Hacker News Reader

I think high deductibles are an excellent choice for those of us who do well financially. I do that myself. But I should note that 40% of Americans can't handle sudden a $400 expense, so it doesn't work well for everybody: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-40-of-americans-cant-cov...

Oddly enough, high deductibles also work well for those people who maintain their health and prioritize it financially.

But the penalties for deferring maintenance/repairs on your car are less severe than deferring maintenance for your body. No matter what happens to your car, you can throw enough money at it to fix it, or at the very least, replace it with something comparable. If you get into an accident you can tape the bumper back on until you get it repaired (or never repair it)

But if you decide "I can't really afford this $1500 colonoscopy this year, and honey if we defer that $3000 MRI for your abdominal pain to next year too, then we can do them both in one year and hit our deductible"... if you wait too long, something that would have been easy to treat may no longer be easy... or even possible to treat.

People shouldn't need to prioritize health care due to financial reasons.

And don't have freak accidents, children with disabilities or other unforeseeable health-related issues.

That's exactly what they're for actually

No, they're for people who experience that and have money. If you have ~$0 assets and suddenly have no income, $10k might as well be $10m.

But for people on lower incomes, why would they be better served with low-deductible (and expensive) policies? If they can't afford a sudden $400 expense, why is spending additional money each month for a more comprehensive policy a good idea? Remember, auto insurance doesn't cover mechanical failures.

A perfectly valid option is to have a higher deductible, and use offset that with putting the funds that would have been needed for the more expensive policy into a general savings account. However, that does require some financial discipline and planning.

And for people who make little enough money where saving that money every month isn't a viable option, they really have no business buying any sort of comprehensive auto insurance anyway. Liability only insurance is far cheaper, and provides all the protection necessary to prevent a car accident from being financially world-ending.

> And for people who make little enough money where saving that money every month isn't a viable option, they really have no business buying any sort of comprehensive auto insurance anyway. Liability only insurance is far cheaper, and provides all the protection necessary to prevent a car accident from being financially world-ending.

You might want to consider this from a different perspective.

For the well-paid like myself who has invested well and has substantial savings, a liability insurance claim that could potentially cost several hundred thousand dollars is "financially world-ending", while having to pay for repairs on my car after an accident is not.

But for someone with no savings, being unable to drive their car because they cannot afford to pay for repairs after an accident may mean losing their job (public transportation isn't so great where they live) and definitely qualifies as "financially world-ending" for them. Whereas several hundred thousand dollars of liability is actually LESS of a threat -- the lawyers can quickly discover that they don't own anything worth collecting and may not even go after their assets, but even if they do, at worst it empties their bank account (which we presumed has less than 400 dollars in it).

This sounds painfully like somebody who is not and never has been poor.

> Low/no deductible policies that cover regular issues amount to forced savings. - My insurance professor at FSU

At low income, what makes sense is to get a cheaper used car. Bam, you've got $1k for an emergency car expense. That $400 stat, if it can be believed, spans from no income up nearly to median income.

Look at the bar graph. It's hard to tell exactly what the numbers are, if people chose multiple answers, but 40% has to be based on the idea that using a credit card even if you pay it off at the next statement means you "can't handle" an expense. That's crazy. It's basically prepper/goldbug logic. Consumer credit is the devil, so anyone who uses it has failed at life.

I also discovered that if you claim the car towing assistance/emergency roadside assistance, they insurance would file as claim and that might be possibly considered as proper paid out claim and affects your insurance premium. You can get your lexisNexis report every year that corresponds to your driver profile based on SSN

https://risk.lexisnexis.com/products/clue-auto

We've also switched to higher deductibles since we have only ever made claims when it was a major accident. When I had a chip in my windshield, my agent didn't even know that they covered that "for free". I had to tell her, so I guess it's not widely know. It makes sense though -- it is in their best interest to pay for chip repair without any reason for the customer to avoid it (deductible) since it can avoid a costly windshield replacement if that chip enlarges or if there are greater injuries in an accident due to the weaker windshield.

I haven't seen any major rate increases on our car insurance, but our umbrella policy premiums went 4x this year (and we switched companies too). We're with Farmers for nearly everything now, but comparing rates with other agencies is on my to do list in case anyone has done the homework and has a recommendation.

A sizable portion of the car washes in Los Angeles have an aggressive chip repair salesman who will circle all the chips and aggressively try to sell you on free windshield repair. Guy was always confused and upset about why I wouldn't want to buy something that was free.

Finally one day my windshield had enough chips to be replaced. Guy sees me pulling out my insurance card and goes "Mercury? They don't cover anything!" so now when the guy starts walking over I say "I'm with Mercury" and he immediately moves on.

I was in my front yard performing an oil change when one of these window chip sales people started bothering me. I literally had to threaten violence to get her to leave my property.

Is this a recommendation for Mercury? :D

You made three claims that averaged $40 each? And you weren't aware until your agent told you that you were paying for full glass coverage?

The lesson may be that insurance agents are terrible people. I've heard plenty of FUD about Geico, but I wonder if it's really just because they sell direct.