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Chockstone Forum - Accidents & Injuries

Report Accidents and Injuries

Topic Date User
Kyle Dempster & Scott Adamson Missing on Ogre 2 10-Sep-2016 At 12:08:28 AM Wendy
Message
On 1/09/2016 citationx wrote:
>Love this new internet world!
>Forget personal responsibility and paying for your own insurance when
>doing something dangerous, get others to pay if the sht hits the fan!

I see it's not the popular response at the moment, but I have some sympathy for this. I find it strange that we live in a world where the only options for all sorts of disaster response seem to be insurance or begging. It's like a uberindividualist world where we are all supposed to take responsibility for ourselves, but most people don't, either from lack of awareness, lack of money or lack of options. Hence the end result is begging and the internet allows that on an unprecedented scale. I don't think it is a sustainable system when all sort of health, accidents and natural disasters have to be dealt with by begging. Take the assorted large scale fires and floods in the past few years. Private insurance didn't cover a bunch of it, or people hadn't been aware of or able to afford insurance and in the end, the government hands out some funds and charities start massive campaigns begging for funds to cover the gap. In the end, how long can begging continue to provide funds for these sort of things?

I expect these guys thought they were covered and maybe they didn't read the fine print or consider the realistic costs, but in the end, they probably wouldn't have been able to get insurance that would cover this sort of thing to the extent required, because the world of insurance thinks it's fine to insure driving, white water rafting, all sort of high risk activities including sitting on the couch drinking, smoking and eating fatty food, but not climbing. As long as we rely on for profit private companies with little awareness of the real risks to provide health, life and rescue insurance, we are going to face issues such as this.

I'm currently climbing in the US and I'm relying the Austrian Alpine Club insurance. I just checked that they cover search as well as rescue, and they do. Up to 25000 euro. Not that I figure there'll be much searching to do where I am. However, I am aware that they have a 10000 euro limit on overseas medical treatment. If something happens, and I end up blowing that out, should I start a crowdfunding campaign to cover it? What would happen if everybody who came up with unexpected expenses started crowdfunding? Where do everyday, unknown people doing unremarkable things who need assistance stand when it comes to this sort of begging?

I don't really know the answers to these problems, especially in poor nations such as Pakistan who have an awful lot of stuff to do for their own people before covering visitors from far wealthier nations. But I do think there is something to be said for government regulated, reasonably priced compulsory coverage that is guaranteed to cover potential events that are now left in this grey, often uncovered area labelled individual responsibility. So people who buy or rent in fire or flood risk areas pay a compulsory levy on property and possessions but are guaranteed coverage. People who smoke or other massive lifestyle risks pay a compulsory levy on health and life coverage, but are guaranteed coverage. And people who participate in various sports get a compulsory levy reflective of real risk balanced against health benefits and are guaranteed coverage. In the end, the people and the government end up forking out for these things, so we may as well plan to cover them in their entirety and take the for profit insurance industry out of the equation.

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