Collective Moral Hazard

Thou Shalt Not File Claim

Written by: Mike Tonsetic

I have been to the mountaintop my brothers & sisters, and the Insurance Gods have spoken! Inscribed in lightning upon these tablets, I deliver unto you their will!

No, no, no need to worry, Manic Preacher Mike is just a character I play on TV. All kidding aside, as DISCLAIMER: I will never tell you not to file a claim. However, I will preach to you until the cows come home on the deadliest sin of them all…

A Collective Moral Hazard

Simply put, we’re all sinners. Me, you, the insurance companies, the lawyers, the roofing industry, and the list goes on; have ourselves created this insurance limbo. We’ve commoditized into complexity such a simple concept.

Insurance is designed to make you whole again, no worse, no better. You crash car, they fix car. Your home burns down, they rebuild. Yes, the devil’s always in the details, but for purposes of this conversation, we’re just going to focus on the greater universal perspective.

I’ll confess, I think where we all went wrong was when industry started selling ‘cheap’. We adopted this ‘well, I guess I gotta have it’ attitude, coupled with a ‘and I ain’t paying a dollar more’ sentiment. Some might compare it to putting a TV on layaway that you can never pick up, but the insurance show may not be suitable programming for impressionable minds…

Use It & Abuse It

Yeah, I know everyone hates paying taxes, but it keeps society from dissolving. Everyone hates paying their insurance bill for the same reason, as in there is no immediate satisfaction and noticeable gain. If you can imagine the chaos of a world devoid of societal infrastructure, just imagine what one would look like without insurance. Pretty scary and ugly right?

Now some may convince you otherwise, that somehow you are ‘owed’, or my personal favorite, you ‘deserve’ something. A roofer may knock on your door preaching to you that you ‘deserve’ a new roof for paying all that premium over the years. An attorney may flash your entitlement on a billboard. But this completely defies all logic and the concept of ‘making you whole again’.

You wouldn’t set the curtains on fire just to build a new house, because that would be arson. You wouldn’t brake check a semi just to pay for a chiropractor’s visit, as that would be insane. You wouldn’t take a sledgehammer to your kitchen sink just create a slip & slide on your kitchen floor. Yet, this still seems to happen, and a lot of it happens right here in FL.

Busted Piggy Bank

Just earlier today I used an analogy in correlating insurance claims with a piggy bank, and I think this ties in with how I end every blog, with some simple, yet sage advice: Keep funding that old piggy bank with quarters and not pennies, because just like crappy cheap coverage, the last thing you want to be doing is rolling pennies when the bank busts; and for god’s sake: ONLY BREAK PIGGY BANK IN CASE OF FIRE!!!

Click to learn more about how to budget for your insurance.