Insurance Company Throws A Logical Twist

StraightnLevel said:
So, do I understand correctly that you believe that BasicMed should allow full PPL privileges for any and all ratings and endorsements, just as Class 3 does today?
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Yes, you understand correctly.

Que someone to fret about a PP flying a 747.
 
Sinistar said:
Our small airport has a nice mix of younger and older pilots. We have several now 80yrs old or older and still flying and loving it.

So very recently one these pilots was given a insurance twist, which in hindsight is pretty cunning from the ins company pov.

They told him they will only insure him if he has his airman 3rd class. He will no longer be insured under his basic med.

Please forgive if this has already been discussed. Insurance company seems to found a easy out. I wonder when that age will 75, the 70, then 65, etc.

Most this age (at our field) are basic med.
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It sucks to get old, but I think the insurer is being prudent.
 
midlifeflyer said:
You mean like the underwriter who approved me to fly an Ovation with zero time in type?
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Yep. Or the one that required 30 hours of tailwheel time to insure me, but when I wanted to add skis didn't care what kind I had nor that I had zero ski time and wrote the insurance equivalent of "SEND IT!" for no added premium when I asked what would be required. Or the ones that don't care that I have 14 years of zero in movement claims, but can only find a single overpriced firm willing to cover me after a straight line wind blew me off my tie downs during a storm.

Aviation insurance is incredibly arbitrary and not grounded in data.
 
You can shop around docs for Basic Med and kind of get what you want. For Class 3, there’s less variability and more risk. Can a basic med doc “cause” a deferral? If not, there’s the “FAA denial” risk reduction.
 
rwellner98 said:
Aviation insurance is incredibly arbitrary and not grounded in data.
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I was going to say the opposite until your experience.

I was thinking insurance companies are for-profit businesses. They want to increase the security of their revenues (premium payments) by reducing the risk of payouts (claims). It would make no sense to arbitrarily reduce revenues if there is no commensurate data-based (statistical backed) risk reduction. So I picture some number crunching that has them pushing BasicMed revenue sources towards Class 3 or else exit. I am deducing, I’m no expert.
 
MauleSkinner said:
Or the one who required me to get a checkout from an instructor who had 25 hours in Maules but couldn’t remember what they looked like?
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That 25 hours…

I didn’t fly the Ovation at all in 2020 and when the policy came up for renewal, a smarter underwriter decided I should have an hour of refresher dual with a CFI who met the open pilot warranty.

I met the open pilot warranty. I thought it was funny that I needed to receive an insurance checkout in an airplane in which I was qualified to give one to someone else.
 
Jon Howard said:
The other item to look at is frequency of medical exams. 3rd Class is valid for 24 months (after 40). Basic med is good for 4 years. A pilot flying under 3rd class is being "certified" every 2 years, under BasicMed every 4 years.
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Cripes, I see a Dr every time the noise in my ears gets too bad. That would be my wife yelling did you get a physical" which means at least once a year. Having done 20 years of USN Flight Physicals and a class 3 when I got back into GA after retirement, my Dr's physicals are far more in-depth than any of the others. Every 4 years he just fills out the additional checklist to show he covered it all even though he does more everyyear and often more than once a year for something or other.

I'm about to have a knee replaced. I can't imagine what malarky hoops the FAA would come up with but you can be damn sure I won't fly until I'm healthy again (and can get the plane back into the hangar myself).
 
Pugs said:
I'm about to have a knee replaced. I can't imagine what malarky hoops the FAA would come up with
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Not much really. They're not crazy about everything. For my third class after my hip replacement (16 years ago) I brought a looseleaf notebook filled with the full record - operative notes, discharge summaries, doctor's reports.

AME: What's that?​
Me: All the records from my hip replacement. I thought you'd want to see it.​
AME: You walked in, didn't you?​

Didn't look at any of it.

PS. I hope your knee replacement goes as well as mine has (this year).
 
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If the 3rd class is so much better physical,lets get down to the nitty gritty and ask why don't they require the hour or so long video and quiz on pilot related medical conditions on a 3rd class medical as they do on the basic med? Maybe you have something that you don't know needs to be looked at or even reported? Does a third class pilot still know all the heath concerns they did when they took their written back in the 70 and 80's ?
 
With insurance companies raising rates or denying coverage with basic med makes me wonder what will happen when MOSAIC is passed? No medical, no insurance?
 
This is still very rare and only seems to apply to older pilots. I haven't seen it at all in my community. I'm guessing the issue is "old" moreso than "BasicMed".

