Property/ vehicle insurance increases

[tony]

Erie, been with them 30 plus years
Check them out.

 

[Bluefish]

Same here. Unbelievable increases over the last two years. Was told by one insurance company that rates here in Texas and Florida went up due to disasters and the number of claims paid out. Umm how’s that my problem? I’ve never had a claim on my homeowners. Ever. I F****** hate insurance companies.

Insurance is simply cost sharing with a profit for the company doing the paperwork. We all pay a portion of what they pay out. Unfortunately places are forcing lower premiums by law so the companies have to charge more elsewhere. I read that they were paying $1.09 for every $1 of premiums in SoCal. That can’t last long and I expect these fires will test the whole insurance industry. They may just leave markets that they can’t make money.

I know a guy who was actuary at an insurance company. I am curious to see what his take on the fires will be to rates.

 

[KsRancher]

I drive a 2003 chevy diesel with 394,000 and my wife drives a 2011 yukon XL with 276,000 on it. Our insurance keeps going up. When I called in and asked about why it keeps going up for a vehicle that keeps going down in value. I was told "it's not your vehicle why it's going up, it the $90,000 SUV or pickup that you hit". I don't know if that's true. Or just some BS sales pitch.


Someone already mentioned that homeowner insurance goes up because our houses keep appreciating. That is understandable. It's just hard to swallow when you get a 30% bump in one year.

 

[Bluefish]

I drive a 2003 chevy diesel with 394,000 and my wife drives a 2011 yukon XL with 276,000 on it. Our insurance keeps going up. When I called in and asked about why it keeps going up for a vehicle that keeps going down in value. I was told "it's not your vehicle why it's going up, it the $90,000 SUV or pickup that you hit". I don't know if that's true. Or just some BS sales pitch.


Someone already mentioned that homeowner insurance goes up because our houses keep appreciating. That is understandable. It's just hard to swallow when you get a 30% bump in one year.

The liability is a big cost. When we had a 1 ton van it was double any of our other cars. It’s big and heavy so it would do more damage. It also cost a ton to fix any newer car. I asked my local body guy about fixing a scratch on my truck bed. He said $3k minimum. They would pull the bed, fix the dent, then respray the bed and put on new stickers.

The other big cost is uninsured. I know in Houston my brother has taken to running a video camera due to being hit so many times by illegals that run. All those accidents get passed on to people who pay.

 

[180ls1]

The other big cost is uninsured. I know in Houston my brother has taken to running a video camera due to being hit so many times by illegals that run. All those accidents get passed on to people who pay.

Yup. This future president or doctor hit and ran us with my wife and daughter in the car on Christmas Day. Wife snapped a pic. Notice he is still on his phone?

 

[30338]

American Family has been very good on home and auto. I check them every 2-3 years and they seem competitive for my coverage. Plus have had 2 large hail claims in last 3 years.

For health insurance, we went on the Colorado state exchange and have gotten very good pricing with BCBS. Huge deductible but good pricing.

 

[MallardSX2]

If AAA Roadside goes up one more time, im
Dropping them. They went up to $170/year on me. I’m over it.

 

[Jstumbaugh]

AAA is one of the biggest scams.

 

[Szwampdonkey]

There’s a book called “the price we pay” by Marty makary that goes into a lot of this stuff in detail. Hospitals charging $75 for a pillow and sheets and hoping people don’t notice. Guaranteed reimbursement by Medicare (albeit at lower levels) empowers these medical entities to charge whatever they want and the people utilizing it don’t care. I see this on the ambulance all the time. People telling me it’s cheaper to call 911 than get an Uber to the hospital. Direct quote. They know it will be covered and they don’t care that we’re all paying for it.

I work for a hospital and that’s not why a hospital charges $75 for a pillow. I assure you Medicare does NOT just pay it and the hospital is making huge profits on it.

