[jmvar]

Last year I broke my arm riding my bike and it ended up costing my health insurance company about $20,000. This got me thinking about how health, auto and home owners insurance companies do business.

The other day I was speaking with a friend that sells insurance and he was telling me to never claim anything on my homeowners policy unless it is a disaster becaue in the end the insurance co. could end up screwing me when it comes time to renew.

So can health insurance co. do the same thing? Will they eventually raise rates for those who are involved in "high risk" activities? The premium comes right out of my paycheck and my company picks up the rest of the tab so I am not sure if that would work. I am guessing that there is some sort of legislature that prevents this or else they insurance co. would have done this already....

 

[Westy]

Since you are in a group plan through work chances are they will not increase your premium, possibly your employers overall costs though. But smokers and fat people will probably cost the insurer more than a reckless MTBers, so they probably could care less about your lifestyle.

 

[MTB_Rob_NC]

So can health insurance co. do the same thing? Will they eventually raise rates for those who are involved in "high risk" activities? The premium comes right out of my paycheck and my company picks up the rest of the tab so I am not sure if that would work. I am guessing that there is some sort of legislature that prevents this or else they insurance co. would have done this already....

The short answer is NO. Health insurance is not as individual as Homeowners. You are put in a "pool" of people broken down by age/gender.

The long answer is kinda - the more the insurance co's pay out vs take in effects everyone.