Combining life and health insurance

[wiggin]

I don't know if this fits into Wraith's earlier 'catastrophic health insurance' thread, so I figured I'd just start a new one. Mods - feel free to move if you want.

I was having an interesting discussion today about the perverse incentives that abound in our healthcare system (and in most of the world) - most of which increase costs and result in suboptimal care. One interesting phenomenon is that if a patient is diagnosed with something really bad and effectively incurable (but 'treatable'), the health insurance company has every reason to wish the patient dies sooner rather than later, resulting in fewer claims. They also have every incentive to make it difficult for the patient to receive expensive (and lifesaving) care.

The person I was discussing this with then suggested an idea I hadn't heard of before - why not bundle health and life insurance policies together? That way, if a patient dies sooner rather than later, they'll have to pay out a hefty benefit. It makes the company take both sides of the bet, and means they'll try to optimize the care to produce the longest life at the lowest cost. It also provides a serious incentive for the company to push preventative medicine and frequent screenings, since a disease that gets too far before it's caught will result in a swift death followed by a big payout. It also provides a market mechanism for determining the point of diminishing returns with a critically ill patient.

It's an interesting idea - what do you guys think? I can imagine there are some difficulties (say you have a gold-plated health insurance policy but only a small death benefit, or vice versa), but it's an intriguing idea nonetheless.

[GGT]

If you really want to know.....I think Insurance products are becoming the bane of our existence. Insurance products are seen as both an investment and a protection against risk, but neither is truly true. I think the Insurance Industry has become a protected monopoly in several sectors.

Instead of making health care more affordable and accessible, we've decided the Insurance Industry is both the middle man and the arbiter of care and quality of care. When health care is too expensive, employers are convinced they have an incentive to help pay for their employees. A perk, a benefit. Insurers float the carrot of group buying powers and discounts. And everyone falls for it.

We can buy a Life Insurance (or Death) policy, and draw upon that to pay for our own health care costs. Like a reverse mortgage.

We're legislated to buy PMI (private mortgage insurance), homeowner's insurance, auto insurance. The Insurers "let" us bundle these things, saying we get premium discounts. How nice. Then they push umbrella policies, that bundle the bundles.

I doubt that Insurers would bundle Health and Life policies in order to cover preventive medicine or screenings, any more than they bundle Home and Auto policies in order to cover floods or hurricanes.

Their entire business model is gaining profits from premiums, and paying as few claims as possible. For the person who buys Life insurance in order to get better Health insurance.....they can't file a claim or an appeal from their grave. And they'll never know what fine print prevents the Insurer from paying the Death Benefit they thought they'd bought for their beneficiaries.

[Aimless]

It's an interesting idea. I can however see it leading to even more defensive medicine in the form of unnecessary investigation and treatments (with all their pitfalls). Moreover, I can see this further deteriorating the already crazy relationship we have with death. Or perhaps not--perhaps there isn't enough to gain from prolonging great grandma's life a couple of years? I also get the feeling this will make big US healthcare's beloved cash cow--chemo drugs--even more attractive, to the detriment of payers as well as of patients.

But it IS an interesting idea. Iirc, while there aren't really any death penalties in Swedish healthcare, there are various forms of life-saving bounties. On the whole I think we'd be better off spending money on solving the problem of antibiotic resistance

[Dreadnaught]

It's an interesting idea, but I can foresee a problem in the "balance" of costs between keeping someone alive. EG if a particular medical treatment is guaranteed to let someone live, but it's more expensive than a particular life-term payout, the incentive would be mitigated.

[wiggin]

It's an interesting idea. I can however see it leading to even more defensive medicine in the form of unnecessary investigation and treatments (with all their pitfalls). Moreover, I can see this further deteriorating the already crazy relationship we have with death. Or perhaps not--perhaps there isn't enough to gain from prolonging great grandma's life a couple of years? I also get the feeling this will make big US healthcare's beloved cash cow--chemo drugs--even more attractive, to the detriment of payers as well as of patients.

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Doctors won't have some different liability here that will cause them to overuse services - in fact, since insurance companies are pushing for it, they have an incentive to make sure doctors use just enough diagnostic procedures - too many, and they've paid out too much in benefits; too few, and their patient dies early.

But it IS an interesting idea. Iirc, while there aren't really any death penalties in Swedish healthcare, there are various forms of life-saving bounties. On the whole I think we'd be better off spending money on solving the problem of antibiotic resistance

A bit of a non sequitur, yes?

