Slashdot Mirror
Google Thinks the Insurance Industry May Be Ripe For Disruption
HughPickens.com writes: The insurance industry is a fat target — there's were about $481 billion in premiums in 2013, and agents' commissions of about $50 billion. Now Conor Dougherty writes in the NYT that the boring but lucrative trade has been attracting big names like Google, which has formed a partnership with Comparenow, an American auto insurance comparison site that will give Google access to insurers in Comparenow's network. "A lot of people are waking up to the fact that it's a massive industry, it's old-fashioned, they still use human agents and the commissions are pretty big," says Jennifer Fitzgerald. It may seem like an odd match for Google, whose projects include driverless cars, delivery drones and a pill to detect cancer, but the key to insurance is having lots of data about people's backgrounds and habits, which is perhaps the company's greatest strength. "They have a ton of data on where people drive, how people drive," says Jon McNeill. "It's the holy grail of being able to price auto insurance correctly."
People in the industry and Silicon Valley say it is only a matter of time before online agencies attack the armies of intermediaries that are the backbone of the trade, and Google could present formidable competition for other insurance sellers. As many as two-thirds of insurance customers say they would consider purchasing insurance products from organizations other than insurers, including 23 percent who would consider buying from online service providers such as Google and Amazon. Google Compare auto insurance site has already been operating in Britain for two years as a search engine for auto insurance prices.
People in the industry and Silicon Valley say it is only a matter of time before online agencies attack the armies of intermediaries that are the backbone of the trade, and Google could present formidable competition for other insurance sellers. As many as two-thirds of insurance customers say they would consider purchasing insurance products from organizations other than insurers, including 23 percent who would consider buying from online service providers such as Google and Amazon. Google Compare auto insurance site has already been operating in Britain for two years as a search engine for auto insurance prices.
Unless people are writing about this in their Gmail or posting about it on Google+, I don't know where Google would get such data.
Their cars aren't on the market yet. They have no data on my driving.
...Someone from the back row shouts out "Because our AdSense profile has determined you were visiting websites about cigarettes recently, your health insurance premium has gone up by 5% and you will probably die slightly sooner. Remember, [i]f you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!"
Is it cynicism if you're just using a Markov chain to predict what other Slashdotters will say?
(Although obviously this is auto insurance, so I'm sure someone can translate the threat appropriately.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
No doubt the industry is ripe for disruption. BUT in addition to risk measurement, another big part of insurance is the stability of the insurer, especially with long-term insurance like life insurance. How confident are you that the Uber of insurance will be around when you die 29 years into your 30-year term life insurance policy? Or will they have been acquired a dozen times by companies of varying financial strength?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I would not want Google, a massive data mining company, to use its access to private and confidential information to sell anyone insurance. Just imagine "You searched 'hit and run' twice in the past year, and 'how to dispose of a dead body' once, your premium goes up by 1000%".
They thought Google+ and Glass were good ideas too.
Where you only "win" if you've lost.
>> it is only a matter of time before online agencies attack the armies of intermediaries that are the backbone of the trade
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=online+in...
Car hacking A security researcher demonstrated that “car hacking” is reality through the exploitation of vulnerable Can Insurance Dongle. Million vehicles at risk.
So commissions are $50/$481 = about 10%. In other words, a fairly minor factor; you can usually save that by switching companies. Sure, it would be nice to chop 10% off your bill; but that is hardly a "major disruption". Even a caveman can chop 15% off your bill; who needs technology?
Most major carriers are moving towards online services already. If Google enters the market, their efforts can quickly be matched, leaving no net advantage for Google.
They'll know when you are sleeping,
they'll know when you're getting baked,
they'll know if you've been bad or good,
so when you see yellow, you better brake!
We would save a lot of money if a retirement account could be used as evidence of self-insurance in place of paying an insurance company.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Many of the wealthiest people in the world made their fortunes in the insurance industry.
http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/ib-wealth-having-all-wanting-more-190115-en.pdf
It's one of the primary funding sources for billionaires.
