You may have auto insurance, homeowners insurance, life insurance, health insurance, disability insurance and business insurance. You pay the premiums every month, quarter or year as agreed in your policy. Are you insured? Perhaps, perhaps not.
Did you read your policy that was provided by the insurance company? I mean really read it, not just scan the dollar amount of coverage. Unless you are an attorney experienced in insurance law, you wouldn't understand most of it anyway. The concept of insurance is simple enough: You pay a premium to a company that will pay you in the event of loss.
So if your house is insured against loss by fire and your house burns down and your premiums are up to date, the insurance company will pay you for your loss. But, hold on a minute! What exactly is your loss? You say it is the cost of replacing the house and the belongings lost in the fire. The insurance company will have other ideas. Now the fine print in your policy comes into play. What was the cause of the fire? What does the policy have to say about negligence? What about depreciation of the property and belongings. Your property and belongings will cost you $300,000.00 to replace, and that doesn't take into account the sentimental value of those items that cannot be replaced. The insurance company has offered you $100,000.00. Who decides what you will get? There is an entire industry built around that question. Law firms and lawyers make billions every year arguing who is right.
Insurance companies hire attorneys to draw up their policies to favor insurance companies. When was the last time you hired an attorney to look over your insurance policy when you payed for the insurance? With the high cost of premiums, most people would think that spending another $500.00 is a wasted expense. An honest attorney would tell you that the policy heavily favors the insurance company and that if you ever file a claim, there is a good chance you will never collect ten cents on the dollar. He would tell you that there is a reason insurance companies record record profits every quarter.
This is true of every type of insurance you buy. The insurance companies spend vast fortunes to fight nearly every claim on some level. Yet, they record profits in the billions. Think about it, are you insured?
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An excellent point. I paid into insurance for 20 years. When I made a claim, I had to fight for 3 years to get any money, and have still had to get lawyers (and the State Department of Insurance) involved to get the rest of it. This company has been repeatedly fined multi-millions, had verdicts in the multi-millions, and still hasn't cleaned up its act.
ReplyDeleteYou do the responsible thing, paying your premium every month, and then they refuse to do the responsible thing when it's their turn to pay you.