this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
133 points (96.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35728 readers
1146 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Is the discrimination worth it as a deterrent? Or is it just to save the instance companies $$$?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Discrimination is the insurance industry's entire business model.

Discrimination as a word doesn't mean a bad thing, it literally just means "to choose between 2 or more of something/someone". As long as there is choice, there is discrimination. If I needed a plumber, and two people wanted the job, I would discriminate against the one without a plumber's license and/or experience. I think that's probably sensible discrimination.

These days discrimination is used to imply some form of social harm, especially towards a marginalised community, and the word "against" frequently follows it. The question really is though: Is an act of discrimination harmful or not, to whom it is harmful, and do the harms outweigh the benefits?

Is the insurance industry's decision to choose prices for people based on their medical situations harmful discrimination? For the customers? Definitely. For the insurance company? Definitely not.

And then the choice really boils down to which of the two you think are more valuable, for whatever it is you value most. People, or insurance companies?

As someone who values less suffering in the world and thinks all people are worthy of dignity, safety and equitable experiences, and huge profits for a private business are not constructive in delivering those values, profit-seeking health and life insurance companies can burn to the ground for all I care. Bankrupting people for things they didn't choose causes far too much suffering in this world.

Stress drives people to suicide in the first place, and insurance companies feed on that to live like social parasites.

[–] nal@lib.lgbt 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not to take away from your main point at the end, but that's just not what discrimination means. Discrimination in this context isn't just making a decision between choices, it's when that decision is made unjustly or based on prejudice.

So yes, it's wrong to put profits ahead of people's well-being. But the question was whether insurance companies' policies to not pay out for causes of death that are strongly correlated with poor mental health unjustly treat people with mental health issues.

To be honest, I think that's an interesting point, because while I similarly find the whole concept of health and life insurance abhorrent, I think these policies are in place so people don't take their own lives for the sake of the insurance money for their loved ones. In that respect, they may save a handful of lives, and you could argue that makes it a just policy. I'm not sure I 100% buy that argument either, I just think there's more to the question than just whether insurance companies are generally moral.

[–] Rednax@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree that the 'unjust' part is implied here. However, it is certainly not part of any textbook definition of discrimination.

Because the 'unjust' part is implied so often, people have started to change the meaning of the word discrimination. I think that is quite dangerous, given how essential the word is in various constitutions and laws.

load more comments (13 replies)