Projected Costs for Gun Insurance are Low!

People who are opposed to gun insurance will often make arguments that the cost will be prohibitive.  They make guesses that it would cost typical gun owners thousands of dollars and work as a backdoor way to prohibit guns.  This is not actually what would happen if insurance was required.  We have enough information to make estimates that would put a ceiling on the average cost and it turns out to be quite reasonable.  Of course, insurers would take particular situations into account and dangerous owners and situations would pay more than average, perhaps much more; but, that’s realistic and can be handled by the owners taking measures to reduce the dangers.

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NYT OP/ED’s on Gun Manufacturer Responsibility—Insurance by Other Means

This is hot stuff!!  A very heartening reminder that the drive to establish a responsible gun policy in our country is here to the finish.

A pair of important OP/ED’s to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the injuries they create has been published in the New York Times.  The first “Make Gun Companies Pay Blood Money” by Lucinda M. Finley and John G. Culhane advocates a compensation fund to pay victims of gun violence financed by a tax on gun manufacturers or importers.  The second “Let Shooting Victims Sue” by Robert M. Morgenthau calls for rolling back the special laws that protect gun manufacturers and others in the gun trade from liability for the damage their wares create.

Make Gun Companies Pay Blood Money

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PreventingNewtown Blog Points Out Gun Insurance Benefits

A new post by Julia Hartman on the PreventingNewtown blog titled “A Case for Gun Liability Insurance” gives a thoughtful and interesting discussion of the benefits of requiring insurance to protect victims of gun violence.

The post gives a moving presentation of the damage done daily by guns and calls for insurance as a way to deal with the problem.  It makes the comparison to motor vehicles and points out the fact that gun deaths exceed motor vehicle deaths in 10 states currently.  Suicides are handled on a par with homicides and accidents, an position which is often opposed by those supporting the status quo for gun policy.

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Workers’ Compensation Insurance and Gun Insurance

Motor vehicle insurance has been the obvious model for insurance advocated by this blog to provide for victims of gun violence. There are many parallels, especially with No-Fault versions to serving the gun situation. There is another place in our society were insurance was poorly working to protect injured persons and where society with the insurance industry has produced a system which has shown durable benefits in efficiently dealing with an important risk. Continue reading

Should Gun Insurance Cover Suicide?

If a good solid system of insurance that pays everyone injured by guns is adapted, an obvious question will be “should it cover suicide.” This is likely to be controversial because many people think that payments to survivors would encourage persons thinking of killing themselves. The issue has been worked out for regular life insurance by having “incontestability clauses” which allow such coverage two years after the policy goes into affect. The idea is that a person is unlikely to plan that far ahead which handles the insurers concerns about the hazard of selling insurance to one who knows that it will be soon be paying the benefit.

Social Security pays survivors benefits after the suicide of a parent or spouse who has been married for more than 9 months. In some cases life insurance paid for entirely by employers will pay in cases of suicide with out a waiting period. The requirement is that the insurance be given automatically by the employer and the employee not contribute to the cost. In that case the insurance may or may not have a suicide clause. It seems unlikely that a person will take a job to get insurance covering their planned death and it seems unlikely that a person will buy a gun to get insurance rather than commit suicide in some other way. Continue reading

Funding the Uninsured Gun Pool

A plan for No-Fault insurance for guns must take into account the fact that many of the shootings are likely to be in situations where the gun cannot be traced. Even if a large portion of the guns in existence are brought into the system, there will be many claims where no specific insurer is available to pay. In NY the Motor Vehicle Accident Indemnification Corporation (MVAIC) and in Michigan the Michigan Assigned Claims Plan (MACP) are available if there is no other insurer. The large costs in Michigan where there is unlimited coverage for medical expenses have generated a lot of political backlash. The Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association pays claims over $500,000 and assesses insurance companies $175 (2012) per vehicle. Funding works by having insurers pay on the basis of either a percentage of premiums collected or a fixed amount per vehicle. A system for guns could work in the same way.

Approximately half of the medical costs are now covered by Medicare or Medicaid. If gun insurance is the primary insurance only for identified guns and the Uninsured Pool is secondary to all other insurance the funds needed would be greatly reduced. Unidentified or uninsured guns do not contribute to the incentive for insurers to have loss reduction conditions or programs in any case, so making gun insurance secondary should not undercut the safety benefits of having insurance. It would also give states an incentive to identify the guns involved in injuries to save on Medicaid expenses.

It might also be desirable to have the Uninsured Gun Pool pay claims for incidents that occur after some fixed time has elapsed for guns that are reported lost or stolen. If the time is fairly long the cost would not be too great and would give an incentive for reporting losses in a timely manner. It would make things more predictable for insurers and may help establish a robust market for gun insurance.

 

Gun Insurance Would Not Be Expensive

                Getting an approximate estimate of the cost of Gun Insurance that would protect everyone is important even though the parameters of an insurance system have not been developed.  In many ways, the wide experience with automobile insurance will serve as a model for the system to come.  There are available sources for the numbers needed to make an estimate if one assumes a certain level of coverage and benefits.

The Insurance Information Institute publishes overall numbers for automobile insurance.  The particular items that interest us are for private passenger automobile insurance (excludes commercial):

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