Eric R Snow wrote:
SNIP

Yeah, sounds like me! I have a very small manufacturing business, making
electronic gear on contract, mostly. I have a lathe, mill, soldering iron,
and a bunch of electronic test gear. I have a house valued at about $200K,
and I pay about $950 a year for insurance for that. The last insurance
quote I could even obtain a few years ago wanted over $950 to insure $30,000
worth of business gear! That's a rate 6.7 TIMES higher! Why? Because
criminals burn their businesses with abandon whenever they get in trouble?
Because I'm being lumped in with the financial criminals of Enron, etc.?
Do people with home shops REALLY pose such a high loss rate to the insurers?
I have serious doubts about it!

The insurance companies have gouged the doctors so bad they are going to
self-insurance, by creating their own insurance pools. Maybe us small
businesses and home businesses should do the same.

The insurance companies will probably lobby the state legislatures to
outlaw self insurance, of course!

Jon

Greetings Jon,
Self insurance sounds great. I wonder how to go about setting that up.
The last place my brother worked was self insured for medical and they
had premiums much less than what I was paying for better coverage.
ERS

Well, I guess I am self-insured, to an extent, already. I don't have
coverage on the business equipment, for fire, theft, etc. There's
even a possibility that if my house burned down, the insurers would
see the remains of my mill and lathe, and refuse to pay a cent on
any part of the house! And, of course, I have no liability insurance
on the stuff I manufacture.

I suspect any group of people can get together and form a corporation
for property insurance of the corporation members. It almost certainly
gets more complicated when you want to provide liability insurance,
as it is not as easy to determine how high the risk is there.

Jon