When Government buys insurance for anything it is stupid

[iamcanadian]

When Government buys insurance for anything it is stupid. The public is the biggest block available to spread risks of loss.

So we are all paying taxes and if there is a loss we all just pay the loss from a part of the taxes we have paid.

Government buying insurance is just like giving money away to a corporation for no reason because they are moving risk of a loss to a smaller pool of payers (who are the group of insured individuals under that company) A loss by government only serves to give the excuse to raise the policies of those few that are insured and to let them make more money than would otherwise if they had less so called losses.

Insurance premiums are based on the loss profile plus a hefty mark-up so that the insuarnce company does not loose money in the long run. The Government should do its part to help reduce insurance premiums by NOT taking insurance for any of its activities.

 

[Kreskin]

Good point.

 

[iamcanadian]

Again why does a whole country need to pay anyone insurance. The risk is already shared by 32 Million people. No insurance and reinsurance has a larger pool that this.

By taking insurance the Government is reducing the number of payers and increasing the amount of profits insuarnce companies take in.

We can see why people and corporation can get insurance to spread risk amoung more people as tey are individuals, but Government is no one in particular and all those Billions spend on Insuring public building or public directors or public activities is a waste of money that only serves to line the pockets of Insurance Companies in bed with Government Bureaucrats with more excuses to spend public money and taxes us some more.

Cut out Governments ability to buy insurance and we can have more of our money back in TAX CUTS which is what we need. Canadians need less government services and this is one service we can avoid paying for as a way to reduce taxes by reducing unecessary tax spending.

Insurance companies always make money no matter what the losses are. They can do with a little less profit and we can keep more of our money.

Government buyng insurance can be stopped in a heart beat and no one will be out any necessary government service by cutting this one huge redundant unecessary public expense across the board.

 

[Finder]

Do you have links to what type of insurance our government is buying from private coperations and what for? Or is this one of your made up facts?

Are you possibly confusing the money the government puts away for insurance purposes, like social assurance and disaster relief.

You are being too general and giving no information for a resonable debate.

 

[iamcanadian]

Government takes out every possible type of Insurance from Private Corporation that they can. For debate purposes I will pick one and we can add some more examples after we thrash this around some:

The Guarantee Company of North America is a Private French Canadian Company based in Montreal and is Canada's largest provider of Insurance to Governments within Canada of ALL kinds which has been serving their insurance needs for over 133 years.

www.gcna.ca

They are the main insurers of Senior Government Directors, Commissioners, CAO's etc. They get paid HUGE premiums every year from the Taxpayer's to cover against FRAUD and OTHER CORRUPTION related activities Government Directors are capable of.

If any of our senior public officials are suspected of pilfering from the public purse, an Insurance Claim can be made under these policies and these insurance policies would have to pay the government, and therefore the taxpayers paying the premiums, back all the money that was stolen by the government administrators.

This serves as a means of stopping the government from going after the public officials personally and to let them get away with stealing our money - since this insurance company is expected to pay it back if a claim is successful (which has never happened so far in the last 133 years).

Typically these policies cover many tens of millions of dollars per person for when money goes missing at the hands of directing government employees and it does not require criminal convictions in order to get lost or missing money paid back. But it does require a lawsuit, which no one on behalf of the Taxpayers has ever advanced.

Notwithstanding that they receive Hundreds of Millions of dollars in Director Insurance Type Premiums from our Tax Dollars, they have never paid out on a single claim according to any publicly available records; making this Fidelity Insurance product a most lucrative business of selling paper to the public that can never causes them any payout.

These most lucrative of insurance policies are taken out and paid for without public tenders, yet have never paid any losses that can be found in public records anywhere. Our governments refuse to make claims under such policies anyway although the taxpayers have been paying towards them for decades.

You can be assured that IF any public official is ever formally accused of pilfering from the public the Guaranty Company of North America will step in with a Legal Dream Team and spend hundred million dollars to defend them at all costs to avoid paying on any of these types of policies.

You want accountability and responsibility in government, you need to eliminate the cloaks and daggers they have put in place to prevent personal responsibility and accountability on the people responsible.

 

[Finder]

You link was to the company which alledgidly is the company in question. I must admit that this whole issue seems pretty minor to me, as any corperation, person, professional has insurance and I see no problem with the government having the same. I think this is used so that the puplic employees are not politicized in government and seperate them from the government they serve, as puplic employees.

 

[iamcanadian]

Billions of dollars spending on getting insurance every year for nothing. You must be a senior bureaucrat. No taxpayer would think this is a minor issue and cost.

The government should simply strip public servants of their worldly belongings before they throw then in jail. Regardless what the cost. Chasing after insurance money to get it back only serves to let the bad guys get away and steal without worry of getting caught since they suffer no consequences from braking the rules and the law.

 

[Finder]

show me the Canadian budgit where the Canadian government spent even a billion on insurance, please, as you stated the Canadian government spends billions a year on coperate and private insurance.

 

[FiveParadox]

Government Insurance

iamcanadian, perhaps you could be of assistance — I am having some troubles attempting to search for any major insurance payments out of the previous Government of Canada through its Ministry of Finance; moreover, I don't quite understand why this is an issue. In my opinion, public servants are not to be considered representatives of the electorate, or taxpayers — these people just happen to be employed by the Government of Canada. Of course they need insurance! To deny public servants insurance on any number of matters would lead to conditions which would be deemed inappropriate, and would not be accepted by many.

