Car Insurance An example of the poor being made to subsidise the rich.

The price of my insurance, like everybody else's, has just leaped. But I am wooed by the gift of three extra services which are now provided 'free'. One is that I am now covered to drive my car on the Continent for up to three months in any one year. As one who is condemned to live forever on state welfare, I obviously cannot afford to go gallivanting around on the Continent for any time at all.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. As ought to be abundantly obvious to every customer, the extra services are not free at all: their cost is simply loaded into the new higher price. It is a way of forcibly selling extra services on the back a basic service one cannot do without. When I told the insurance company they said that of course I was right, but that was their policy and they could not unbundle it just for me. Take it or leave it. I tried other insurance companies, but as expected, they have all come up with similar schemes.

It is another case of large corporates getting their own way. It is also a case of the insurance industry tuning its policies to the needs of Mr & Mrs (double-income) Average, with the result that Mr & Mrs (state welfare) Pauper end up subsidising the motor insurance of those who can afford to take their cars to the continent. A case of market forces forcing the poor to subsidise the rich simply because it is not quite as profitable to cater for the poor as well.