This originally aired on December 19, 2022.
Insurance isn’t some newfangled bureaucratic nightmare created to torture modern humans.
It’s been around, and often failing, for a long time, like a really long time, maybe millenia.
Humans who have been lucky enough to qualify or afford insurance have been complaining about it just as long.
The rest of us who can neither afford nor qualify, suffer the inequities.
You would think the age of big data would sort everything out, but there’s something called the selection issue.
Three economists, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein and Ray Fisman decided to write a book about the business of insurance and why the rest of us should understand that business.
The book is titled Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It.
One of the authors, Ray Fisman, who is the Slater Family Chair in Behavioral Economics at Boston University, joins us.
Guest:
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