>> Insurance doesn't work if you only pay it -after- you have a problem.
It's been said in several other places but this sort of intellectual dishonesty can't be left alone.
There are a plethora of examples currently in place in society that work well where if an uninsured person requires assistance they pay AT COST. If they can't afford out of pocket they set up a payment schedule.
Wait a minute. No they don't. People who sustain life-threatening injuries when uninsured do not pay "at cost". They don't pay at all. The hospital bankrupts them, and then the rest of society pays nominally increased premiums to cover them. This is a policy failure that has to be allowed to happen when we're talking about human life instead of property.
This is a major flaw with our health system (which should be single payer), and is a framing device for a possible policy flaw in Tennessee (to wit: people in the surrounding communities should have been required to pay a substantially higher fire tax to obligate surrounding communities to cover them).
But none of this has anything to do with what the fire department did. The fire happened outside their service area. They simply weren't obligated to respond to it.
>>People who sustain life-threatening injuries when uninsured do not pay "at cost". They don't pay at all. The hospital bankrupts them, and then the rest of society pays nominally increased premiums to cover them.
I should have said that people are provided services and given a bill. Recouping that cost is, as you point out, difficult or impossible in many cases.
>> But none of this has anything to do with what the fire department did. The fire happened outside their service area. They simply weren't obligated to respond to it.
I can't argue with that. But it's still irksome that there is no other recourse for someone confronting an extremely slow moving fire while people with high pressure hoses look on.
I'm having trouble understanding why it should. The main thing that is difficult for me to accept is that the fire department was there, within rock-throwing distance of a fire, and did nothing except make sure the neighbors who were covered were protected.
Because by omitting the specifics, you're coloring your interpretation of the event. There were no injuries. Nobody's life was threatened. The structure itself was likely of marginal financial value --- it was a mobile home on unincorporated land. There's "fire", and then there's "fire".
I can see the point about "in the middle of nowhere", but aside from invoking classist and rural vs. urban prejudices, why should it being a "double-wide trailer" change anyone's opinion?
It wasn't a large home, invested with generations of family sentiment, threatening a tree-lined street of houses. Put more bluntly: the property damage we're talking about here may have been minimal; to the person suggesting that the residents should have been allowed to pay, say, $5000 to get the department to help --- well, that may have been 40-50% of the value of the structure.
My point is that absent some actual meaningful obligation, perhaps the fire department didn't have a particularly strong moral reason to engage with this fire. Even in the city, the department might let, say, a garage burn to the ground.
A garage is not usually a place people live in, making it a qualitatively different thing. You're suggesting a "moral" difference between expensive homes and inexpensive homes.
People generally live in double-wide trailers because they can't afford nicer houses. If someone's trailer burns down, that person is out of a house just as much as some guy in a McMansion would be if it burned down. Someone whose double-wide burned down probably has less saved money and fewer resources to take care of emself with than someone who just lost a McMansion.
Ok. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying, the specifics of the situation --- a house that was probably worth low 5 figures --- do matter to me.
Let's suppose the chance of a fire is 1% every 10 years. So 100 houses pay 100 * 75$/year * 10 years = 75,000$ per fire. Now if the house is worth < 75,000$ then paying the cost of putting it out is not worth it to the property owner.
As to why it might cost that much per fire, it's probably low probability event so you need to pay for all the time, training, and equipment that sit's unused between emergency's. Add in the overhead in showing up to events like this one where they receive zero compensation and you have a major free rider problem.
Working back from the fee is a very questionable assumption for the cost.
For that matter, I asked whether it was a case of people not reasonably being able to afford the cost five levels up; I'm asking about a "moral" distinction tptacek sees.
That would create an incentive for firefighters to burn down people's houses. I'm not saying they would, but it's best not to create such situations.
It would be harder to determine the right price to charge people. It's not the water that costs anything, it's the equipment. Remember, this organization is not seeking to make a profit, just cover costs. If people pay in advance, you charge (number of houses / cost of maintenance). Very straightforward. If people pay after the fact, you have to charge (number of houses that will burn down / cost of maintenance). But you don't know in advance how many houses will burn down.
Finally, while letting a house burn down is an ugly business, it's also pretty ugly when you have to send out collections. You already know they were too poor or irresponsible to pay the fee upfront, so it's not like they have a nest egg sitting around.
Already, for the uninsured, if you break a leg and need an ambulance ride you get one. It costs an arm (in addition to your wounded leg) but you get it.
Would you say this creates an incentive for EMTs and paramedics to break people's legs?
Again, systems are in place to already collect from people who can't afford lump sum payments. Amortized scheduling occurs in pretty much every industry.
Yes, a certain number of people cannot and perhaps will not pay. But the net benefit to society is manifest when your neighbor's house isn't burnt to the ground.
You are half-right, and such things used to happen occasionally - back when there were multiple competing fire departments, some of them veered towards being protection rackets. That's a big reason service is a (local) government monopoly nowadays.
You're ignoring the detail of insurance. I elsewhere point out examples of other government services that allow people to pay the costs if they don't pay the fee/purchase insurance, but the fact remains that insurance works differently by definition.
You're ignoring that in almost every other instance where you could have had insurance, you receive assistance and pay the price.
This is not insurance, this is a protection racket.
EDIT: By protection racket I mean this: I think in this scenario there is little distinction in letting something bad happen when it is well within your ability to stop it and making something bad happen.
"If you don't pay up I'm not going to be able to stop Vito over here from breaking your legs if he tries to break your legs..."
A protection racket is when you pay to avoid damages, lest someone from the vendor incur those very same damages to you in retaliation for not paying. The fire department didn't set the fire.
Also, a "protection racket" is when some thugs retaliate against you if you don't pay them, not when people refuse to provide a service you've previously refused to pay for.
I also have a dim view of the laws of the Alaskan city, but there's no call to throw around accusations of "intellectual dishonesty" and such just because you're angry, too.
Insurance does work. It worked in this case: The neighbors houses were saved. But when insurance is the ONLY means by which a burning house can be saved we should rethink how we treat emergencies.
Yes. People should not be allowed to build residences in areas that don't have suitable fire coverage; the fees and taxes required to enlist surrounding communities into protecting them should be mandatory.
Well, most people that live in an area that doesn't have fire coverage know this and understand it. I guess these people didn't (or maybe when your house is one fire you forget). What I am saying is as long as you understand this everything is fine, for both sides.
It's been said in several other places but this sort of intellectual dishonesty can't be left alone.
There are a plethora of examples currently in place in society that work well where if an uninsured person requires assistance they pay AT COST. If they can't afford out of pocket they set up a payment schedule.