It's an interesting idea, but I can foresee a problem in the "balance" of costs between keeping someone alive. EG if a particular medical treatment is guaranteed to let someone live, but it's more expensive than a particular life-term payout, the incentive would be mitigated.

Yeah, that balance issue is an interesting one. I imagine that different people would have different approaches. If you felt that you didn't want extraordinary life saving measures (i.e. people who currently have DNRs and the like), you could opt to reduce your life insurance payout or eliminate it entirely, in exchange for lower premiums. If, on the other hand, you felt that you'd prefer to spend more money and get every ounce of medical care available, you could increase your death benefit by paying bigger premiums (or maybe just increase your co-insurance) so the insurance company has more incentive to keep you alive.

I agree it won't solve all incentive problems, and the 'economic' value of life is hard to square with our ethical and cultural mores. The biggest problems I can think of deal with patients who contract a chronic disease that has a very good (but very expensive) treatment they must take for the rest of their life. Those can easily overwhelm any cost from the death benefit, and some of these diseases simply can't be avoided by better preventative care. I'm not sure how to fix this problem, though to be fair the current system is worse at dealing with this than the proposed system.

The part I like about the idea is that it allows for some hard-headed choices about end of life issues, and leaves the calibration to market forces and an individual's choice (rather than centrally managed so-called 'death panels'). There's no doubt that we need to think long and hard about how much money we're going to spend on dying patients, and this is one way to do so without making a top-down decision.

[Wraith]

It's an interesting idea, but I can foresee a problem in the "balance" of costs between keeping someone alive. EG if a particular medical treatment is guaranteed to let someone live, but it's more expensive than a particular life-term payout, the incentive would be mitigated.

That's not a new issue, though. I don't think it's enough to toss out a possible solution just because it doesn't fully solve all problems; you need to have an alternative that you feel solves the set of problems better to do that.

Wiggin: I think it's an interesting idea, but I'd think there'd be some implementation issues around this. How would you go about getting this to happen? Government requirements that life insurance get bundled with health? I suspect the implementation details are where most of the problems with this idea are going to be found.

[wiggin]

I'm not sure this should be a mandated policy - maybe it could just be an option for health insurance on the market, but one that has overall lower premiums than buying separately? I imagine this might be the case - the company is naturally hedging their bet by covering both sides.

Mandatory implementation would be tricky, though - will we have an individual mandate for life insurance? I can't imagine that working well.

[Wraith]

I'm not sure this should be a mandated policy - maybe it could just be an option for health insurance on the market, but one that has overall lower premiums than buying separately? I imagine this might be the case - the company is naturally hedging their bet by covering both sides.

Mandatory implementation would be tricky, though - will we have an individual mandate for life insurance? I can't imagine that working well.

Neither can I. But I also don't really see the insurance industry starting this on it own without pressure from somewhere, and I can't imagine consumers getting together well enough to apply the pressure from that side.

[wiggin]

Yeah, I see your point. I'm just curious about the thought exercise - would such a system actually work better? How might we try to implement it? Why hasn't an entrepreneur tried it?

Insurance is all about risk management, and hedging that risk seems like a natural thing to do, especially when you can make money off of either bet, when the odds are calculated appropriately. People routinely take both sides of a bet, as do banks and various investors - why don't health insurance companies?

[Wraith]

Yeah, I see your point. I'm just curious about the thought exercise - would such a system actually work better?

If we ignore the implementation, I think it'd work great as a goal. It won't solve all problems, but it'll solve more than are solved now. The only downside I can think of would be that the premiums for these types of plans would be higher.

How might we try to implement it?

I can't think of any way to implement this without causing significant problems.

Why hasn't an entrepreneur tried it?

Insurance is all about risk management, and hedging that risk seems like a natural thing to do, especially when you can make money off of either bet, when the odds are calculated appropriately. People routinely take both sides of a bet, as do banks and various investors - why don't health insurance companies?

When people take both sides of the bet, it's to reduce risk. If an insurance company were to offer bundled health & life plans, they're increasing their risk, not reducing it. If their client gets sick, they lose. If the client dies, they still lose. If the client gets cured, yup, still lost. The reduction of risk is with the consumer. If this were gambling, this would be putting the consumer in the "house" role. It's good for consumers, but at best neutral for insurance companies.