Medicare pays a tiny percentage (determined by them) of what’s billed. Often times they will just flat out deny the pillow as unnessecary and not pay a dime on it. Even though everyone knows the patient needed said pillow (procedure, medication, therapy, etc). So if the hospital knows their cost for the pillow is $7.50 and Medicare will only pay 10% they bill $75 so they don’t take a loss and can continue to pay their RNs, MDs, and PTs so they can treat you. If they charged the $7.50 it cost them to give it to you Medicare would pay them 10% of that, so .75 cents. Do that long enough with enough things the hospital doors close and you have nowhere to be treated.

Commercial insurance will very often follow what Medicare does. So now you know how it all works. Hospitals are 100% NOT getting paid $75, or 100% of what’s billed for a pillow (or whatever procedure, treatment, etc)

 

[yfarm]

Anybody that believes that Medicare and Medicaid pay the cost of care is dreaming, everyone else pays for those patients mandated discounts by paying inflated fees- read about cost shifting.

 

[Yoder]

If the value of the assets you own continues to increase, then insurance has to go up doesn’t it!?!? You payed $500k for your house and now it’s “worth” 1mil+, the insurance has to cover the replacement cost of your new million dollar property.

People love to brag about how much their land/house/farm/vehicle/etc is worth, but then complain about how much the insurance and taxes went up.

I would imagine all of the a holes burning down the country in 2020 didn't help our rates.

 

[mt terry d]

Government is the largest deadbeat customer of medical care.

 

[fmyth]

I work for a hospital and that’s not why a hospital charges $75 for a pillow. I assure you Medicare does NOT just pay it and the hospital is making huge profits on it.

Medicare pays a tiny percentage (determined by them) of what’s billed. Often times they will just flat out deny the pillow as unnessecary and not pay a dime on it. Even though everyone knows the patient needed said pillow (procedure, medication, therapy, etc). So if the hospital knows their cost for the pillow is $7.50 and Medicare will only pay 10% they bill $75 so they don’t take a loss and can continue to pay their RNs, MDs, and PTs so they can treat you. If they charged the $7.50 it cost them to give it to you Medicare would pay them 10% of that, so .75 cents. Do that long enough with enough things the hospital doors close and you have nowhere to be treated.

Commercial insurance will very often follow what Medicare does. So now you know how it all works. Hospitals are 100% NOT getting paid $75, or 100% of what’s billed for a pillow (or whatever procedure, treatment, etc)

Apparently only people who are uninsured or those with high deductibles are actually charged the sky high "chargemaster rates". My deductible is 15k. If I had an emergency room visit and the hospital calculated the bill based on the chargemaster rates for the visit at 16k I would pay 15k then my insurance would get a bill for 1k but would likely only pay $100 because they have previously negoatiated a lower contracted price. I feel hospitals should only be able to charge the consumer the same prices they have negotiated with their lowest paying insurance company.

"Hospital chargemaster rates are the equivalent of Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price or MSRP in car buying markets. They are little more than the price a seller would ideally like to charge a consumer. Hospitals set their own chargemaster rates – there is no legal requirement or set formula a hospital must follow when establishing the basis between chargemaster rates and costs. As a result, chargemaster rates are unlikely to be accurate reflections of actual hospital expenses.
Recently, The Montana Office of the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance examined the ratio between 10 acute hospitals’ expenses and chargemaster rates.
The state concluded that what the hospitals listed as chargemaster rates for all payers would cover between 192 to 384 percent of the hospitals’ actual costs.
A hospital may also change chargemaster rates at any time – prior notification is not always required – and mark-ups on hospital-purchased services and supplies like durable medical equipment are not disclosed. All of these features make it difficult for public and private payers to use chargemaster rates as a way to establish relevant prices to pay to hospitals. Hospitals instead negotiate discounts off their chargemaster rates with individual and group plans.
In fact, almost no one actually pays the publicized chargemaster rates. The vast majority of health care consumers are represented by a payer of some kind, such as a commercial health insurance company, Medicaid, or Medicare. Commercial insurers negotiate the actual prices they pay during the process of contracting with providers. Medicare and Medicaid establish their own payment levels independent of hospitals’ chargemaster lists – Medicare through the federal government and Medicaid through state governments. (The cruel irony of the chargemaster is that the uninsured are the most likely to be billed chargemaster rates because they are not represented by a payer. NASHP will be exploring this issue in in future work.)"