From: Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org>
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 18:40:48 +0800
To: aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Protocols for Insurance to Maintain Privacy
In-Reply-To: <199711060003.AAA12962@server.test.net>
Message-ID: <199711061032.FAA08872@homeport.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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.

Adam

Adam Back wrote:

| And being a hard line anarcho capitalist, I draw the conclusion that
| if you can't afford to keep yourself alive, that is your problem.
| (Heartless ain't it:-) Aside from comments about evolution in action
| (perhaps I personally don't want to fund propogating these genetic
| defects, and that is my choice), my suggestion is that such cases
| would have to be met by charity.
| 
| A charity could also refuse to help people who hadn't donated, if
| it chose.


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume