The Latest Insurance Scheme
September 2nd, 2007by Dave
I recently heard that my former employer is offering a new sort of “insurance” service. The Plan format sounds familiar: for a monthly fee, with an annual commitment and payroll deduction through your employer, you are able to consult with an in-Plan specialist with no fees or deductibles. But the specialist is a lawyer, who can advise you on anything from wills to home sales to traffic tickets.
Is this a good thing? I can see where it could be helpful in negotiating the legalities of life, particularly with property, wills, etc. But my gut response is disgust.
First, are we really at the point where the average middle-class American needs to consult with a lawyer every year? I’ve never consulted a lawyer so far in my life, and while I’m sure it’ll be necessary in a few places, I’d like to think that I don’t need it regularly.
Second, will this end up doing the same thing to law that it has to medicine? With unlimited insurance, people tend to go to doctors for trivial reasons, and drive up the cost of health care for everyone by demanding unnecessary treatment. I can see the same things happening here. If I could consult with a lawyer any time I want for free, I’m sure I could find plenty of places where I’d use the service. And the lawyer would be likely to point out the many places I could use his services, of course.
Third, the list of exceptions is a mile long. The last thing I need is another program where I have to spend 2 hours figuring out whether the problem I have is covered by my insurance.
For reference, the monthly cost is $18.75. It requires a year-long commitment, and will not cover “pre-existing conditions.”
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:53 am
“With unlimited insurance, people tend to go to doctors for trivial reasons, and drive up the cost of health care for everyone by demanding unnecessary treatment.”
Maybe your logic follows in the legal context, but is the original medical example accurate? I would be interested in seeing any substantiating data/cross-national examples on this one. First, I think in the American medical system, it’s the doctors who have incentives to provide lots of treatments, sometimes unnecessarily, because that is how they get paid by insurance companies. Second, isn’t it also possible that a system that provides some patients with a few extra treatments/doctor visits would actually cost less *overall* if it meant that other people who might not otherwise have insurance actually *do* go see their doctor in a timely fashion instead of waiting until their conditions deteriorate to the point they need to go to a hideously expensive emergency room? Sorry to be tangential on this one, but I sometimes wonder about these assumptions; they are really not obvious to me.
That’s an absolutely fascinating piece of info about your former employer, tho — I’ve never heard of such a thing before.
I suspect this plan mostly leads to people better navigating existing laws/systems/policies, rather than more lawsuits. But with all the injustice in the world (and if you don’t see it all the time, you’re not looking), I sometimes wonder if there shouldn’t actually be *more* lawsuits. The real tragedy, to my mind, is that we don’t have better dispute resolution mechanisms than lawsuits/courts, because you shouldn’t have to have the money/time/personal resources to pursue a problem legally to rectify grievances when other people are not following the rules. But I have no special insight on how to solve this problem…
And, yes, life shouldn’t be so complicated that one needs a lawyer for many things — that actually suggests the need for major reform in various areas. It would be interesting to see records about what topics come up most frequently for the company’s lawyers. This really is a boon to them more than anyone.
(I remember reading a really eye-opening article in the Christian Science Monitor a few years ago on how once upon a time in many states you could become a lawyer just by passing the bar exam — you didn’t have to go to law school, but you could learn by being a sort of “apprentice” and studying on your own as well; then the ABA/law schools established a lock on professional standards and these laws withered, tho a few states never changed. Aha! Here’s the article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0603/p13s01-lecs.html They sum up the conflicting goals at the end: standardized training vs. access to the profession)
September 6th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
I think this is a great idea. Personally, I don’t need a lawyer - but that just means I won’t buy the insurance. Just like I don’t buy earthquake insurance while living in New Jersey. But I think its great that such insurance is out there, for people who need it.
There are some professions for which there is the constant threat of a lawsuit. Just as doctors all have medical malpractice insurance, as the society becomes more litigious (and the fact that it is litigious is annoying, but that doesn’t seem to be the source of your disgust) other professionals will want to do so as well.
An engineer might want such a plan as a contingency against the inevitable lawsuits in case something he designs fails. My dad, as a university administrator, gets hit with lawsuits all the time - when a student fails out of school they typically sue the school and name the administrators in the suit. Of course, universities have their own full-time counsels, but for smaller companies that can’t afford to keep lawyers on staff, having lawyer insurance makes a lot of sense.
Besides, if people abuse it by going to the lawyer more, the insurance company will lose money. And that’s not something an insurance company will sustain for long. If that happens, you’ll end up with deductibles like health care. So, one must assume that for the moment this sort of insurance isn’t actually increasing consumption.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
“An engineer might want such a plan as a contingency against the inevitable lawsuits in case something he designs fails.”
Do individual engineers typically get sued in these events? Or is it just the company for which they work/top management?