[profile53]

There’s a dead reply to your post saying that this occurs because of the insanely litigious nature of the USA. I think it’s worth highlighting — business/property owners are essentially trying to use contract law to route around the fact that the US legal system is broken with regards to civil litigation and throwing out bogus cases. For example, having a private pool in your own back yard can make you liable for someone else’s child breaking in and injuring themselves in your pool because you not having enough barriers to stop them means you allowed the access.

[Eisenstein]

> the US legal system is broken with regards to civil litigation

And the problem with that has a lot do with corporations. For instance, if you are a pedestrian and get hit by a car and end up in the hospital, in a lot of places in the USA your health insurance will not cover you at all -- you have to sue the driver and get compensated from their auto insurance. The logical method would be for your insurance to cover you and then the health insurance would recover costs through appropriate parties.

It is the same with ridiculous lawsuits like the aunt who sued her sister because the nephew jumped on her and threw out her back. In order to recoup medical costs she had to sue her sister since the sister had homeowner's insurance.

You can't entirely blame the legal system when the corporations are using it to perpetuate the problem for their own gains at the expense of everyone.

[mindslight]

It's not either/or - the legal/legislative system is jointly at fault, for letting corporations run amok with generating endless complexity in the form of "terms" that nobody reads, understands, or actually agrees to. The big print of "health insurance" is that it covers medical expenses. From a basic legal perspective it should be impossible for any fine print to walk that back. From a consumer protection perspective, insurances sold to consumers should have to cover complete scopes that fulfill public policy goals.

[fireflash38]

I sometimes feel like insurance in general is one of the greater "hidden" evils in this world. They prey on your worries and fears, and then they try to do anything possible to weasel out of paying out when a fear becomes a reality.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is some good in it (mostly around risk calculations), but the entire industry feels scummy.

[hk__2]

Note: if you think a dead reply is relevant, click on its timestamp and then on "vouch" to make it alive again.

[giraffe_lady]

And the litigiousness is downstream of having freakish medical expenses and no universal safety net. An accident can incur costs your could work you whole life to pay off so of course there's a complex adversarial social system built around those consequences.