Your Call Is Important To Us by Penny Laura

Author:Penny, Laura [Penny, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2005-07-11T15:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Insurance: n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

—AMBROSE BIERCE

In January of 2005, Marsh & McLennan, one of the biggest insurance brokers in the United States, agreed to pay $850 million to settle charges that they had engaged in bid-rigging and taken kickbacks. Marsh was supposed to find insurance plans for companies, but they faked wildly inflated bids to sell mildly inflated bids, and then got commissions from the insurers, who benefited from the cunning little scheme. They would neither confirm nor deny these allegations, of course, but they agreed to pay, apologize, and mend their wicked ways. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who led the Marsh probe, has been handing out sheaves of subpoenas to insurers, alleging widespread corruption throughout the industry. Nobody bid-rigs alone, and bid-rigging is but one of the infractions investigators are considering. Aon, ACE, AIG, Aetna, Cigna, Hartford, and MetLife are some of the giant American insurers who are the objects of Spitzer’s latest blitz. Though his detractors claim that this is another well-publicized crusade en route to his impending campaign for governor, attorneys general in other states, like California and Connecticut, are following Spitzer’s lead, and have also started issuing subpoenas to insurance companies.

I don’t think Spitzer’s insurance probe is a Machiavellian ploy, but if it is, it is a damn good one. I think a lot of people are wondering where, exactly, their premiums go, particularly when those premiums are rising precipitously. The most hotly contested issue in recent elections in my neighborhood, specifically Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, was car insurance. People were pissed about double-digit premium increases, and they demanded that all the candidates speak to this issue. Some demanded that the candidates commit to the establishment of public auto insurance, as they have in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Others demanded that the candidates pass legislation curbing the outrageous rate hikes. The Nova Scotia government ended up negotiating a soft-tissue injury claim cap in exchange for lesser increases, a decidedly industry-friendly solution. In February of 2005, when the Canadian insurance industry reported making a record-breaking $4 billion in profit in 2004, the headlines, even in staid papers, used words like obscene and outrage.

This insurance ire is one example of the resentment that smolders in the hearts of policyholders across this great landmass. The insurance industry may not be as obviously synonymous with bullshit as advertising or politics, but people are becoming more and more frustrated with its escalating costs and baffling verbiage, given that they have to have insurance if they want a house or a car or, in the United States, to not die. Lawyers have been milking insurance rage for a long time. Insurers are being sued in scores of suits, class action and individual, meritorious and spurious. The Web fairly teems with sad stories by the screwed. Folks stuck at home, sick and waiting for a

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