Monday, February 22, 2010

Catching up on comments

I’ve caught up on responding to comments that have come in while I was out of commission:

Yes

Great minds

This sounds familiar

And I deleted a comment on a very old post. I’m so proud: the Spambots have found me.

If I wasn’t such a coward I’d try installing the widget that shows recent comments. Maybe someday...
Posted by Elise at 2/22/2010 02:31:00 PM Categories:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Texan99 writes:

Lordy. When did price controls ever lead to anything but shortages? I'm not even sure state governments should be regulating insurance prices. We treat insurance companies very much like utilities, but public utilities are notoriously badly run state-sanctioned monopolies.

I understand the need for oversight to ensure that insurance companies stay well-enough capitalized that they will have money available to pay promised claims after accepting people's premiums for years. I understand why insurance regulators reserve the right to shut down an insurance company if it fails this test, so that the customers have a prayer of getting most of their money back before the organization goes all the way down the tubes. But I don't understand why the premiums have to be regulated.

In the case of power utilities, we regulate the prices because we give the utility company a monopoly. We do that because we can't tolerate an overlapping hodgepodge of electrical lines and gas pipelines and sewers. I don't see the same concern for insurance products -- in that case, the more redundancy, the better.

February 23, 2010 at 10:21 AM
Texan99 said...

I meant to post that above, under the insurance thread.

February 23, 2010 at 10:57 AM

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