It probably wouldn't even work as a selling point. Consumers are notoriously math-stupid in matters like this, and I can't think of any attempts at advertising something like this that wouldn't come off as morbid or pessimistic - neither good selling strategies.

[Lebanese Dragon]

I think it's an improvement, the biggest downside is that it forces someone to buy both.

Even the example of Amazing health care coverage and minimal life insurance, it's still better than 0 life insurance. The downside is you have to buy both, limitiing consumer freedom.

[wiggin]

When people take both sides of the bet, it's to reduce risk. If an insurance company were to offer bundled health & life plans, they're increasing their risk, not reducing it. If their client gets sick, they lose. If the client dies, they still lose. If the client gets cured, yup, still lost. The reduction of risk is with the consumer. If this were gambling, this would be putting the consumer in the "house" role. It's good for consumers, but at best neutral for insurance companies.

It probably wouldn't even work as a selling point. Consumers are notoriously math-stupid in matters like this, and I can't think of any attempts at advertising something like this that wouldn't come off as morbid or pessimistic - neither good selling strategies.

Hmm, you think this wouldn't be a good risk arbitration strategy for health firms, especially now that they can't be too choosy about who they cover (what with prexisting conditions being thrown out)? This way, they can charge more in premiums as a hedge against having to pay for a long, drawn-out illness - though taking on some risk on the other side of the bet that the person dies right off the bat. Sure, they 'lose' either way, but they also win - by either getting longer periods of higher premiums, or by not having to pay for an expensive illness.

The point is that offering both of these together allows the company to put a price on that risk, when beforehand they could just try to mitigate it by denying claims and generally being dicks.

(Put it another way: why do banks buy both mortgages and CDSs? If the mortgage is paid off, they lose because the CDS was a waste. If the mortgage defaults, the CDS gives them some solace, but they still lose the loan. The reason they do this is because it's a good way to monetize and trade the risk they're accumulating and spread it out.)

[Wraith]

(Put it another way: why do banks buy both mortgages and CDSs? If the mortgage is paid off, they lose because the CDS was a waste. If the mortgage defaults, the CDS gives them some solace, but they still lose the loan. The reason they do this is because it's a good way to monetize and trade the risk they're accumulating and spread it out.)

Yeah, if they lose on one side, they'll win on the other side. With this bundled insurance idea, if they lose on one side, at best they can not lose on the other side, and they still might lose there too. There's no risk mitigation there, it's more like doubling down while betting on continued good health. They might be able to justify extra risks they're taking on with increased premiums, but that's it.

[wiggin]

Yeah, if they lose on one side, they'll win on the other side. With this bundled insurance idea, if they lose on one side, at best they can not lose on the other side, and they still might lose there too. There's no risk mitigation there, it's more like doubling down while betting on continued good health. They might be able to justify extra risks they're taking on with increased premiums, but that's it.

What do you mean? If they lose on the life insurance side, they've saved money by not paying out expensive therapies (so all of those years of premiums paid off). If they lose on the health insurance side, they saved by not paying out the life insurance.

I think your argument makes more sense if you're talking about insuring someone for their entire life. That's not what happens here - most people aren't going to die on these policies, since Medicare covers all of the retirees. And most people also won't have expensive diseases, either. This is just a way to balance the (relatively small) risks of these two events against each other.

[Wraith]

What do you mean? If they lose on the life insurance side, they've saved money by not paying out expensive therapies (so all of those years of premiums paid off). If they lose on the health insurance side, they saved by not paying out the life insurance.

They're "not losing" on the other side, not "winning". And that's a best case. They could also pay for expensive treatment and have the guy still die; double loss. Unlike the other examples you gave for risk hedging, they aren't collecting money from somewhere that they wouldn't have otherwise. The only place for them to get that money is from increasing the premiums. It's not really different for them than selling life insurance and medical insurance separately, except now they won't be able to dump costs on the other guy, because they're also the other guy.

I think we're drifting a bit. My only point was that I don't see insurance companies really diving into this idea without some sort of external motivators.

[Lewkowski]

We can buy a Life Insurance (or Death) policy, and draw upon that to pay for our own health care costs. Like a reverse mortgage.

We're legislated to buy PMI (private mortgage insurance), homeowner's insurance, auto insurance. The Insurers "let" us bundle these things, saying we get premium discounts. How nice. Then they push umbrella policies, that bundle the bundles.

