Mandatory Insurance or $8 gas?

[Foxfyre]

Imagine if the government required automobile drivers to purchase liability insurance against the Worst Case Accident: totalling a 2010 Maybach Laundalet with four newly-minted orthopedic surgeons aboard. Worst case liability: $50 million or so.

With a $50 million liability insurance requirement, who would drive? Only the wealthy.

The Deepwater Horizon incident pointed up the inadequacy of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990’s $75 million economic liability limit for operations involving high pressure, high-volume deepwater oil.

Some Congressional Democrats would like the liability cap to be set at $20 billion; some want no cap at all. They don’t even acknowledge the fact that shallow water operations are orders of magnitude less risky than deepwater oil; to them, an offshore well is an offshore well. . . . .

Read more here:
How to Kill an Industry, or: Hello $8 Gas! | RedState

Moral of the story. If the Federal government can force you to buy healthcare insurance, it can force you to insure anything.

Do you approve of that?

 

[Meister]

I do agree with you, it's just another chip in the wall. Once they have a foot in the door there will be no stopping them. Our country was never set up to have such a large invasive government that we are becoming acquainted with.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Buying insurance against an accident caused by your actions is one thing. Buying insurance just cause others don't is tyrannical. If you are doing a dangerous thing, I have no qualm against requiring you to insure against things that might go wrong.

The cap is the problematical part. Any damage you do over a certain amount is no longer your problem? I don't think that is that good of an idea.

 

[Foxfyre]

That's really why I picked the short blurb to illustrate the issue. It is ambivalent and, probably without intending to, illustrated many of the problems.

1. The State requires you to have automobile liability insurance IF you drive on public roads. You are not required to have liability insurance if a vehicle is not driven or is driven only off road or on private roads. I don't think any of us think this is unreasonable or unfair or oversteps government authority.

BUT. . . .we would have a HUGE problem with it if the state decided that everybody has to have auto liability insurance because we MIGHT decide to drive on a public road at some time or because it would lower everybody's costs because everybody has to buy it.

2. As it is the State that issues the licenses for oil companies to drill offshore oil and gas wells, I don't think anybody has a problem with requiring those companies to agree to pay any damages that might occur due to accident or other unforseen event and I have no problem with those companies being required to show financial ability to do so either through insurance or by placing funds in escrow or whatever.

BUT. . . .the problem as stated in the OP is that this requirement would be required of even shallow water wells as well as deep water wells.

I can certainly see an excellent reason for a cap on punative damages. And I can see a reason for an insurance minimum and a cap so that insurance companies would be willing to assume the risk. I don't see a good reason for imposing a cap on actual damages, however.

3. I could see a good case for the Federal or State government to provide a means for people to buy catastrophic health insurance which would drastically reduce the cost of private insurance.

I can find no justification to require people to buy a product that they don't want and don't intend to use.

 

[WillowTree]

now that the open borders crowd got their way there will soon be waaaaaaaaaaaaay more takers than there are givers, then just sit by and watch the shit hit the fan.

 

[JScott]

Yeah lets not get national health insurance. I like the waiting rooms at capacity with a 3 hour wait.

 

[Foxfyre]

Yeah lets not get national health insurance. I like the waiting rooms at capacity with a 3 hour wait.

Well that's better than three month or three years wait that has people from Canada and the UK coming here when they just can't wait. And our new health czar--that isn't his actual title but that's pretty much what he is--drools over the UK system even as the UK is now admitting they can't sustain their system and are looking to decentralize and de-federalize it.

 

[rightwinger]

Imagine if the government required automobile drivers to purchase liability insurance against the Worst Case Accident: totalling a 2010 Maybach Laundalet with four newly-minted orthopedic surgeons aboard. Worst case liability: $50 million or so.

With a $50 million liability insurance requirement, who would drive? Only the wealthy.

The Deepwater Horizon incident pointed up the inadequacy of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990’s $75 million economic liability limit for operations involving high pressure, high-volume deepwater oil.

Some Congressional Democrats would like the liability cap to be set at $20 billion; some want no cap at all. They don’t even acknowledge the fact that shallow water operations are orders of magnitude less risky than deepwater oil; to them, an offshore well is an offshore well. . . . .

Read more here:
How to Kill an Industry, or: Hello $8 Gas! | RedState

Moral of the story. If the Federal government can force you to buy healthcare insurance, it can force you to insure anything.

Do you approve of that?

More Right Wing conservatives making apologies to BP

Can you possibly get more pathetic?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Buying insurance against an accident caused by your actions is one thing. Buying insurance just cause others don't is tyrannical. If you are doing a dangerous thing, I have no qualm against requiring you to insure against things that might go wrong.