Insurance companies are also the definition of conservative investors... and they are very large investors. It seems that they could easily be describes as on of the legs that the financial system stands on. I doubt that this sector could survive the wild swings in stock price that tech companies go through.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The problem with insurance is that it's a really complex product. That is the reason why there are human sales people because you want someone to explain it to you in person rather than study page after page of contract terms. The real revolution would require totally new approach to the product, i.e. Google becoming the actual insurance company and not just "insurance searcher"..
I will point out that there is a huge difference between life and property insurance. Both are highly regulated.
Property insurance, which includes auto insurance, is about short term risks. They buy reinsurance to protect them against big, one off extraordinary risks. Earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. If they muck up on ordinary risks, such as basic underwriting, they can still go bankrupt and leave you one the hook.
Life insurance is a whole different ball of wax. Their biggest risk is superannuation risk – people living longer than expected. There are a few reinsurance schemas which have just been launched but they are untested. Very much the expectation. Here you do want financial stability.
You can do that, if you're willing to lose everything when your momentary lapse of attention results in (or is claimed to result in) serious injury.
Aide form the whole "I don't want to lose everything I've saved", having at least collision insurance means that you don't have to fight with the other person's insurance company, and that has value. No matter who is at fault, you're not going to have to pay, so the other insurance company can't try to bully you or ignore your claim. Instead, your insurance company and theirs will typically take a few minutes to decide between professionals which one will pay the claims.
Getting insurance isn't the problem.
Getting companies to honor it, is.
Given how difficult it is to track down support from Google for support on some of their current offerings, I'm not sure insurance will be much of an improvement in customer experience.
The traditional life/health/auto insurance markets have been the target for the next collateralized security market. With some quiet legislative changes to insurable interest regulations, the likes of Goldman Sachs will soon be shorting your grandfather's life*. And once that market becomes established, the holders of the most valuable behavioral data will have an advantage in pricing the various tranches of risks properly. That would be Google.
*There has been legislation proposed at State and Federal levels (already passed?) allowing "poor old grandpa" to sell the future benefits of his life insurance, which he has been paying premiums on for years, for a lump sum of cash he can use while he's still alive. Once this new paper hits the securities market, is bundled and then sliced into risk pools, we have the makings of the next securities crisis. Watch for terms being used in the investment community like "catastrophic longevity" and think about the people who will be lobbying against the FDA's approval of the next miracle cancer cure.
Have gnu, will travel.
Please do health insurance Google! Blue Cross sucks! They need the rug pulled out from under them.
If that means I submit my health info to the Big Datas...so be it. So long as it helps to drive healthcare costs down.
Two weeks ago USAA asked me how much I expect to drive and I had to ballpark it. Since my commute is so short, it would be great to have Google provide a la cart pricing. USAA by comparison didn't even ask for odometer values. What a stupid way to determine my costs.
The destruction of jobs by technology continues unabated.
1)My prescription had not arrived. When I asked why, they said my insurance company told them my service was 'term" as in terminated. I have no idea why the customer service person felt it was important to tell me the status code for terminated was "term", but she did. But I wasn't terminated. Had to call up the insurance company and get them to tell the pharmacy division (same company, but they can't talk to each other) that I had insurances. Apparently there was some kind of major problem and lots of people had the same issue, but most were fixed before they realized the problem existed.
2) I owed them $7. Apparently my insurance back in August only paid them partially for a prescription. But when they sent me a bill, they just said I owed them $7, rather than telling me what it was for. As I am not an idiot, I don't send money to people unless they tell me why I owe them. They promised to send me an itemized bill.
Clearly, the insurance industry (and the pharmacy division) are run by extremely competent monkeys. Or by extremely incompetent people. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Nice to see Google willing to cover it's own auto drive cars.
