I am not even sure where you would get that out of any of my comments.
States license and regulate the auto insurers but the insurers do not have to have a physical presence there to do business. Most of them even use this new-fangled thing called the Internet to reach many of their potential customers rather than a physical office.
The difference is that auto insurers do not have to have a physical presence in a state to be licensed and sell there. Medical insurers do.
Auto insurers can sell to someone in Maine from an office in Oregon as long as Maine allows them to. This opens the door to more insurers selling to a given area, thus having to...wait for it...compete...with an insurer from Florida, or anywhere else.
Medical insurers have to have a physical presence or subsidiary in the state where they want to sell. This increases the cost of doing business there, which inevitably discourages many from doing it in the first place...less competition...
You are exactly correct, but you may want to take another look at your policy. The company I am with has zero physical presence in my state, or any other state nearby. State Farm may be an exception, but look at Allstate, Geiko, USAA, esurance and others. They are based out of one location (maybe with a few satellite offices) and can sell to anyone in any state for which they are licensed. They do not have to have a physical presence in that state to be licensed and to sell there. This spurred competition, thus lowering rates.
It is interesting that you fail to consider that opening auto insurance to interstate competition not only caused rates to plummet through the floor, but it also meant that anyone could freely move about the country without having to worry about who was going to gouge them next.
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I am not even sure where you would get that out of any of my comments. States license and regulate the auto insurers but the insurers do not have to have a physical presence there to do business. Most of them even use this new-fangled thing called the Internet to reach many of their potential customers rather than a physical office.
The difference is that auto insurers do not have to have a physical presence in a state to be licensed and sell there. Medical insurers do. Auto insurers can sell to someone in Maine from an office in Oregon as long as Maine allows them to. This opens the door to more insurers selling to a given area, thus having to...wait for it...compete...with an insurer from Florida, or anywhere else. Medical insurers have to have a physical presence or subsidiary in the state where they want to sell. This increases the cost of doing business there, which inevitably discourages many from doing it in the first place...less competition...
You are exactly correct, but you may want to take another look at your policy. The company I am with has zero physical presence in my state, or any other state nearby. State Farm may be an exception, but look at Allstate, Geiko, USAA, esurance and others. They are based out of one location (maybe with a few satellite offices) and can sell to anyone in any state for which they are licensed. They do not have to have a physical presence in that state to be licensed and to sell there. This spurred competition, thus lowering rates.
It is interesting that you fail to consider that opening auto insurance to interstate competition not only caused rates to plummet through the floor, but it also meant that anyone could freely move about the country without having to worry about who was going to gouge them next.
Same here...though I noticed that every time I ran the query, my firewall blocked an icpm packet from one specific IP address...