Ethics Through the Lens of Insurance

 Hello everyone, 

This is my final presentation for Bioethics, where I will be discussing Insurance from a dual perspective. 

I hope you enjoy my presentation, and that you come away from it with a bit more knowledge about why insurance is structured the way it is. 

Enjoy! 

Let's start with a question: What do you know about insurance? What do you think its goals are? 

As you initially read through this(though I hope you do wait till the presentation, so it doesn't spoil too much), I want you to think through all you know about the insurance world and let your mindscape expand to show a full picture by the end of the post. 

History Lesson (No punny satirical videos this time, sorry!) 

Insurance, in its most modern sense, can be traced to the past 120 years, but pieces of its principles can be found all throughout the pages of history. I won't bore you with too many details, but if curiosity strikes you, do take a gander here: 

http://wsrinsurance.com/how-insurance-began-3000-years-of-history/

The basic thought process of Insurance comes from the lack of true individuality. More or less, a problem you have is likely to also plague someone else, and some problems span the whole of society or even a huge part of it. And because the world runs on currency, most problems require funds to solve. If our society as a whole all have these issues that cost money (perhaps even more money than one individual can easily pay), then would it not make sense to pool funds to pay for those who are currently having that issue?

From this perspective, society can chip in equal amounts to begin and all of society is covered so long as the problems happen sporadically amongst them. Now, as in fairness, those who pull from the pool more often, end up needing to pay a bit more since they pull from it more than the average individual does. 

Does this make sense? I sure hope so!

Now, we talk about the modern issues that declare insurance to be unethical. AKA Profitability

Our country runs off of markets, businesses in the markets must remain solvent and be able to expand if necessary, so they get stuck between a rock and a hard place. They want to insure you based on the original principle, they have all this historical data to use, and they also have a market to fit into. They must charge high enough to keep the company going, but charge low enough that customers aren't deterred by the price and go find insurance elsewhere. This is where ethics come in. Some argue that any company that is meant to serve society but is influenced by the whims of capitalism and profitability cannot and will never be considered ethical.

One can also argue that we don't need insurance, we should just save and pay for our bills. BUT here's the problem with that logic. 

So insurance companies cannot be ethical if they're in the market. So they leave the market. Suddenly, you get injured, the hospital hits you with a bill for $10,000  plus another $4000 for the ambulance. Do any of you have 14,000 in savings to shell out for these bills? No? Okay, so you take out a loan to pay it, that works, but then there's interest and collections, oh look! Your credit score is now going down because of the loan.  This is an exaggeration, but not by much. 

You can't just get rid of one element of the market, but keep the others. Sure, you can argue that they're all greedy and take more than they should from the common citizen, and many would agree with you, but simply removing insurance from the market won't solve the issue. It's too ingrained.  

I mainly discuss this point to jab at a coworker, he didn't like this approach, but he also couldn't deny it either, so I think I win this round. 

Let's switch to the consumer side. 

Many of the issues I hear about people having has to do with the amount they are paying for their policies, or they argue the case of someone who is very sick and needs insurance but cannot pay the amount the company decides.  

Let's stop for a moment and ponder this: What are your own personal feelings regarding insurance and this scenario? 

Do you feel you pay too much? 

Do you think these issues would be different if we had a different type of economy?

Honestly, I sit in the middle ground between the consumer and the insurance world because of my studies, and even I find difficulty finding an easy solution to the disconnect between insurers and insurees. The business side makes it purely logical, numerical. If one is a greater risk, if they pull from the pool more than others, they should pay more. But from the consumer perspective, they might not have the funds to pay more hence why they have insurance in the first place. It is quite the dilemma, and I intend to further my own research on this topic because insurance as a whole has quite the grasp on our economy (cue 2008), and I want to know where the equilibrium is. 

Questions for Test:

How long has modern insurance been in practice?

Why is modern insurance considered unethical? 

Looking forward to the 7th!