I need/want someone to talk to. I am home all day with my wife but since she has dementia she no longer talks. So I cannot have any type conversation of more than 2 or 3 words with her. But I have a lot to say about a lot of things and just wish I had someone to talk with. I do have about 5 or 6 friends whom I speak with occasionally. But that’s not the same as having a person right here to converse with whenever I need or want to. When I do have conversations with my friends, by telephone, the conversations usually last half and hour or an hour. But I don’t talk with them every day, only about once a month.
A topic that I want to talk about is what I consider the biggest problem with life in the US these days. I think that the major problems stem from two major US institutions, the insurance industry and the advertizing industry. The insurance industry is like a legalized racket and it is fed by the advertizing industry. These days the insurance industry is involved in just about everything we do and everywhere we go. It didn’t used to be that way. And what makes these insurance companies so much worse is they always try to find a way to not pay for your losses or pay just the minimum. And the reason there are so many insurance companies covering so many different parts of our lives is the profit margin/return on investment is about 50% to 60%.
Now days you have to have insurance on your house. When you go to buy a house you must pay for title insurance. And most times you have to pay that again when you refinance your house. Then there are other companies that want to sell you insurance on the appliances in your house. Most appliance companies try to sell you insurance, they call them warranties but it’s the same thing, when you buy an appliance. And if you don’t buy a warranty when you buy the item they will call or write you in a few days, weeks, or months to offer you another opportunity to buy insurance, nee a warranty.
Even when you have insurance on your house the insurance companies have “riders” that help them not pay for damages or losses in certain situations. In some cases you have to pay additional to cover these riders, like, for example, flood insurance. Several years ago there were cases where insurance companies did not want to pay for hurricane damage in the New Orleans, LA area after a major hurricane hit the area. They called the damage water damage rather than hurricane and wind damage. In some states like Florida you have to have a rider on your home insurance, or a separate policy to cover wind damage, and flood/rain damage is also a separate policy. And when calamities occur in places other than where your house is located the insurance companies jack up your insurance rate, nee: the price you pay, to cover their loses in other places. One time I called my home insurance company when the price of my homeowner insurance went up to ask why. I told them I did not have any loss claims and there were no storms and tornadoes in my area. The agent replied that there were storms that caused damages in other parts of my state. So they increased my price to cover their loses other places.
Now you have insurance on your house but that does not cover your car or truck that may be parked in or near the house when there is hurricane or tornado damage. The vehicle requires its own insurance policy and you must have a rider to cover hurricane or tornado damages. Otherwise the car insurance just covers an accident with another vehicle or a utility pole or some types of property damage like a fence or lawn.
Back in the 1960's car insurance was not even required. You could have insurance if you wanted it but state and local laws did not require it. Then the insurance companies got behind closed doors with law maker and persuaded them to require insurance on every car. Then they tightened the laws to require car insurance before you could renew your car tags each year. Then to make matters worse for consumers, car insurance companies began adding a fee to each car policy to cover what they called the “uninsured motorist”. And this uninsured motorist fund was not per policy but per car. So if you have 2 or 3 vehicles insured they charged this fee for each vehicle even though you could not be driving more than one at a time. So many times, when I had three vehicles, I paid more for the uninsured motorist fund than I did for liability insurance on one vehicle.
Then in addition to your car insurance there are now companies that want to sell you insurance to cover the parts of your car that might fail. And the advertizing for these car parts warranty insurances are really very deceptive. Some advertisements claim that your car will automatically break down the moment that you original car warranty expires. They falsely claim that you will have huge bills for repairing major parts of your car like the engine, transmission, radiator, air conditioning, and computer parts. But they never mention exactly how much this warranty insurance will cost per month or year. That’s because the policies are expensive and over time you will pay more for those policies than if you didn’t have the policy and just paid for the repair when something happens. In addition, most of the things that they say will go bad are just false advertising. I have driven at least 4 cars well over 100k miles and none of them broke down when the warranty expired and none needed new engines, transmissions, or other major parts when the milage went up. There are some part on your car that you should expect to wear out (not break down) as the milage goes up. Parts like brakes, starters, alternators, batteries, air conditioning parts, etc will wear out. But the major parts of cars will, with proper maintenance, last for years after the warranty has expired. If you buy new tires for your car the tire dealer will try to sell you, offer you, insurance called a warranty on the tires.
Most of these car parts warranties are very expensive. They can be $100 to $150 a month. But the advertisements for these car warranties never tell you what they cost. If you do the math you will see that these warranties cost more than your yearly car insurance. And you are likely to get absolutely no benefit from these warranties because its rare for cars to break down unless they are mistreated. The car warranty seller make a big deal of frightening you that your “check engine” light will come on and then you will be in big trouble. In fact when that light comes on the repair could be as small as replacing a sensor, vacuum hose, or gasoline cap. Its not the end of the world for your car and necessarily a huge repair bill.
