The Root of Insurance Problems

I've recently come across ads for a new car insurance company called Root, that promises to lower your rates by measuring how you actually drive, so that your risk, and thus premiums, is assessed by your actual choices and performance. And yes, they actually tell you that your rates are lower because you're not paying the insurance for crappy drivers.

It's not quite a silicon valley darling, but predictably enough, the crowd that laments how it sucked to have insurance that charged you more for "pre-existing conditions" was bad, and paying for other people's health care problems is good, is at the least not opposed.

Yeah, I can hear the argument now - how you drive is a choice, and pre-existing conditions aren't.

Well, ok. Leaving aside how fair it is to force someone else to pay for your particular handicaps in the genetic lottery or nasty turns of fate (and keep in mind, part of the deal that the VA is supposed to provide if it provided decent health care overall is because you're putting your neck on the line for the people paying for it...), a hell of a lot of chronic "pre-existing" issues are a direct result of repeated personal choices.

Take the fat acceptance movement, for example.

There are entire rafts of issues that come along with poor diet, lack of excercise, and so on.

And yes, if you want to drive a car, at least in the states, you effectively need car insurance.

Finally, yes, I'm aware that shouting "hypocrite" at a liberal or SJW is pointless. I'm still sometimes shocked at how self-unaware they are.