Insurance companies should not have to disclose your credit score because quite simply, they should not have access to your credit to begin with. We are not asking for credit when we buy insurance. But why stop at just a credit score? Maybe insurance companies should lobby lawmakers for a complete family history, a psychological test or two, and throw in a polygraph test for good measure. There are very few things that I detest more than the insurance industry.
Perhaps investors should have access to publicly traded companies, like American International Group, and prior to buying any stock in a publicly traded insurance company the company directors should be made to furnish and disclose their own credit histories and worthiness. Bank directors should have to furnish their credit histories before customers deposit money in their banks. You want full disclosure from us? How about letting consumers start prying into the business executives personal lives, discovering how many homes they have, how much they make, if they pay bills on time, or whether they use company jets for little vacations to unwind from all that hard work?
I find it absolutely fascinating that an industry can compel you to buy their product, indeed passing laws that require it, and then use every excuse imaginable to squeeze more money out of you. It is equally fascinating that people accept this. You have a certain breed of dog, Mr. Jones. Oh sorry, we rate your homeowners higher. You have the V-8 in your car Mr. Smith, we charge more for that. Our studies show (our- being the operative word) that you will be one fraction of a percent more likely to get in an accident than someone with a V-6 engine. We will have to charge you more. Oh your credit score? We can interpret that anyway we want and rest assured that we will find some ridiculous reason to rate you higher.
Insurance companies manage to pass laws that reduce their exposure to risk. You see, they are risk managers. Reducing risks means more money to them. So they lobby intensively for laws that force you to wear seat belts, helmets, hardhats, or any other device they believe will reduce or minimize their losses. They are very adept at conspiring with lawmakers over cocktails to pass legislation in the name of safety when in actuality they could care less. It’s all about the money. They fight no fault insurance tooth and nail.
If in fact you ever do make a claim, then you get to don your headgear and do battle with adjusters. Their sole purpose in life is to reduce the insurance companies risk once you make a claim and settle on some partial and ridiculous amount. Sign away your right to sue them. Everything is “hunky dory” as long as you send in those premium checks. Once you make a claim that all changes. In places like New Orleans and S.Florida, homeowners pay through the teeth for property and casualty coverage. I know one homeowner paying 900 a month on a 200,000 dollar home in New Orleans. More than the cost of her mortgage.
Oh and the excuses insurance companies make. Trying to cap awards and settlements. The problem is that lawmakers, a huge proportion of which happen to be lawyers, don’t fall for that rhetoric. Insurance companies can’t whisper some safety sales pitch in the lawmakers ears. They don’t want to hear it because just as insurance companies suffer from greed, so too do those lawyers making laws. Insurance companies like blaming insurance losses on fraud. Of course. Everyone suffers from theft. It is a cost of doing business and yet I see very little in the way of insurance fraud investigators actually working with police departments in a routine way. Once in awhile they show up in some isolated fraud incident that is exposing them to tremendous loss. More often than not, they simply use adjusters to nickel and dime mom and pop when they finally make a claim. Maybe cancel their insurance after wards.
I cannot tell you how many hundreds of thousands of dollars of mine have found their way into health insurance, title insurance, car and vehicle insurance, life insurance, property and casualty insurance, disability insurance, or any number of other insurance products. Absolutely outrageous and astronomical costs of malpractice insurance. There is no way to calculate the cost. My personal claims have amounted to very little of that cost. How do you calculate the cost of an individual’s taxes paying for the 180 billion dollar bailout of A.I.G.?
Here’s the bottom line. The insurance business has overstepped it’s boundaries. They sell a product. They are a monopoly, and although they have a few different names, they all play the same game. They use information that has no bearing on whether you pay for your product and get coverage in return. They use your own information against you. Insurance companies have no more business ordering a credit report on you than your electric utility, your phone company, your dog groomer, or your grocer. If you pay your bill, that’s all that counts. I don’t want their prying eyes in my personal life, I don’t want them impinging on my personal liberty by plying lawmakers with cocktails, and I don’t want their silly and self serving statistics which are a broad generalization and have very little to do with any given individual.
My insurance premiums have never gone down. After all those safety advances, crusades on drunk driving, and every other conceivable law that benefits insurance companies and saved countless lives, not once in 35 years have I reaped a financial benefit. Using a credit score is just one additional method to justify stealing more dollars from their “customers.” I can’t wait for the day that insurance companies start administering psychological tests and polygraphs. If they could figure out a way, trust me they would.