Likely the gov will not let them get away with fine print and eula that can end up having 3rd party victims left to fend for them self's after getting hit by an auto drive car.
That is a joke, right?
It seems like they can only lose if there is a big spike in claims, such as a natural disaster or possibly war/terrorism. And in those events, when a big spike in claims occurs, doesn't the government insure the insurance company with disaster relief?
The smaller "pinprick" losses are from individual fraud claims. You'd have to sign an insurance contract that gives Google investigation rights (just as you do a conventional insurance company) and what Google could do with those rights during a claim investigation could be a major advantage. And since I am not committing fraud, I would benefit from buying a policy from a company that is not the choice of fraudsters.
Gently reply
In my younger, more vulnerable, far more gullible years, some representatives at Primerica asked me to sign up with them. They told me it would be a great Summer job in between college semesters and that I'd learn a lot.
Learn a lot I did.
They did pay for me to go to to state-required classes to become a licensed insurance salesperson. They were right, I did learn a lot about insurance there. The theory, how it works, lots of legal stuff and ethics, etc., etc. I was happy about that. It's good stuff to know.
I also learned about the company.
It didn't take long for a giant red warning sign to pop up in my head: "WARNING!!! PYRAMID SCHEME CULT. WARNING!!!"
That's exactly what it was. You see, the way Primerica worked was like this: You go out and sell an insurance policy and maybe a few other things. You get a commission. So does the person who got you to join. So does the person who got THAT person to join. And then the person above that person, all the way to the top.
I, being something like the 6th or 7th generation, would be feeding cash to the founder of that local chapter. Looking at the commission rates it soon became clear: If you're just working to sell insurance, you won't make much money. But if you can get 100 people under you then you don't have to sell insurance - all the dumb grunts would be doing the work for you. All you have to do is have weekly meetings and buy food and play music and do bizarre "team building" exercises and hire the occasional motivational speaker...
And then I thought, "So, people who are buying insurance and securities through this company are not only paying for my time and the service, but also all of this other crap... Including the person at the top who is just jerking off all the time at this point."
Well, it took all Summer to take all of the classes - passed with flying colors - and they even paid for me to take the state exam and get the license. I did both. By then it was time to go back to school and, though I was supposed to get back in touch with The Cult, I never did. I took my knowledge and ran for the hills.
Thanks for the education, Primerica, not only on how insurance works, but also what a truly abusive freak show your corporation is.
You were right. I did learn a lot.
Love sees no species.
It will not be as easy as breaking up the travel agents business using the net by buying the ITA software or something like that.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
With insurance, you don't really know for sure how good it is until the day you hope never comes happens, and you have to make a claim. Do they drag their feet or low-ball payment of the claim? Do they drop you? Do they hike up your rate?
My car insurance is kind of on the middle-low end of cost. I get ads for other insurance that could have cheaper premiums. But... With my current insurer, I have had a few experiences with having minor and not-so-minor claims, and they have treated me well, and not dropped me, and not jacked my rates up.
I don't think losing that kind of peace of mind is worth some marginal rate decrease.
Way to follow the heard Google....FYI it's also nice to know that you see no value in people, "they still use human agents"
Morons.
Can your retirement account cover that?
Most people's insurance plans can also not cover an 8 figure payout. People shop on premium cost alone.. Most have not much more then state minimums. When I was young and had no assets I only carried 40K of liability insurance. Connecticut state min is 20K.
At 20K even totaling out a mid-range compact car will max out that coverage. That's why we have "uninsured/under insured" coverage now. So when some 20 y/o driver with 25K of insurance totals my 60K car and puts me in the hospital my insurance picks up the difference.
If the 6 year old you speak of gets hit by the same driver he is just SOL. Past 25K he will have to sue the driver directly and hope he has some assets.
I do agree that putting your own retirement/home at risk just to save a few bucks a month is foolish. You could end up losing a lifetime of work for a driving mistake or something you have no control over (like your parked car catches fire in garage,burns down condo complex or hurts someone).
