re: Shocker: study suggests insurance companies are breaking it off in our butts

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So you'd rather your insurance company go out of business after paying out claims?

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Dumb hyperbole

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If the insurance company is in the red one year, they do their best to get out of the red for the following year (sometimes it takes 2 or 3 years depending upon the state DOI).

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As a business, their EBITDA has been in the red once over the last 40+ years.

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Are you a socialist?

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Are you a retard? Because you’re missing the entire argument that was established in my very first response. This is an industry granted exemptions from interstate commerce clauses. It is the only one. They’re free to operate in ways that are illegal for everyone else in the pursuit of their profits. They can collude like drug cartels and chop up territories to fix prices, and they do.

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He's probably going to say barrier to entry is too high due to the above. I think it's hilarious he thinks the top companies collude on rate and claims activity. Completely out of touch with reality

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lol. They absolutely do. It’s not even hidden. It is completely legal for them from a federal standpoint and state regulators are comically flaccid against it.

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Are you a retard?

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You are if you dont follow up with your "record high profit" argument with aim directly at every other aspect of life. Especially government.

Our county sets mileage rates for property taxes. Most of the tax is set for the county school system.
The county tax assessors office takes 2% off the county tax revenue to operate her office.

We have one of the fastest growing counties in the country. Plenty of student growth and demand upon the school resources.
But the tax assessor grabs "record profits" with the same number of employees doing the work.

Not a damn socialist gives a shite about the record profits of an organization that didn't grow one bit in terms of personnel other than to give out raises.

Sales taxes hit record profits.
Income taxes hit record profits.
All of it is based on margins at rising levels of growth.
The government isn't doing anything better. Just reaping the growth with record profits. But not a peep from the socialists.

Learn what a margin is and get off your high horse.
Margins rule the world. Even for socialists and communists.

Secondly, if you trust the federal government more than your state government then you should really consider moving.

I would 1000 times demand more local control than federal control.
My vote means more.
My politicians are more accountable and easier to eliminate.

You have a paranoia (it is irrational) of insurance companies and state legislation.

Self insure. Please.

It’s not a paranoia, moron. It is reality. The numbers are proof. It is the most consistently profitable industry outside of public utilities in my life. They have a damn near flawless record of never losing and frick people over constantly, while being completely unchecked by the federal government. None of this is paranoia, it is reality.

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lol. They absolutely do. It’s not even hidden. It is completely legal for them from a federal standpoint and state regulators are comically flaccid against it.

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Evidence?

Collusion is illegal. Especially at the federal level for insurance companies. You are kind of a moron for stating the opposite.

And insurance companies hate the department of insurance.
I dont know how you define flaccid.

If collusion existed, you'd be able to point to the each individual company not losing their arse vs continuing to use industry averages.

Or are you suggesting they take turns willingly losing their asses as to not draw suspicion

Co-mingling data from a stock company that must price at a profit with a mutual company that prices at a loss is an interesting strategy.

The exemptions they’re granted by their exclusions from the commerce clause make it legal for them to pool data in matters of risk and pricing. An activity that is illegal for all other industries. It is regulated only at the state level.

In California: Homeowners in high wildfire risk areas, including parts of Northern and Southern California, allege that insurers systematically withdrew from local markets. Instead of competing fairly, companies allegedly communicated directly or through shared industry platforms to limit consumer choices and inflate premiums.

The lawsuits argue that insurance collusion allowed companies to avoid market competition and artificially raise prices, violating California’s strict consumer protection laws.

Key Allegations Include:

Coordinated Non-Renewals: Multiple insurers canceled policies in the same neighborhoods around the same time, leaving homeowners few alternatives.

Artificial Premium Inflation: Companies allegedly used shared risk models to justify raising premiums across the board.

Steering Toward Limited Options: Insurers pushed homeowners into costly surplus lines insurance, offering less protection.

"Tacit" Collusion via Shared Risk Models: Companies may use shared or similar risk modeling tools to justify uniform, high-rate increases across a region, reducing competition on price.Coordination on Claims Payouts: Insurers in specific regions may collude with service providers, such as auto repair shops, to underpay claims or use standardized, low-ball repair estimates.

Oklahoma - State Farm currently being sued and backed by the attorney general:

In 2020, a mysterious meeting in a State Farm high-rise in Illinois cooked up a pernicious scheme, the petitions said. A Wind Hail Model Enhancement Team — a star chamber, one petition called it — was formed to oversee a practice of pre-denying claims of hail damage. Adjustors were trained to refuse total roof replacements, the petitions said, and State Farm colluded with the global consulting company Accenture and Haag Engineering, a firm that provides forensic damage assessment, to distort the definition of hail and disguise policy terms.

The goal was to reduce hail claim costs by 50%, the petitions said. The initiative was rolled out in June 2020 in Dallas County, Texas, the petitions said, and was quickly extended to three other hail states, including Oklahoma. Within six months, the program was expanded to the rest of the country.

In open court on Nov. 7, Reggie Whitten and Mike Burrage put it simply.

“You got a scheme when you are going to reduce the claim before it even happens, and make billions,” Burrage said.

“We have people all over the state who don’t know why they are being cheated,” Whitten said. “They cheated hundreds of millions in Oklahoma between 2020 and 2023, and billions more in the United States.”

Leffel (State Farm Attorney) did not deny the special State Farm meeting or the pilot program in Texas. Rather, he objected to how those events were characterized.

“We heard all these adjectives: cheating, fraud, and on and on,” Leffel said. “But adjectives are not evidence.”

Leffel described the meeting as a group of people gathering to decide whether to adopt a new feature on claims adjustment.


Oklahoma Attorney General Intervention: The Oklahoma Attorney General is currently attempting to intervene in these cases (specifically Hursh v. State Farm), characterizing the company's actions as a pattern of racketeering.

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I’m not saying historic winners, I’m saying every fricking year, except 1 (2001) they’ve never failed to be profitable as an industry. It isn’t magic, it’s math, and ethics.

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And yet they are the 19th most reliably profitable industry.

And I agree with the math.
My company loses money in 2024.
I raise rates in that state for 2025. Worst case scenario (unfriendly DOI), I may not hit profitability with filed rate changes until 2026.

If the DOI is extremely unfavorable, I retire the insurance product and file a new one with the department of insurance not dependent upon rate increases for base level rates of newly written customers.
The prior customer base is grandfathered on an unprofitable product, but I have stopped the bleeding with newly written business.