The medicine vs. the disease.

Your November 2003 issue highlights insurance fraud and provides compelling testimony for the proposition that insurance is a massively defective product. Best's Review's exposition of the extent and multiplicity of insurance frauds goes a long way towards proving that the insurance cure is worse than the prospect of no insurance at all. The medicine is worse than the disease, and we are addicted to insurance.

If any other product caused a mere fraction of the fraud, crime and corruption that "Dealing in Fraud" (November 2003) attributes to insurance, the product would be withdrawn from the market in a flash. Handguns, for example, pale into insignificance when compared to the societal, psychological and physical damage Best's Review's many sources indicate is caused by insurance.

You dramatically point out that automobile insurance causes criminal activity. Automobile insurance is thus equivalent to putting guns in the hands of incompetents and racketeers. It is apparent from your articles that children's lives are being put at risk because of automobile insurance.

What possible justification can there be for funding and thus perpetuating the criminal conduct that keeps the National Insurance Crime Bureau in business? The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud also exists because of corruption. A few years ago, the insurance industry was the largest customer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and you point out the extent to which the insurance industry takes up valuable law enforcement resources today. Insurance companies continue to be the banker for multifaceted criminal activities because these activities are profitable for insurance companies. If the articles in the November Best's Review were about a medical scourge such as influenza, the plague, infantile paralysis or AIDS, we would find a solution. If insurance were a miracle pharmaceutical it would be withdrawn from the market because of the adverse side effects.

I understand why Best's Review shows the side of wrongdoing done by policyholders and claimants. Is it unreasonable for policyholders and claimants to ask who is monitoring the massive frauds being perpetrated by insurance companies? Post-loss underwriting infects the entire industry, and low baring causes policyholders and claimants to inflate claims. Instead of paying claims, insurance companies now say, "Sue me."

It is my personal view that people cheat on insurance companies because they know that insurance companies cheat them. Americans are not corrupt by nature. We are not a nation of crooks. Insurance is a problem.

Insurance needs to be rethought and, if viewed as a corrosive and destructive force, maybe it can be remedied.

Eugene R. Anderson

Anderson Kill & Olick P.C.

New York