Date:         Thu, 28 Sep 1995 12:19:42 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Ron Lussier <coyote@zuni.chaco.com>
Subject:      Re: Insurance Industry Regu

At 12:07 PM 9/28/95 CDT, Harvey Chao wrote:
>In other words, insurance co's are profit-making institutions, as any legit
>business must be. But corrupt ones try to jazz it way up, creating 
>situations like you've described.
>
>Any chance that government restrictions before the election, were so severe,
>that even legit, clean companies could only lose money? I have no info on 
>this (do you, Cheese? How about sharing your stats with us?), but would sure
>like to find out-- if my rates were lower, I could afford that new engine
for my
>'71!

This is possible, but doubtful.  See below.

>How does one get this info, I wonder? (When pigs fly, if corruption is
>that widespread, maybe?) Any suggestions, anyone?

This would be fairly simple.  Most (if not all) major insurance companies
are public companies.  Look at their record of dividends... these are their
profits, divided up amongst their stockholders.  As insurance companies
don't have much in the way of R&D costs, the dividend multiplied by the
number of shares gives a fairy close approximation of their profit for the year.

(High-tech companies often don't pay dividends, since all of their profits
go into the next year's R&D.)

>From what I've heard, the insurance industries profits have been climbing at
a rate higher than inflation.  The 'insurance crisis' is largely a
manufactured crisis to justify higher rates.

Ron
--                                       
Ron 'Coyote' Lussier         /\_/\      ____             Chaco Communications
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(1990 VW Westfalia Camper)    \_/          \/    http://www.chaco.com/~coyote