I have to return some videotapes...
Why would Google (makers of a self driving car) want to shake up the insurance industry... perhaps to the point where they could use their name as being a major player in the industry to force some hands on insuring self driving cars.
When you read comments on a Slashdot post about the Google self driving cars the biggest complaint is "insurance companies will never allow it!" or "Who would we sue when something went wrong!"
hmm if Google was the insurer then I suspect we'd sue Google... though they'd have a pay out ready to go from the insurance pool they created, thus eliminating the risk to Google.
Or even just as an insurance search engine, they maybe able to leverage that industry in order to actually insure self driving cars...
Why would Google even build a self driving car you might ask? Google is an ad company, think about how many ads you are exposed to while in a car, there are ads on the radio (soon to be Google play in car streaming service) there are ads on the bill boards (no need to look at them when you on a screen in the dash board, provided by Google)
The average american spends slightly less than 2 hours driving a day, they've already made a play on TV (5 hours a day) and I don't think people will put up with Google bed, driving is the thing you spend the next most time doing...
They want you eyeballs on something that can display Google ads all the time, they know that you won't give them willingly unless you get something out of it. So self driving car... to make it happen they need to have better control over the insurance industry, so they are working towards better control over the insurance industry.
when it created the All-State Insurance subsidiary. worked so well they spun it off in the 60s. they'd like that business back now... ;) at the time, it was a shocker to the staid old birds.
At the end of the day, I think Google wants the information about people's driving destinations, habits, etc. People will offer this to Google for discount car insurance. Google will use it to sell more appropriate ads and make more money. They will get this data as well with their automated cars, but it will be awhile before everyone is driving one.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Of course. They have all the data and statistics. And they have the comprehensive reach to give insurance to everyone, *for a much lower cost*. We'd be fools not to take it, because it's so cheap, and covers *everything*. Cars, houses, rentals, electronics, babies, jobs, farms... anything you have or need.
This will kill the Insurance Industry(TM) as we know it, and replace it will GoogleSure, in which you are automatically enrolled once you turn 16. Enrolled for life.
Inevitably, this imperious mission creep will eventually invade politics: first taking over all lobbying, then the politicians, then finally the entire government itself. We will become citizens of the GoogleStat. Politics, lawmaking, poverty, homelessness, immigration, budgets, subsidies, etc. all will be done in the most efficient manner possible; the entire economy will be 'tightened up' thanks to Google's efficient algorithms. And we won't even need to vote on anything anymore, because our Benevolent Father Google will already know what we choose, where we drive, how we live, and what we want. The Holy Algorithms will simply select the best laws for us, and the DriverlessGoogleCopBots will enforce them, just like Judge Dredd: Judge, Jury & Enforcement rolled into one... One Massive Algorithm to Rule Us All. And it will finally be perfect.
It sounds like the services described in the summary are still insurance agencies, just with lower (and less visible) costs and more technological awareness:
Some [of these] companies, like CoverHound and PolicyGenius, are online insurance agencies. Others, like Comparenow, send traffic to insurers and get a finder’s fee whenever someone buys a policy.
Now, that's fine as far as it goes; traditional insurance agents are an unnecessary, costly, and often unsavory gatekeeper if you're just looking to buy a vanilla personal insurance policy. If Google et al. can finally get people to cut out traditional agents, that's great - banging on about the evils of old-fashioned financial gatekeepers like stockbrokers and insurance agents is a pet hobby of mine. Still, I guess I'm missing what's so revolutionary here - I've been able to comparison shop directly from company websites like GEICO or Esurance for over a decade, with no intermediary at all.
Seriously Google, don't mess with the insurance industry. Don't mess with any part of it. They will make you pay. Look at what happened in 2010; we thought we were going to finally get a single-payer option for Americans and instead the federal government handed out the largest corporate handout in the history of government to the health insurance industry.
