From: nobody@neva.org (Neva Remailer)
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 17:06:38 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy
Message-ID: <199711070852.CAA31307@multi26.netcomi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




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Adam Shostack wrote:
>Many insurance companies with Mutual in their name (Liberty Mutual is
>large in the Northeastern US) get that from being founded as mutual
>insurance companies, where you pay to be part of the mutual insurance
>group, and when you get sick, injured, etc, the group pays money
>towords your treatment.  I think it broke down with increases in
>mobility.  They were implicitly based on reputation capital, and were
>not highly fraud resistant.
>
>Adam's suggestion of a charity which only pays for the treatment of
>those who donate thus recreates an old system.

Mutual insurance companies are owned by the people who purchase their
policies.  The policy holders actually elect the management.  As there
are no policy holders who own a significant percentage of the
policies, the management of the companies do not have much feedback.
Surprisingly, they seem to function well.

However, these companies are not a thing of the past.  As of ten years
ago, the mutual life insurance companies managed about half the assets
in the life insurance market.

Many of them are quite old.  The Presbyterian Minister's Fund is the
oldest continuous life insurance company in the world.  It was founded
in 1759.

Mutuals are said to be formed when investors can't be found to provide
capital for the company.  A number of mutuals were formed in the
seventies to handle medical liability insurance which commercial
companies did not want to handle.  (It seems likely that somebody,
somewhere, was behaving irrationally. ;-)

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm

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