From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Mon Jul 10 2000 - 22:14:47 MDT
> If insurance were truly a fair bet, it would account for my healthy state in my
> premiums. That it doesn't indicates that its a scam. Yes, shit does happen.
> However there are people that shit tends not to happen to. Insurance forms, for
> example, do not ask the ages or dates of birth and death of your ancestors, so
> they totally leave out any possibility for people with healthy and long lived
> genomes to realize benefits from their natural state. Insurance policies also do
> not account for your past health history.
Yes, it is unfortunate that insurance companies are often prevented from
discriminating more than they do, and that does make the bet more unfair.
They are allowed to account for some things: smoking, hazardous jobs,
history of heart disease, diabetes, and other things.
> Some on the list will say I'm not following the social contract, blah blah blah.
> The social contract is typically a piece of paper they hold over your eyes while
> they are going for your wallet.
No argument here. But sometimes you /still/ want to hedge, even though
you know the odds are bad. Here's an example from my experience: I once
had an 8-game football parlay ticket that I bought on a whim (I don't
normally bet sports--I much prefer to bet on my own talents at the poker
table). 7 wins later, I had a ticket that would be worth over $10,000 if
the Broncos won a certain game, and nothing if they didn't. The highest
expectation thing for me to do, of course, is to just ride it out (and
the Broncos were favored by 3). But I chose instead to take the sure
thing by buying a $5,000 ticket on the Broncos to lose the same game.
So now I get $5,000 no matter who won, but I paid another 9% house rake
for the privilege, and gave up the chance at $10,000. Sure, it was a
bad bet overall, but it was still a reasonable thing to do at the time.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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