Worth Mentioning

As a follow up to an earlier post I thought some of the comments by John Stossel were on the mark.


Suppose you had grocery insurance. With your employer paying 80 percent of the bill, you would fill the cart with lobster and filet mignon. Everything would cost more because supermarkets would stop running sales. Why should they, when their customers barely care about the price?

Mr. Fembup, are you feeding Mr. Stossell ideas?

Suppose everyone had transportation insurance. The roads would be crowded with Mercedes. Why buy a Chevy if your employer pays?

I am leaning more toward a Porsche.

Suppose car insurance worked that way. Every time you got a little dent or the paint faded, or every time you buy gas or change the oil, you'd fill out endless forms and wait for reimbursement from your insurance company. Gas prices would quickly rise because service stations would know that you no longer care about the price. You'd become more wasteful: jackrabbit starts, speeding, wasting gas. Who cares? You are only paying 20 percent or less of the bill.

This analogy has been used more than once on this site. It never gets old.

Somehow people seem to believe "insured" means free.

I am beginning to think someone actually gets it.