OK, so your house and car are insured and then you have to be concerned with health insurance. But insurance companies do not offer an all inclusive health policy. You must buy multiple policies and select from multiple options to cover all of your health needs. You must buy a policy that covers you for doctor visits and also for hospital stays. And those are considered separate options and each has its own “deductible’ (meaning additional money you must pay) before the full effect of the policy goes into effect. If you want coverage for your eyes, and glasses that is a separate policy or an additional rider on your health insurance policy. If you want to cover your teeth that is also a separate policy or rider on your health policy.
Many years ago when I first signed up for health insurance I remember that there were more than 160 health insurance companies all across the US for Federal employees to choose from. I bet that number has grown by now. Just look at what the Federal Gov’t has done with its medicare and medicaid health insurance policies. Why two programs. Because the Medicaid program is for very poor people who cannot even afford a Medicare policy. And within Medicare there are multiple options, parts a, b, c, and d. And then there is a separate insurance program for veterans and they can go to VA hospitals to get care.
One big insurance program being promoted and advertised these days is what is called “life insurance”. This insurance does not prevent you from dying and you really never get the benefit of it. It pays for your funeral when you die. And the insurance companies have been really pushing this type insurance and overstating the cost of a funeral. Some advertisements now claim that a funeral can be $10 to $12K or more. I am pretty sure that this is an overstatement. One advertisement added that in 20 to 30 years an funeral will cost as much as $30K. Now its true that if you buy all of the top of the line offerings of funeral homes you may end up spending more than $10K to $12K. But the average funeral can be as low as $5K. And you can save a bunch of money by electing for cremation instead of a casket and burial plot. And you can also buy your casket from a casket company instead of the funeral home or cemetery and save a lot of money on that item.
The latest things that insurance companies are selling is pet insurance, for your cat, dog, or other pets. So you are going to take a trip? Companies now offer travel insurance and there are some types of travel that you may want to get that insurance because of the unexpected delays that occasionally occur.
While the insurance industry affects almost all parts of our lives we get very little return for these policies. Most of us get the most and best return from health insurance policies. But we pay for insurance on our homes, cars, and even some health problems and never get any return for our investment.
An AARP newsletter recently reported that the reason that insurance companies flourish is because their return on investment is usually 50 to 60% . In my case I have been paying for a homeowner insurance police for the better part of 40 years and at a rate of at the least of $500.00 per year. And for that more than $20K I have received absolutely nothing in return. I have had no claims for any damage or theft or fire at any of my homes. So that 20K is a 100% profit for the insurance companies. It’s almost the same with my auto insurance companies. I had a had a few claims for damage or minor accidents but the insurance company has still made a 40% to 50% profit on my auto insurance policies.
ADVERTISING
Some time I wonder how people who are in the advertising industry can sleep at night. So many TV and other advertisements are either untrue or in most cases very deceptive. I have heard it said that only about 10% of people believe what is presented in advertisements.
In addition to overstating the effectiveness of products, many advertisements are just plain deceptive. The advertisements have disclaimers posted but the print or type size on the TV screen is about the smallest that you can get and many times the disclaimer is posted and then removed from the screen so quickly that you cannot read more than 2 or 3 words of it. And then they also use another deceptive trick, posting the disclaimer in white letters on a white background, or in blue letter on a blue background so you cannot read it. And what I really hate in advertisements these days is the ones that give you about a one second view of something and then the images go on to something else. It impossible to get an accurate account of anything if you are only given one second to see it.
Advertiser have people who are spokesperson for products state that it was great for them. Sometimes these parsons are identified as “paid endorsers” and sometimes they are not. So the average person cannot tell whether the person making the claim is a true user or just someone paid to say the words in the advertisement. And for some reason advertiser think that if they get a celebrity to make a statement in their advertisement the public will be more likely to buy an item. I personally don’t care whether a celebrity endorses a product or not. And there are some celebrities who make millions of dollars on top of their already huge salaries or incomes by endorsing products. A few years ago it was retired football player Payton Manning who seemed to be in about four or five TV commercials for different products. Now it retired basketball player Shaq O’neil who is in about five commercials. So you see his face several times a day on several TV channels.
I loved the good old days when things advertised on radio and TV included candy bars, chewing gums, ice cream, bread, canned goods, shoes, department stores, automobiles, tires, gasoline, and just about anything you could go to a store and buy. Now days there are advertisements for things you cannot buy without a doctor’s prescription. And many things now advertised should not be on TV. The pharmaceutical companies are at fault for these advertisements but those who work in the industry also bear some of the blame, along with broadcast companies who want every dollar they can get.
Its my feeling that in general your doctor knows what is best for you but these advertisements will tell you to tell your doctor you want this product. And as far as I am concerned if its not an item that you can go to a store any get yourself without a prescription, then it should not be advertised on TV. And where do the pharmaceutical companies get the names for their products? I think they just put all of the alphabets in a bag and then pull out seven or eight of them and that’s what they call the product, regardless of whether it spells anything the average person knows. They just make up new names for their products.
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