I doubt that Insurers would bundle Health and Life policies in order to cover preventive medicine or screenings, any more than they bundle Home and Auto policies in order to cover floods or hurricanes.

Their entire business model is gaining profits from premiums, and paying as few claims as possible. For the person who buys Life insurance in order to get better Health insurance.....they can't file a claim or an appeal from their grave. And they'll never know what fine print prevents the Insurer from paying the Death Benefit they thought they'd bought for their beneficiaries.

Pretty off base. I've never been a fan of whole life policies, term policies are much cheaper, affordable and provide better protection during the years where life insurance is most needed. I guess the whole life policies might have some estate planning benefits but for most people its not necessary.

You are not required to carry Home Owners insurance. There is no law that I am aware of that requires a home owner to carry insurance.

And some states have proof of financial responsibility alternatives to auto insurance.

In addition you always seem to think that the insurer wants to skip out on as many claims as possible. That would be true if price was the only bottom line however reputation and word of mouth is also an important aspect to claims. If one insurance company has a reputation for not paying out on claims and another has high claims satisfaction rate, guess which one a discerning customer will choose?

[GGT]

Yes, a mortgage lender can legally require Homeowner's Insurance, in addition to PMI (if down payment is less than 20% of purchase price).

What's the reputation of the Insurance Industry these days? Not very good.

[Lewkowski]

Yes, a mortgage lender can legally require Homeowner's Insurance, in addition to PMI (if down payment is less than 20% of purchase price).

That's not what I said.

This is what I said.


"You are not required to carry Home Owners insurance. There is no law that I am aware of that requires a home owner to carry insurance."

Once again there is no requirement by law for a homeowner to get insurance. Now if the bank (seperate entity) requires the homeowner to get insurance to protect their collateral that is something completely different.

[Aimless]

You know, this would be a lot better with a concrete example or two. I'm also not sure I see why the insurance company would necessarily be interested in seeing you die sooner rather than providing a cure. If they cure you you can continue to pay insurance premiums for many more years after all.

[wiggin]

Lewk - I actually think you need PMI if you want to qualify for an FHA loan through Fannie/Freddie and your downpayment is small. But that's not law in the sense of 'every car needs to be insured against X liabilities', because it's perfectly possible to have a mortgage without being required to carry PMI.

Minx - let's say you have a 60-year old patient who comes down with a nasty form of cancer (pancreatic, perhaps?). You can throw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem and maybe extend their life by 6-12 months, if you're lucky. But if they died tomorrow, you'd have roughly the same lifetime premiums and much less cost in claims. Even more so when you figure out that you've got at most 5 more years of premiums left over (before they switch to Medicare) but lots of very expensive procedures between now and then.

[GGT]

<And some states can legally require flood insurance for those living in flood plains, by way of zoning ordinances.>

wiggin, I still say this would only extend "perverse incentives", by giving the Insurance Industry even more sway over our healthcare system. They're too involved as it is, adding tons of costs as for-profit bureaucratic middle men. It's amazing that a sector not even involved in actual care controls so many of the medical decisions made, and was able to write their own interests into the Affordable Care Act via lobbyists.

Besides, people can already buy life insurance, earmarked for their beneficiaries to pay off their medical debts. People with catastrophic illnesses have been known to draw on their life insurance policy at reduced pay-outs, in order to pay for "experimental" treatments not covered by health insurance. Early in the HIV/AIDS crisis this was fairly common as a last resort, and in the days when bone marrow transplants were uncommon and denied by insurers.

I suppose people using new stem-cell research for Parkinson's, or experimental electrophoresis with UV light for certain auto-immune disorders might do the same, unless they can get into a research study? The better tactic might be to get more things covered, for more people, that reduce the costs over time. We'll find out how this pans out over time, with the new end-stage prostate cancer meds that cost $93,000 for one course of therapy, adding 3-6 months of life, covered by Medicare.

[Aimless]

Minx - let's say you have a 60-year old patient who comes down with a nasty form of cancer (pancreatic, perhaps?). You can throw everything and the kitchen sink at the problem and maybe extend their life by 6-12 months, if you're lucky. But if they died tomorrow, you'd have roughly the same lifetime premiums and much less cost in claims. Even more so when you figure out that you've got at most 5 more years of premiums left over (before they switch to Medicare) but lots of very expensive procedures between now and then.

