Tag Archives: insurance

ER Shootings Show Need for No-Fault Insurance for Guns

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An OP-ED  in the New York Times on Jan 1, 2013 by David Newman titled “At the E.R., Bearing Witness to Gun Violence” does not mention insurance but shows the wide variety of cases which arrive.  The author linking to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine states that household members are 18 times more likely than intruders to be the victim.  NRA insurance excludes members of the gun owners family from coverage even if the gun owner is sued by them.    The author also states a quarter of gun crimes in American E.R.’s were committed with guns wrested from armed guards citing an article in The Annals of Emergency Medicine.  Assuming the shooter is indigent and uninsured (a good bet) the victim would have to sue the hospital who’s insurance company has deep pockets for defending the lawsuit.  Perhaps there will be some free immediate treatment in such cases; but how about follow up.  Fortunately, the article states that “Case fatality inside the hospital was much lower in the ED setting (19%) than other sites.”  Low fatality makes insurance more important because of the need to take care of the injured both immediately and over time.

This blog is dedicated to advocating for developing an insurance plan which covers all situations and all shooters, at fault or not, legal or not, known or unknown.  Other posts will analyze what is necessary to reach that goal.

Gun Insurance Would Not Be Expensive

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                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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Fine Article on Gun Insurance by Megan McArdle in The Daily Beast

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Megan McArdle has written a long piece in The Daily Beast entitled “Should People Be Forced to Buy Liability Insurance for their Guns?” It is by far the most detailed and thought out analysis of the suggestion that I have seen since Newtown. While I don’t agree with her conclusion that the problems make insurance as a solution unworkable, she gives logical reasons that need to be addressed.

She starts with three reasons that we would want insurance. The first is to Continue reading →

Systems of Insurance applied to guns

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There are many systems of insurance with varying breadths of coverage. The liability insurance that is talked about in the discussion at the moment would only cover a small proportion of the deaths and injuries that are occurring. The systems described below run from something so narrow that provides compensation to only a miniscule proportion those hurt to ones that could be implemented to protect almost all injured persons. Continue reading →

Good Washington Post blog article on guns and insurance

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Brad Plumer has an excellent article on ‘The economics of gun control.’  It discusses the overall cost to society and the ways that requiring regular liability insurance would help.  It’s the best survey article I’ve seen on the subject so far.  You should also look at the paper he points to by Duke’s Philip Cook and Georgetown’s Jens Ludwig. This paper analyzes the costs to society and gives a broad range of possibilities.

To get to a real solution for our society we’ll need to have insurance outside the box and address the two big no arguments–‘it won’t cover criminals’ and ‘it’s unconstitutional.’  All of these problems are solvable and this kind of journalism is where to start.

Tail insurance a problem in many areas

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In various fields there is a problem with people who retire or close down their businesses with ‘tail insurance.’  The problem is that a liability issue can come up much later.  Much of the coverage that’s sold only covers suits that are later reported for injuries that occur during the policy period.  It’s hard or doctors or persons producing lasting products to get coverage for an injury that occurs after the policy expires but is  caused by an action that occured while the person was in business.

Gun insurance will have a similar problem.  If an owners insurance is to cover someone injured long after the gun was lost or stolen, it will have to cover a long tail.  A new structure of insurance will be needed.  But new structures of insurance are created all the time as the world faces new risks.  Good gun insurance will have to be designed with the help of the professional risk analysts.