The cap is the problematical part. Any damage you do over a certain amount is no longer your problem? I don't think that is that good of an idea.

The cap doesn't work that way, all it odes is limit the economic damages on a federal level. This only covers the direct economic damages to other businesses, and in no way limits their tort liability under sate law, or even non economic liability in federal court.

 

[Foxfyre]

Buying insurance against an accident caused by your actions is one thing. Buying insurance just cause others don't is tyrannical. If you are doing a dangerous thing, I have no qualm against requiring you to insure against things that might go wrong.

The cap is the problematical part. Any damage you do over a certain amount is no longer your problem? I don't think that is that good of an idea.

The cap doesn't work that way, all it odes is limit the economic damages on a federal level. This only covers the direct economic damages to other businesses, and in no way limits their tort liability under sate law, or even non economic liability in federal court.

All insurance policies, however, do have a maximum that the policy will pay that is either set by the insurance company or, in the case of insurance such as work comp, will usually have a statuatory limit.

In this case I believe the idea is to require a a high statuatory minimum cap on a required insurance policy. The issue in this case is whether companies working on lower risk shallow water rigs should be required to insure at the same level as the higher risk deep water rigs. And there is of course the sticky wicket of the Federal government requiring the insurance rather than leaving that up to the states or property owners who provide the leases and licenses to do business.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Buying insurance against an accident caused by your actions is one thing. Buying insurance just cause others don't is tyrannical. If you are doing a dangerous thing, I have no qualm against requiring you to insure against things that might go wrong.

The cap is the problematical part. Any damage you do over a certain amount is no longer your problem? I don't think that is that good of an idea.

The cap doesn't work that way, all it odes is limit the economic damages on a federal level. This only covers the direct economic damages to other businesses, and in no way limits their tort liability under sate law, or even non economic liability in federal court.

All insurance policies, however, do have a maximum that the policy will pay that is either set by the insurance company or, in the case of insurance such as work comp, will usually have a statuatory limit.

In this case I believe the idea is to require a a high statuatory minimum cap on a required insurance policy. The issue in this case is whether companies working on lower risk shallow water rigs should be required to insure at the same level as the higher risk deep water rigs. And there is of course the sticky wicket of the Federal government requiring the insurance rather than leaving that up to the states or property owners who provide the leases and licenses to do business.

Regulations are almost always stupid if they are proposed as an attempt to prevent something that has already happened. Upping the liability limit for offshore drilling is just more posturing because oil compamies will get their lobbyists to explain that if they pass this stupid shit the companies will just go do business somewhere else until the stupid shit goes away. No one is going to carry an insurance policy to cover them for a Rolls Royce if they drive a Volkswagen, and the people that do drive the Rolls will point out that since no one else is driving they don't need the insurance.

 

[topspin]

You had me at $8 gas

 

[Foxfyre]

The cap doesn't work that way, all it odes is limit the economic damages on a federal level. This only covers the direct economic damages to other businesses, and in no way limits their tort liability under sate law, or even non economic liability in federal court.

All insurance policies, however, do have a maximum that the policy will pay that is either set by the insurance company or, in the case of insurance such as work comp, will usually have a statuatory limit.

In this case I believe the idea is to require a a high statuatory minimum cap on a required insurance policy. The issue in this case is whether companies working on lower risk shallow water rigs should be required to insure at the same level as the higher risk deep water rigs. And there is of course the sticky wicket of the Federal government requiring the insurance rather than leaving that up to the states or property owners who provide the leases and licenses to do business.

Regulations are almost always stupid if they are proposed as an attempt to prevent something that has already happened. Upping the liability limit for offshore drilling is just more posturing because oil compamies will get their lobbyists to explain that if they pass this stupid shit the companies will just go do business somewhere else until the stupid shit goes away. No one is going to carry an insurance policy to cover them for a Rolls Royce if they drive a Volkswagen, and the people that do drive the Rolls will point out that since no one else is driving they don't need the insurance.

All good points.

As Bobby Jindahl kept trying to get through to the Administration, the moratorium on offshore drilling idled a lot of multi million dollar drilling platforms and rigs already in the Gulf or otherwise off shore. The owners of those rigs cannot afford to let them sit idle for prolonged periods, and the oil companies can't afford to keep paying the lease on them when there is no chance for any profit to offset that cost.

So, idle rigs go elsewhere. Mexico. Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, or even China or other more remote places. And they won't be available again for years.

Making it too expensive for oil companies to operate off U.S. shores, and there's lots of other places they can go.