The company you renew with has the opportunity to charge higher rates or issue a rider eliminating low back claims from coverage.
Instant Adversary
The quickest personality change in the world comes in that instant your "claim" for loss is made. Your friendly carrier, those lovely people who extended their hands in protection, guaranteed your freedom from losses, covered your infirmities and disabilities, and assured you that they were "solid as a rock" now become your adversaries.
The Carrot Before You Turns into a Stick -- With Which You Are Beaten
Insureds have been called "liars, thieves, and pillagers" in front of family, including children, when every fact points to a legitimate claim. Other promised benefits are deliberately made difficult and expensive to continue to collect.
A lifetime abstainer's workers' compensation claim has been denied on the basis of "drunkedness" without the slightest bit of investigation; liability has been denied on the basis of "the patient was not employed by the company" when, in fact, he had been employed by that company on the same job for multiple years with an excellent record for attendance.
Arbitrary Denial
Some carriers will also deny claims arbitrarily just to see if their client, who trusted them as their protection against loss, will complain or threaten suit, leaving instructions to the adjusters to pay the claim if a complaint comes in and to ignore it if there is no threat. How's that for the extended hand who asks for your trust and guarantees your freedom from losses?
Yes, of course, every company will also pay many claims promptly ... sometimes; the point being that you will rarely know their response until faced with a loss. And, yet, they advertise with a great message: Trust us; we are worthy of your confidence.
He who believes that has never filed a claim for loss, nor does he have any friends or neighbors who have.
David and Goliath -- You're David without a Slingshot
Such adversaries, when choosing to combat with you, are often without principle; plus, every advantage is against you. They are one of the parties in dispute, and at the same time, the judge of the same dispute.
And they have many years' experience in knowing what a policyholder will or won't do in a host of circumstances. Plus they have almost unlimited funds to delay, appeal, harass or do whatever they wish, so the intimidated policyholder is usually wise to accept their judgment, swallow the loss and forget the whole matter.
Required Insurance
Workers' compensation, Medicare and auto liability as well as homeowners' policies are generally requirements in our present day society and deserve special mention.
The Greatest Victory
Medicare, for example, represents the insurance industry's greatest triumph to date. Via that mechanism they are forcing every American on Medicare at the age of Medicare eligibility, whether needed or wanted; this is their contribution toward making America a welfare state.
This same great victory means all the investment money from premiums collected when risks and losses were comparatively low, now becomes theirs with negligible risk against it -- plus the person involved gets to pay for his expensive medical years via taxation. This, of course, will be the second time policyholders have paid for medical care in their declining years.
The Aftermath of Uninsurability
The practices of insurers today distancing themselves from the medically needy, their ability to issue "riders," and their rate setting procedures now guarantee the existence of a group of Americans who cannot purchase insurance or afford medical care. This is the carrier's second great contribution toward making America a welfare dependent state.
Who takes care of these individuals? Surprise. It's you, the public, who now have the opportunity to again make insurance much more profitable by taking care of the aftermath of their greed. Medicaid and the other social services grow, and will continue to grow so long as insurance is allowed to extract profit from the public without being responsible or accountable for the human waste left in their wake.
Walter R. Rhodes, D.C., F.C.C.C.
Fort Worth, Texas