Y'see, that's tricky for me, because I'd see that patient as [very likely] being a purely palliative patient, where extending "life" would take a back seat to keeping down suffering during the remainder of their life. As you describe it, this isn't a case of choosing "treatment" over "cure", because cure seems to be out of the question no matter what expensive procedures you try (unless he's one of the lucky few in which you catch it in time or it isn't very aggressive, congrats to Steve Jobs btw). Under your scheme, would this patient be pressured by the insurance company to submit to a [likely] inappropriate treatment plan because if he didn't then his family would be denied the life insurance payout?

[GGT]

It is tricky, minx. Physicians may want to extend life and/or provide palliative care, and feel the burden of explaining the options to their patients. First, they don't want to do harm by giving false hope, or see their patient choose longer life no matter how futile, painful, or destructive it might be.

Patients, on the other hand, will often choose just one more day, any way they can get it. No matter how painful to themselves, or expensive to others. If they can string one day to the next...hour after hour....it can mean one more anniversary/birthday/holiday, one more kiss or embrace, one more special song or memory. One More Day can mean the World, and no monetary figure can quantify or qualify its importance.

[Hazir]

I think it's an elegant way of putting the problem where it is caused. But, your's truly doesn't have or need life insurance, what to do with people like me? Oblige us to take out a policy we don't want and from which we will never benefit?

[Lebanese Dragon]

I'm going to do something pretty cool here, and instead of typing a long wall of text, I'm going to do a video response. And if people like this I may do more responses like this. Hilaroius i just looked out my window 5min ago, saw nothing, and then i looked just now, and it's literally pouring rain, i do not exaggerate. 0 to 60 mph in seconds. Check this out, tell me how cute you think i am, all that good stuff.

[Dreadnaught]

I'm on this damn wireless card and it's too slow to watch video. I think the heat shorted out the Internet here.

[CitizenCain]

It's an interesting idea - what do you guys think? I can imagine there are some difficulties (say you have a gold-plated health insurance policy but only a small death benefit, or vice versa), but it's an intriguing idea nonetheless.

What's so horrible about having people actually pay the cost of their own health care? Like we make them do with all the other essentials in life (at least in theory), for example. Obviously making people pay for the goods and services they require will never be as popular as providing them for "free,"* but there's a substantial upside in that you, the affected party, actually get to decide what cost you're willing to pay for whatever benefit. If it's worth half a million to you for grandma to live another year to her 97th birthday, you can pay for that option. On the other hand, if you have any semblance of sanity, you can come to the conclusion that it's far too much money to pay for such a short time at such a low quality of life.

The real problem with all this crap seems to be that everyone's spending someone else's money, so of course they think it's worth obscene sums for low odds of survival and poor quality of life. It is absolutely worth $60,000 of your money per year for my dialysis treatments, but barely worth the gas to drive there if it's my money.

That, and the implicit, unpleasant fact in these types of decisions. No one's willing to come out and say what we all acknowledge as true - we can and do put an economic value on human life... and many lives are worth less than the keyboard I'm typing on, never mind the millions of dollars it would cost medical science to save.

And of course, there's also the America-specific issue of health insurance being synonymous with health care - people expect it to cover every expense, instead of what it's supposed to be, insurance [against a catastrophic bill]. Does your car insurance cover oil changes? How about home owner's insurance covering light bulbs? Right, but health insurance should cover routine maintenance and every minor expense. Not specific to your idea, but another general anchor around the neck of any meaningful health care reform in this country is the abusive and erroneous perception in America of what health insurance is supposed to be.

*Free, as paid for by their tax dollars, soaking the rich with more taxes and taking out unsustainable debt against future production from slavizens of our perspective nations, of course.

[GGT]

Cain, I would join your rant, but only to a point. Americans have come to view health insurance as health care, but only because costs have grown so damn expensive for even basic things (office visit for antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, let alone a complete physical with blood tests, age-appropriate screenings, vaccinations).

We had this argument years ago, when employers started offering health insurance to their employers instead of wages good enough to pay OOP. I recall you didn't see one damn thing wrong with auto manufacturers offering platinum policies (with pressure from UAW) for their entire work force. In fact, you defended that practice from the employer's perspective---just another way to pay less in wages but still attract and retain workers.

