
My heart goes out to the residents of Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico who lost practically everything in successive storms. Despite solemn promises, it will take a very long time (if ever) for victims to be compensated.
When you look carefully at your insurance policies, you realize that what they protect best is the insurance company.
But to be able to sleep at night, you need to continually feed the hungry beast. If you dare to stop, you will lose everything. All the money that you have already paid and some eventual coverage.
But cheer up… If you are lucky, POTUS might toss you a few rolls of toilet paper.
Alain