A walk to the mailbox usually holds little promise of anything of value. A sale circular, a postcard advertising home repair services, a mailer offering an extended warranty on our car. There might be one of the few magazines we still actually subscribe to, maybe the local newspaper. When the highlight is one of those charitable solicitations with a memo pad featuring kittens or preprinted address return labels, you know the pickings are thin: bonus points if the labels actually spell our name correctly.
So a piece of "official" looking mail is a notable if for no other reason than its rarity. There wasn't much to this particular one: just a regular white business envelope from our insurance company. While it could have been the occasional privacy notice or change in some obscure policy detail, it looked more one-off than those mass mailings. As I walked back down the driveway I tore open the flap and peeked in, not really expecting much, but loath to toss it without even checking. What I saw stopped me in my tracks: a check for $25.29.
It wasn't the amount that did it. After all, that's barely half of a dinner if you're doing take out for two. It was the source of the check. Insurance is one of those black holes that we shovel endless amounts of money into as, well, insurance. We do so in the expectation, and indeed the hope, that we will never get anything back. That's because a payout means we've been beset by a misfortune of some kind. Hopefully it makes us at least partially whole for the expense, and then we move on. And I can tell you from personal experience it's usually an unproductive bit of fantasy accounting to total up all you've put into it over the years and see if you come out ahead. Odds are you don't.
I rifled through the other detritus in the pile to find another letter from the same source, assuming it might contain some sort of explanation. It seems that the complete and total disruption to our usual routines has meant that, on the positive side, we're not exposed to all the usual risks. For weeks we rarely left our homes to go anywhere other than a quick local trip to get groceries or supplies. No trips to the airport, to the office, to grandma's. And so our car was safely parked in the driveway or garage, the biggest risk being when the garbage cans were dragged past it on the way to the top of the driveway. As such we were getting a rebate for an auto premium that covered us from a universe of hurt with which we were no longer engaged.
A few days later, a similar walk to the mailbox produced a like result. Another small check from a different insurance company, this one related to health, with the same basic explanation. While pandemic related expenses have soared and placed severe stresses on the entire health care system, that has been more than offset by a drop in other medical expenses. People staying home aren't getting injured as much, and elective surgeries have been postponed. Yes, this all has a huge impact on the economics and employment in the healthcare segment, and that's no small thing. But at the other end it also means insurance companies are paying out less, and so they are giving some back.
To be clear, all these amounts are small and unlikely to make a dent. And it should be noted that many companies have already filed for large increases for the next cycle as they anticipate expenses coming back as pent up demand returns and government support (specifically in health care) evaporates. Companies are in business to make money, not give it back, even if we seem to be in a period where corporate social awareness and responsibility is on the upswing. Still, one can be forgiven if the optimist triumphs over the realist in the hope that this kind of corporate largesse might be indicative of any kind of change in the system. Mitt Romney famously noted that corporations are people too. And while it may be naïve, isn't it nice to at least hope they could be moving away from Mr. Hyde and towards Dr. Jekyll?
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford hates paying for insurance. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
So a piece of "official" looking mail is a notable if for no other reason than its rarity. There wasn't much to this particular one: just a regular white business envelope from our insurance company. While it could have been the occasional privacy notice or change in some obscure policy detail, it looked more one-off than those mass mailings. As I walked back down the driveway I tore open the flap and peeked in, not really expecting much, but loath to toss it without even checking. What I saw stopped me in my tracks: a check for $25.29.
It wasn't the amount that did it. After all, that's barely half of a dinner if you're doing take out for two. It was the source of the check. Insurance is one of those black holes that we shovel endless amounts of money into as, well, insurance. We do so in the expectation, and indeed the hope, that we will never get anything back. That's because a payout means we've been beset by a misfortune of some kind. Hopefully it makes us at least partially whole for the expense, and then we move on. And I can tell you from personal experience it's usually an unproductive bit of fantasy accounting to total up all you've put into it over the years and see if you come out ahead. Odds are you don't.
I rifled through the other detritus in the pile to find another letter from the same source, assuming it might contain some sort of explanation. It seems that the complete and total disruption to our usual routines has meant that, on the positive side, we're not exposed to all the usual risks. For weeks we rarely left our homes to go anywhere other than a quick local trip to get groceries or supplies. No trips to the airport, to the office, to grandma's. And so our car was safely parked in the driveway or garage, the biggest risk being when the garbage cans were dragged past it on the way to the top of the driveway. As such we were getting a rebate for an auto premium that covered us from a universe of hurt with which we were no longer engaged.
A few days later, a similar walk to the mailbox produced a like result. Another small check from a different insurance company, this one related to health, with the same basic explanation. While pandemic related expenses have soared and placed severe stresses on the entire health care system, that has been more than offset by a drop in other medical expenses. People staying home aren't getting injured as much, and elective surgeries have been postponed. Yes, this all has a huge impact on the economics and employment in the healthcare segment, and that's no small thing. But at the other end it also means insurance companies are paying out less, and so they are giving some back.
To be clear, all these amounts are small and unlikely to make a dent. And it should be noted that many companies have already filed for large increases for the next cycle as they anticipate expenses coming back as pent up demand returns and government support (specifically in health care) evaporates. Companies are in business to make money, not give it back, even if we seem to be in a period where corporate social awareness and responsibility is on the upswing. Still, one can be forgiven if the optimist triumphs over the realist in the hope that this kind of corporate largesse might be indicative of any kind of change in the system. Mitt Romney famously noted that corporations are people too. And while it may be naïve, isn't it nice to at least hope they could be moving away from Mr. Hyde and towards Dr. Jekyll?
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford hates paying for insurance. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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