 

[Finder]

Thanks FiveParadox, couldn't had said it better myself. But I'd still love to see these figurers of the Canadian government spending billions a year on insurance. If that were true I could see why anyone would be upset, but I doubt the expense of insuring our puplic workers can not be that high.

 

[iamcanadian]

I said governments in Canada. Add up all of the governments, all of the building, all of the ypes of insurance they buy and it is more than One Billion dollars worth.

The Directors insurance for administrators is just one example that only serves to avoid personal responsibility and accountability and shift the costs and risks on the taxpayers on top of our taxes.

A part of our own personal insurance premiums are going to help spread thr risk of corrupt public servants stealing our money.

I say let them steal and when they get caught take everything they own from them as a way to get it back and deter others from doing the same.

 

[Finder]

Re: RE: When Government buys insurance for anything it is st

Iamcanadian you have a low opinion of our puplic servants my friend, and though I do think some of them are over paid slightly I would not see there insurance as something which is wrong but inline with the private sector to at times to get the best ppl in the puplic service competitive. If we offered the puplic service indestry crappy wages and benifits then what would we get as public servants. Hell we already complain about the ones we get now.

I must admit I do not have the figurers for the puplic service but I see you've down graded you billions a yea r to a billion a year, I highly doubt that even if you take all the puplic service employees, and I mean all of them including the mail men that it would be a billion. I might be wrong but there are an alful lot of public service employees out there for the municipal, provincial and federal governments.

 

[BitWhys]

If a CEO suggested not insuring a company's assets he or she would be tarred and feathered before being turfed from the board room whether the shareholders picked them independantly of the CEO's opinion or not. I haven't heard or read such fine example of anti-government public/private double standard for quite some time.

 

[FiveParadox]

Government Insurance

I agree, BitWhys.

I think that the idea that Government agencies and institutions should not have the right to purchase insurance is, with all due respect to the thread poster, absurd. Of course these institutions should have insurance — if an employee of an institution committed some sort of fraud, and the institution wasn't insured to cover such events, then it would be the taxpayers directly paying to compensate the corporation in terms of recovering such assets. That would not be, in my opinion, a wise course of action.

 

[iamcanadian]

The Government Services in Canada must stop acting like communists with our public jobs and public money in only using them in their self-interests and for their collective benefit.

Public Employees serve the Public and its not supposed to be the other way around like it has become in Canada over the last 30 years.

We need more accountaability and more responsibility placed on these individuals. When they make mistakes or do something wrong they should pay for it personally and not let Insurance Companies defend them to avoid accountability for their actions.

Everyone is entittled to public employment. Public Employees are not entittled to employment for life just like private employees are not employed for life.

Comparing public administrators to Private CEO's and directors is absurd. They are on different planets appart from doing completly different functions.

 

[damngrumpy]

I would hope the government like any other smart group would ensure they have insurance to cover loss of any assets it holds.
Did you know even insurance companies buy insurance from other insurance companies in case of loss. Almost every business deal is insured or underwritten buy other financial companies.
Buying insurance, no matter who you are government or private, makes good sence to protect the interests of those who own the assets
Could you imagine the cost to us if the parliament buildings had to be replaced, or we had no insurance for vehical liabilities?
There are all kinds of things the government needs to insure to protect our interests. God help us if they didn't and we the taxpayers had to foot a number of serious losses.
Nope I hope the nations backside is covered every way from sunday

 

[Finder]

iamcanadian, we are not about to elect puplic employees to give them accountability and I highly doubt people are very interested in electing the office workers at city hall, or those of the parliments, and or any other puplic service. You may call it communist, but the history of the puplic service goes as far back as democracy itself.

 

[iamcanadian]

You may call it communist, but the history of the puplic service goes as far back as democracy itself.

It goes back before democracy. That was the whole reason democracy was created. Power corrupts. People in the public service get corrupted over time.

We elect people and change them often to prevent them from acquiring too much personal power over time.

With non-elected public administrators, the longer they are there the more corrupt and unethical they become.

It is important that there be good job rotation between the public service and the private sector so that none of them have senior controlling public jobs for too long.

Career bureaucrats need to be culled after no more than 10 years and sent back to the private sector to earn a living legitimately and help pay taxes too and bear the consequences personally of their decisions while in public service.

 

[FiveParadox]

Hard-working Public Sector

iamcanadian[/i]]Career bureaucrats need to be culled after no more than 10 years and sent back to the private sector to earn a living legitimately and help pay taxes too and bear the consequences personally of their decisions while in public service.

I would think this to be quite an inappropriate accusation, in terms of the implication that public sector workers don't earn a living legitimately while in the public sector. We couldn't do without public sector workers, in our day-to-day lives — the administration of Canada depends upon the public service, and I think we should be grateful for the hard work that they do.

Yes, the public service certainly has certain persons working therein who lack ethics, and who are corrupt — however, I would argue that the same is true for private corporations, too; we just wouldn't know, because we don't have reports by Sheila Fraser, the Auditor General, tabled before the House of Commons every few years on private corporations.

 

[Jay]

It's like no one ever told the left what the difference between private and public is....