If Google tries to disrupt the insurance industry we soon will have no Google.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Every time you send a text while driving they up your rates.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
$35,000 in the MINIMUM. You're still on the hook for ay amount above that the jury decides on.
Google has been wandering too far out from its experience. Space satellites are another head-scratcher project of theirs. The history of big oligopolies wandering off target is not very good. GM used to do that also, and ended up selling off most of their experiments at a loss. And while Xerox did great research outside of copiers (GUI's, Ethernet, etc.), they didn't know how to bring it to market, making bulky, expensive copier-like machines.
I would like to see Google be more aggressive going after the cable co's, however. That's only semi-wandering. The cable model is ripe for the picking: ticked off customers and poor choice. Google has the deep pockets and distribution infrastructure necessary for such a battle.
Table-ized A.I.
This is very scary. It would even increase their motivation to mine every possible bit of personalized data they can get on everybody to create personal profiles with health issues, preferences, tendencies, affiliations, etc.
This cool. Very cool. A solution that cuts out a largely unnecessary part of the process (agents) and it's expense is long overdue.
Still, there's an industry that I'd like to see "disrupted" even more - undertaking. Any business whose primary product is "...the last thing you'll ever be able to do for your late loved one..." deserves, more than any other, to be disrupted.
Insurance companies are also the definition of conservative investors... and they are very large investors. It seems that they could easily be describes as on of the legs that the financial system stands on. I doubt that this sector could survive the wild swings in stock price that tech companies go through.
Maybe you heard of an exceptionally large insurance company named AIG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_International_Group. If you would describe them as a "conservative investor" then I do not think you know what that word means.
It's not just commissions. If you can automate away the process you can eliminate a shit ton of people, too, and that's where the costs are. I'll bet a lot of those commissions are in commercial insurance policies and those kinds of policies will still probably be sold by sales people who earn a commission.
Part of me is like, yay, insurance is expensive and it would be nice to pay less for it, and why shouldn't you in theory be able to just find policies via the web?
But part of me is like, ugh, every time some genius decides an industry is ripe for disruption what they end up meaning is they want to shitcan a bunch of employees and pocket the money that was otherwise filtering through the economy and keeping at least SOME people middle class.
It doesn't seem like anyone actually wants to change the business model of insurance -- ie, I pay money in case something bad were to happen and in theory the policy covers my liabilities. I don't know how you "disrupt" the basic structure of that business.
It's just the race to the bottom all over again.
health insurance works in systems outside of the usa.
1 needs profit limits.
2 billing reform
3 no more out of market
4 no more job based heath care (other then maybe them some kind of system for high risk jobs with no outs by making people independent contractor / subcontractors)
5 basic checkups need to be covered (a lot lower cost then the ER)
6 combine medicare and medicaid (maybe VA as well)
Seriously, Fuck Google.
Google could publish is the percentage of claims that are paid. At work we have health, dental, vision, and disability insurance that looks great on paper, but it's hard as hell to collect and takes months or even years to do so. After I broke both my hands after trying to catch a falling rack, it took me over a year to collect on my short term disability I'm a developer so I couldn't work. My company was great and let me work ten hours a week as the scrum master. What good is short term disability if it doesn't pay out until months after you're back at work? Most of my coworkers just give-up on getting claims paid.
I'd love to see numbers published on percentages of claims paid and the time between filing and payout. That is what the public lacks when making good decisions when buying insurance.
This is privacy advocates' worst nightmare. Okay, nazi-style mass murder of people with certain thoughts and opinions enabled by the scarlet letter that is all the data Google keeps on all of us is privacy advocates' worst nightmare. But this is how it starts.
When Google eliminates the middle men, do you think prices go down? Only for some, and then only for a very short while until the competition is out of business. And this process is accelerated by high rates for high risk individuals. High risk for payouts that is, which is not always the same as high risk for society. For example:
* Visit a lawyer's website recently. You're more likely to sue when we underpay your claim. Let the competition have you.
