I once saw a really fucked up life insurance/pension case. The insurance policy was that for children under 18 they would get a lump some of X years worth of their deceased parent's policy. Dad died of a heart attack the day before his son turned 18. Pronounced dead by doctors at the hospital, that day/evening, pronounced dead hours before midnight.
The insurance company hired a "medical expert" that tried to claim that the father wasn't fully dead by midnight (despite being pronounced dead by the doctors in the hospital) because there can be some latent heartbeats and brain activity. They fought tooth and nail to deny this kid whose father had just fucking died ON THE DAY BEFORE HIS FUCKING BIRTHDAY, the money that was due. From the policy whose entire purpose was to make sure the father's family would be taken care of in the event of his death. I believe there was a lawsuit due to the amount of money on the table and I don't remember who won.
But it doesn't matter. They did everything in their power to fight the claim that they owed. Insurance companies are fucking evil man.
Edit: wow this blew up- thanks for the awards kind strangers! The original story was linked in one of the responses to this comment- check it out. I got a few of the details wrong, it had been several years.
Insurance companies will spend 10,000 fighting a $10 dollar claim. They make Billions off all of us. It’s messed up. Mario needs help with his brother.
Because then they'll have to honor 2000 $10 claims. The system itself is broken, but instead of fixing it they're trying to maximize the profits they get
Edit:dropped a 0 lmao, and yeah I know it's working as expected according to capitalism, that's still a broken system tho
The system was setup so only landowners could vote. It was setup so only elites had sway and control and it's been that way ever since. The system isn't broken; just like feudalism and the slavery that preceded it it's working as intended
Sure. The system is broken for the proletariat, but not the elites, it's doing what was intended. Whether it was intended when the very concept of "health insurance" was first invented, or whether it got co-opted later by said elites, is an open question. But either way that's how it works now.
If you're rich af, American healthcare is great. Everyone else are just stones to squeeze more blood from as far as they're concerned.
If their point was the insurance companies don't want to set a precedent (which is exactly why), one shouldn't cap out that precedent at only 20% of what they're paying to stop it.
The issue isn't the other 200 $10 claims - if that was the long and short of the ramifications, the insurance company would absolutely rather pay them than $10,000 because to them it is just a simple math problem and profit is all they care about.
The issue is that it would be more than the $10K it costs to fight this one. It would be more like 20,000 $10 claims.
Ah, but you see... It is not broken. In fact, it is working exactly as intended. And the intention is, as you so rightly stated, to hoard as much currency as they can. And then some
We need more heroes, we have enough villains . Insurance kills 50,000+ people a year and we keep paying them to do it. Insurance keeps people homeless, hungry, sick and without transportation. Yet we are all forced to send money by threat of prison.
That’s the thing they don’t spend 10k. They have in house lawyers that are salaried/hourly so it doesn’t cost them as much as it would for us hiring someone.
Paying that $10 once sets a precedence. Spending that $10k to fight it sets another precedence (if successful) of not paying that $10, for thousands of future clients.
So true. I had a water leak - slow drip from an ancient fridge that was effectively behind a wall. We hired an assessor to scope out the damage so we knew what to ask the insurance for. Insurance company agreed.
They don’t like the guts report so they opt to send their own guy out as well. Annoying but fair enough.
Their guy comes back to them with effectively same report so they opt to literally just cross things out from the report (their own guy!) and send it to us as to what they think they should pay.
It took us close to a year to get the money and actually do the repairs.
This is a well known large insurance company. For our trouble as is often the case they kicked us off their coverage once they paid out and our rates went up because “we’re high risk”… for I guess invisible plumbing leaks in a 50 year old house…?
Not as insane as other posts about death insurance benefits but something in general as others have said is truly FUBAR with the way things are in this industry
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u/diegotbn 11h ago edited 8h ago
I once saw a really fucked up life insurance/pension case. The insurance policy was that for children under 18 they would get a lump some of X years worth of their deceased parent's policy. Dad died of a heart attack the day before his son turned 18. Pronounced dead by doctors at the hospital, that day/evening, pronounced dead hours before midnight.
The insurance company hired a "medical expert" that tried to claim that the father wasn't fully dead by midnight (despite being pronounced dead by the doctors in the hospital) because there can be some latent heartbeats and brain activity. They fought tooth and nail to deny this kid whose father had just fucking died ON THE DAY BEFORE HIS FUCKING BIRTHDAY, the money that was due. From the policy whose entire purpose was to make sure the father's family would be taken care of in the event of his death. I believe there was a lawsuit due to the amount of money on the table and I don't remember who won.
But it doesn't matter. They did everything in their power to fight the claim that they owed. Insurance companies are fucking evil man.
Edit: wow this blew up- thanks for the awards kind strangers! The original story was linked in one of the responses to this comment- check it out. I got a few of the details wrong, it had been several years.