In that same vein, it's now become too expensive for most Americans to pay OOP for anything disease-related, let alone chronic illnesses that can be diagnosed earlier than ever. Cancers aren't the automatic death sentence they used to be, but are now often categorized as chronic/recurrent diseases that need lots of testing, screening, chemo, radiation, surgery. Auto-immune and/or neurological diseases like MS, Parkinson's, progressive illnesses of dementia or Alzheimer's....

Not many could afford treatment OOP.

[GGT]

Also, these insurance comparisons of cars and oil changes, homes and light bulbs....to health maintenance or what is "catastrophic" is another US-specific example of craptastic abuse of "theory". New cars come with warranties (an insurance product built into the price of the vehicle), extended warranties can be bought (an insurance product to cover expensive things like transmissions or catalytic converters), road-side assistance and towing service is sold by car manufacturers, AAA and others (more insurance products).

Homeowners are buying insurance products for theft loss, fire/flood/water/wind damages, total replacement policies, plus personal accident and liabilities, contractor protection, and umbrella coverage against bankruptcy. Private mortgage insurance, Life insurance to pay off a mortgage, Title insurance, Renter's insurance, riders for jewelry or other valuables, and bundling of all sorts.

None of those things are theoretically the same as health care or medical care. Houses and cars can be repaired AND replaced, but it's not the same by giving someone an artificial eye or synthetic limb, dialysis or organ transplants, comas or early death.

[CitizenCain]

Cain, I would join your rant, but only to a point. Americans have come to view health insurance as health care, but only because costs have grown so damn expensive for even basic things (office visit for antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, let alone a complete physical with blood tests, age-appropriate screenings, vaccinations).

Utter bullshit. A "basic" office visit for prescriptions or a quick medical diagnosis costs me $40. The damned expensive ones with blood screening or a physical cost me $85, (IIRC, it's been at least a year or two since I checked). Expecting health insurance to cover a quarterly or semi-annual doctor's visit is perfectly analogous to expecting your car insurance to cover bi-monthly oil changes ($19.99 at Jiffy Lube) or the occasional tune up and tire rotation.

It's only outrageously expensive if you use the ER like a primary care physician, and then you should be forced to pay through the nose to discourage you from wasting critical emergency resources for every scraped knee and sniffle.

We had this argument years ago, when employers started offering health insurance to their employers instead of wages good enough to pay OOP. I recall you didn't see one damn thing wrong with auto manufacturers offering platinum policies (with pressure from UAW) for their entire work force. In fact, you defended that practice from the employer's perspective---just another way to pay less in wages but still attract and retain workers.

You don't remember that correctly at all. I saw plenty wrong with it, but like most issues in this debate, it's not the employers or the insurance companies who are at fault, it's the federal government, for making health insurance the only tax-free benefit available to employers.

In that same vein, it's now become too expensive for most Americans to pay OOP for anything disease-related, let alone chronic illnesses that can be diagnosed earlier than ever.

Bull. Just because someone doesn't want to pay a few hundred dollars a month for prescription medications doesn't mean it's too expensive for most Americans.

Cancers aren't the automatic death sentence they used to be, but are now often categorized as chronic/recurrent diseases that need lots of testing, screening, chemo, radiation, surgery. Auto-immune and/or neurological diseases like MS, Parkinson's, progressive illnesses of dementia or Alzheimer's....

Not many could afford treatment OOP.

So? Everyone dies. That doesn't mean it's a worthwhile utilization of resources to pay for everyone to fight off death for another day. The fact that cancer (etc.) is an extremely expensive "chronic disease" to treat is an indication that it requires a lot of highly specialized care and particularly scarce resources. You can shift around the costs all you want, but at the end of the day, someone has to pay for it and there's not enough resources for everyone, so no matter what you do, someone's going to be left out in the cold to die "prematurely." When you let the market ration those resources, you at least end up incentivizing an increase of supply in those areas, leading to better technology and more doctors in the future. When you force the government to ration it, you add inefficiencies to the equation, effectively reducing the supply, as well preventing proper incentivization to increase supply in the future.

New cars come with warranties

And when a new car is "defective," the insurance company doesn't pay to fix it, the manufacturer does. So, just as in that case, don't complain about defective products to your insurance company, bitch at your manufacturer for any sub-standard parts or defects in craftsmanship when it comes to your self as well. See if your auto-immune disease is still covered under warranty. If not, sue your parents and/or God for issuing a defective product, and write your congressman to insist that we ban people from manufacturing unsafe, sub-standard human beings in the future.