* Liked something by Ron Paul on Google+? Some Google analyst thinks he found a correlation between that and higher claims. Your rates go up.
Big Data makes insurance rates in the best case arbitrary (when they misidentify factors that supposedly relate to insurance risk) and in the worst case discriminatory and a method for punishing people financially for behavior we all supposed was constitutionally protected (when they accurately identify behavior, like advocating for tax reform that actually benefits the middle-class, that those who control the few big companies with the big data don't like). Hopefully the ACA will prevent this in the health insurance market by mandating a rate based only on geography, age and smoker status. But I'm sure they can easily marginalize people who oppose their ideas using just auto, homeowners and liability insurance.
They say we should vote with our dollars. But we're obviously far outnumbered in such a battle. And the very wealthy don't so much vote with their dollars as they wage outright war with them. Imagine your homeowners and auto insurance rates quadrupling because of the places you go, websites you visit and company you keep (online and otherwise). While less explicit, the end result isn't much different than the Nazi's Nuremberg Laws or or laws limiting property ownership to white males with family histories.
Thanks for nothing, first amendment. Soon we'll have to exercise #2 instead.
Can they send a drone with a customer-service or sales rep?
Because, for medical insurance today, you can reach nobody for either of these by phone, nor have an email or voice-mail replied-to either. You would think they would be at least somewhat interested in at least sales calls, but apparently they are so awash in profit that it just doesn't matter to them.
Companies used to have walk-in offices where you could camp-out if necessary.
I finally found a locally-based non-profit health plan where I was able to reach somebody - after a 1/2 hour wait on the phone. Now, a sales person will call me back in the next 24 hours - or so they say. This, at least, is an improvement.
And... (wait for it)... I was able to find out from the non-sales customer-service rep that they do, in fact, have a walk-in office where you can do business. You can pay your bill, pick up literature, or camp-out to talk to a representative. Apparently, they also make appointments. That will probably come in handy on February 14.
FWIW, the one I'm referring to is Sharp in San Diego. I know nothing about them other than the above, other than previous favorable experience with the Sharp-Rees-Steely Urgent care facility down the street, and reports from a friend who has one of their plans though his employer.
Now, will Google send an over-sized drone? Will Amazon set-up an appointment so that I can meet the sales rep that they ship to the closest 7-11 with Amazon Lockers? And will either of them pick up the phone - for anything?
I'm sure either can handle the online part of the experience.
(I love Amazon lockers!)
You _could_ be sued for a car accident and they _could_ come after your personal assets, but I do believe that's rather rare if you have sufficient insurance. Where "sufficient" partly means "enough that your insurance company will have their lawyer spend time defending the claim".
... at least in most states.
I grew up in Michigan. We had GREAT health care at little cost, thanks to the auto industry, and the non-profit Blue Cross organization that they used for insurance. Even if you did not work in the auto industry, everybody in Detroit had Blue Cross "cadillac coverage" at reasonable cost.
But they sold-out (metaphorically) and licensed their name to greedy, profit-making enterprises. In California, we have Anthem Blue Cross, a profit-making corporation, and about the worst anti-consumer company in the world. When I moved here, somehow I though Blue Cross was actually Blue Cross. What a mistake!
The first few years, it was much like the Cadillac care I had experienced in Detroit. Their PPO network was wide, they paid, they didn't quibble. It has gotten steadily worse. You throw money at them and get basically nothing, unless somebody at Anthem Blue Cross screws-up in their job of discouraging you from accessing services.
I've paid my bill, through my bank's bill-pay service, every month, on time. And I've gotten a cancellation notice, without fail, every single month. In fact, I even got one dated several days before the due date, before they changed the computer programming to print a fake date on the statements. This wastes customer's money mailing out thick cancellation notices every single month. It probably results is older patients with dementia double-paying bills. I am sure that they know that.
