This study asks and answers a simple question: “Does Health Insurance Make You Fat?” Jay Bhattacharya, Kate Bundorf, Noemi Pace, and Neeraj Sood, NBER [National Bureau of Economic Research] working paper no. 15163, July 2009. (Thanks to Grover Weston for bringing this to our attention.) The authors explain: “We find weak evidence that more generous […]
A health-insurance company has announced a large-scale experiment involving consciousness. This is the experiment: if any particular surgical procedure lasted too many minutes, the insurance company will refuse to pay for anesthesia. The company is Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. On November 1, 2024, the company announced: “Beginning with claims processed on or after February […]
Of all the curious things one can get insurance cover for – the golfing fraternity’s ‘hole-in-one-insurance’ is surely one of the curiouser. Why would one want insurance against a hole-in-one? The answer lies in the substantial cash bonus prizes which (some) golf clubs offer to those players who manage to get one. From the club’s […]
Clown insurance is for clowns, not for persons potentially afflicted by them. Insurance companies offer it to clowns because clowns – no matter what you may thoughtlessly think of them – are people, and bad things can happen to anyone. Clown insurance exists, as a distinct product category, thanks to the mathematical discipline called risk assessment. […]