Insurance Rant

I'm in the market for car insurance now. I just bought a new car and I'm moving back to the U.S. from overseas. I have insurance and car now but both in Indonesia. So my wife, who's back in the U.S. making these arrangements, looks into insurance and it seems now it will cost twice what it did when we last had insurance in the U.S. The reason, they say, is because we weren't insured in the U.S. for two years and apparently I had some sort of traffic violation in 2005.

I really don't like paying for car insurance. Sure, I guess you can look at it as a "peace of mind" thing, knowing that if you get in a bad accident you're covered. But what happens if you don't? You're gambling by not having insurance and gambling by having it.

And what is with the varying rates they charge? Where do these figures come from? Why does my insurance go up just because I was uninsured for a brief period? Sure I know the answers to these questions -- it has something to do with gambling and the insurance company not wanting to take a risk -- but why me?! Why do I have to throw so much money out the window? It kills me!

I believe that the main reason car insurance, among other things, is so expensive, is our disgusting litigious society. If we weren't so greedy and sued each other for such ridiculous amounts of money in the case of an accident or whatever, we wouldn't have to pay so much for insurance.

If I plow into some guy and his $10,000 Dodge Neon, for sure he can sue me for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right away there's the repair or replacement of the car and then of course medical bills. And the medicals bills will likely be astronomical in order to properly compensate the doctors who have high malpractice insurance bills.

And then the sap I hit is going to need some sort of compensation for his hurt feelings and stress caused by the accident. Before long, you have a $54-65 million pair of pants ala Roy Pearson .

Can't we all just get along?