Insurance

Guest101

Recently I've noticed that basically the answer to everything seems to be, get insurance. Should've got insurance.

Why?

I don't just mean housing. I've seen similar is car threads too etc ( as in more than 3rd party ).

Insurance is supposed to protect from your own negligence ( which is a good thing ) and from natural disasters ( also a good thing ).

If someone else is negligent, why should your insurance cover that ( it's good if it does, but just as fairly you can and should sue the other party).

Seems very silly.

needabed

I'm wondering if we should all get insurance on our insurance :rotfl:

davidmcn

Guest101 wrote: »

If someone else is negligent, why should your insurance cover that ( it's good if it does, but just as fairly you can and should sue the other party).

And if the other party can't be found / doesn't have any money / doesn't have any insurance?

In practice if your insurers have paid out to you, they will try to recover their loss from the other party.

TBagpuss

The problem is that (a) you don't always know who the other person is and (b) the other person may have no money or assets, or may have no insurance, so if you sue them, you get nothing.

Plus, suing someone can take a long time and be expensive (depending on circumstances) - so you may get your money in the end, but in the meantime will have had to pay up front to repair the damage / replace the broken item etc.

If you have insurance then the insurers will sue the person responsible, if appropriate, but the risk of that person turning out to be unidentifiable, or bankrupt, or uninsured, or dishonest falls mainly on the insurer rather than on you.

Of course, other than buildings insurance (if you have a mortgage) and car insurance you don't generally *have* to have insurance, if you think it is silly you are of course free to take a calculated risk and go without.

Insurance is a form of spreading the risk. If you'd rather take the full risk yourself, and gamble that nothing will go wrong, that any damage will be caused by an easily identifiable person who has insurance/assets and who is honest enough to admit liability early on, or that you can afford to absorb the loss and the cost of litigation, then feel free to chose not to take out insurance.

Guest101

I understand the practicalities of course more the principle of the matter.

Society is hitting a low point when we have to ensure against everything because other people aren't honest.

It's not that liars haven't always existed, it just seems very common now to say 'f him/her I don't know them'