Insurance Companies Only Want Excellent Customers

*Hiragana Times CIA(Cynically Insulting Agency)

Many cases of nonpayment by insurance companies have recently come to light in Japan. Hiragana Times CIA interviewed business insurance expert Mr. URANO Tadashi, who is also the director of “Association of Medical Victims,” about the situation.

CIA: The number of cases where insurance has not been paid by life insurance companies is now said to be more than one million, and cases of nonpayment by non-life insurance companies number almost 400,000. How come?

Dir.: Most people take out policies with insurance companies with the vague idea that their life and/or assets will be covered by their insurance if something goes wrong. However, in the contracts customers sign, there are many clauses containing special policy conditions that prevent the insurance companies from having to pay out.

CIA: What clauses are these?

Dir.: As an example, if you buy insurance that will refund you for the treatment you receive at a hospital even after hospitalization, they may not pay you unless you apply for the payment. Another example is insurance policies that boast that no prior medical checks are necessary. They then won’t pay you when you do get sick because they will claim that you were sick before you purchased the insurance. Although many people believe that their insurance will cover them fully if they buy insurance that stresses it will cover cancer, myocardial infarction and cerebral embolism, etc., a loophole may be written into the contract saying something like “You will be paid when you are diagnosed with the condition that has restricted you from working for more than 60 days.”

CIA: But no one will buy insurance after having read the thick contract information written in small print, will they?

Dir.: That’s right. Companies are doing their best to ensure they do not have to pay out on insurance claims. Even if you are paying for insurance that guarantees, for example, that your family will receive some ten million yen when you die, when you reach 60 years old, the coverage will be reduced to only two or three million yen. It means that the higher the possibility there is of you dying, the less likely the insurance company is to pay the insurance.

CIA: I wonder if the sales staff of insurance companies explain these things to their customers?

Dir.: As you know, insurance companies are always recruiting new sales staff. What the companies expect from newcomers is that they will recruit only their relatives who will likely not ask too many questions about the insurance policy conditions. Also, the companies take into account as a matter of course that the sales employees will quit soon after being recruited. So, the insurance companies will never explain the clauses in great detail.

CIA: But won’t customers who are badly treated cancel their insurance policies?

Dir.: This is better for the insurance companies. Actually, they want this to happen. Listen! People who get sick or are involved in accidents are not good for the insurance companies. The companies do not need this kind of customers. They only want excellent customers who never get sick, who never get involved in accidents, but who just silently keep paying their insurance premiums that keep swelling the profits of the insurance companies.

Comment from CIA/
Not only insurance companies, but also other medical businesses need to be structurally reformed. There are doctors who treat patients little by little charging every time, and give dying patients lots of medicine or life-prolonging injections in order to earn more money from them. Human beings have made remarkable progress in medical treatments to fight HIV, however, on the other hand some pharmaceutical companies abandon patients who cannot afford to buy such medicines due to high prices and are subsequently left to die. Everybody, please remember! – medical treatment is not for helping those in need; rather it is a business that profits from helpless people.

*Hiragana Times CIA(Cynically Insulting Agency)

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