Every year, they violate various California insurance laws, the state Insurance Commission slaps them on the wrist over it, and they agree not to do that again, and provide an extended open enrollment period. (At least before Obamacare). And then they do it all again the next year.
Just don't.
I'm exploring a locally-based, non-profit health plan (Sharp - San Diego). Alas, these are scare as hen's teeth.
Google has so much data on everybody in the world that they could probably do a far better job at predicting insurance risk by means of proxy variables than anybody else.
Which is why, if you have high personal valuation, say you make 200K / year, have a trust fund or other assets, you often want much higher limits on your policies. If you own two houses and a boat and a bunch of securities, it makes sense for the aggrieved party to go after you. If you flip burgers, not so much. My insurance policy states that they will defend me for losses above the policy limits, but it doesn't say how aggressively they will go about it. And, if they lose, so do I.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Major hole in the concept of Google using your location data: they can't distinguish whether you're driving, on a bus, riding with someone else, etc. The location data barely useful without knowing who's doing the driving. It's like a red light cam or speed cam, they know a car you owned went through the light or was speeding but they do not know that you were actually the driver.
The insurance industry is not exactly a tower of virtue.
In theory, having more info could permit them to discriminate if some behavior is risky or not.
In practice, it could just become an excuse for more premiums, unrelated to actual risk.
Kim Kardashian had "Dat Azz" insured by Lloyds of London, despite the fact it broke the internet. Who is going to fix the internet when this happens again?
Fewer insurance agents will be able to afford insurance. Where is the part where we enter the leisure economy? Because we already have the part where people aren't working ---
And then, just think, if we had true national health insurance and well-funded subsidies for the disabled, then your car insurance would only need to cover the damage to the car and surrounding property. I'd buy auto insurance from Google if they took care of that.
The disruption is not lower rates for drivers it's bigger profits for investors. 10% of 481 Billion is a nice chunk of change. Throw in some data analytics to get rid of high risk drivers (or charge them 3x what they pay today) and now you're really talkin'
:(.
Big Data and Expert Systems suck for everybody except the investor class
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you're talking about America Healthcare is cheaper in every other 1st world country and they have just as many unhealthy people (dear god, have you seen British food?). Heathcare is expensive in America because Regan gutted the education system 30 years ago and we've got a doctor shortage (esp primary care docs) and because we let a large, completely unnecessary industry skim money off the top.
And before anyone tries to blame malpractice insurance it accounts for about 10% of the cost of health care. I forget how pointed this out but: Would you sign a waiver on any mistakes the doctor might commit for a 10% discount on surgery?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
is the insurance industry spent half a billion dollars in 1 year on anti-single payer campaigns. They were fighting for their lives, and they won.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
... not!
Insurance companies already charge top dollar for policies that they back out of on a whim. Let's introduce serious competition into that market and see what happens... fees *might* decrease a little due to competition, but they'll be even less honorable when it comes time to pay out because of decreased profit margins.
> it's a massive industry, it's old-fashioned, they still use human agents
We can replace humans with computer or even robots, almost everywhere, be it agents, farmers, doctors or warriors. The question is: what happens to all those 7+ billion humans afterwards? Even if the benevolent electronics will continue to feed them and work for them, will people retain a meaning for life?
Some types of insurance such as home insurance still have a need for agents because when disaster strikes it's very helpful to have someone there to get you immediate aid and help you through the long process of rebuilding.
Other insurance such as auto insurance don't need local agents. While there are companies that do employ agents, there are plenty of low-cost auto insurance companies that don't and Google would be nothing new.
Some insurance such as life insurance takes sales people to use high pressure tactics. Most people would never buy life insurance on their own because nobody wants to think about dying. Google might make some headway here because all the data they collect would help them better figure out the risks for a particular person. But the life insurance industry is no slouch when it comes to data collection and analysis. And a lot of profits in life insurance come from investing the premiums, something Google would have no advantage in.