They have long asked for more frequent exams and things like annual FR and IPC and have been less interested in insuring older pilots in higher end planes. I don't see this changing much.

Insurance are in the business of making money, they need to sell policies. Discrimination is usually via rates when the market allows, not selling a policy is lost revenue.
 
fast99 said:
With insurance companies raising rates or denying coverage with basic med makes me wonder what will happen when MOSAIC is passed? No medical, no insurance?
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And that is the slippery slope the basicmed poo pooing, pro-insurer lackeys don't want to acknowlege. I know it rings hollow in this PMC echo chamber, but life in America has become so overpriced/currency-diluted, that the only way to live with a modicum of stability against financial ruin for most, whether it be housing [spare me the paid off go bare nonsense, american housing is mortgage driven through and through], transporstation, healthcare, and recreation... is to be able to afford insurance.

That makes insurers your de facto government and regulators in practice, since economic discrimination is a legal form of. LSA/MOSAIC ingénues are about to find that out the hard way at the rate we're going. Keep thinking this is an outlier problem, file that under the eff around and find out. Zuerst kamen sie....
 
hindsight2020 said:
And that is the slippery slope the basicmed poo pooing, pro-insurer lackeys don't want to acknowlege. I know it rings hollow in this PMC echo chamber, but life in America has become so overpriced/currency-diluted, that the only way to live with a modicum of stability against financial ruin for most, whether it be housing [spare me the paid off go bare nonsense, american housing is mortgage driven through and through], transporstation, healthcare, and recreation... is to be able to afford insurance.
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Well said, don't matter how rich you are because you are one serious medical event away from financial ruin in this country.
 
fast99 said:
With insurance companies raising rates or denying coverage with basic med makes me wonder what will happen when MOSAIC is passed? No medical, no insurance?
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Are insurance companies raising rates for basic med?
 
hindsight2020 said:
And that is the slippery slope the basicmed poo pooing, pro-insurer lackeys don't want to acknowlege. I know it rings hollow in this PMC echo chamber, but life in America has become so overpriced/currency-diluted, that the only way to live with a modicum of stability against financial ruin for most, whether it be housing [spare me the paid off go bare nonsense, american housing is mortgage driven through and through], transporstation, healthcare, and recreation... is to be able to afford insurance.

That makes insurers your de facto government and regulators in practice, since economic discrimination is a legal form of. LSA/MOSAIC ingénues are about to find that out the hard way at the rate we're going. Keep thinking this is an outlier problem, file that under the eff around and find out. Zuerst kamen sie....
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Aviation insurance notwithstanding, I think about every other insurance I carry is at pretty reasonable rates. I obviously don’t live in CA, FL or LA.
 
I still think that a medically handicapped individual driving a 5000 lbs truck, in case of a catastrophic accident, is more likely to cause serious harm ( both financial and medical ) driving on a busy city street or a highway than a similar person crashing his 172 on what most likely would be an empty field or some other remote location … do we see spiking insurance premiums for such drivers or are such scenarios normally absorbed and distributed across what is ultimately an extremely large pool of insured drivers ?
 
Warmi said:
I still think that a medically handicapped individual driving a 5000 lbs truck, in case of a catastrophic accident, is more likely to cause serious harm ( both financial and medical ) driving on a busy city street or a highway than a similar person crashing his 172 on what most likely would be an empty field or some other remote location … do we see spiking insurance premiums for such drivers or are such scenarios normally absorbed and distributed across what is ultimately an extremely large pool of insured drivers ?
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The difference is that auto insurance is mandatory and regulated. And yes, bigger pool.

Bottom line for me is that medically-related aviation accidents are about the pilot and not the type of medical clearance.
 
Warmi said:
I still think that a medically handicapped individual driving a 5000 lbs truck, in case of a catastrophic accident, is more likely to cause serious harm ( both financial and medical ) driving on a busy city street or a highway than a similar person crashing his 172 on what most likely would be an empty field or some other remote location … do we see spiking insurance premiums for such drivers or are such scenarios normally absorbed and distributed across what is ultimately an extremely large pool of insured drivers ?
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I asked this question of our risk management people a number of years ago. I asked them which was going to do the most damage - my Jeep Wrangler or a C-172. Their comeback was "which one is going to make the 6 o'clock news?" I stopped my discussion immediately. We were prohibited from using GA (with the exception of certain tail numbers that lined up with our corporate shuttle fleet) for company travel. No matter that it was faster to fly from OLM to HIO than it was to drive. Oh well, I've been retired from Intel for over 9 years, so I do not care anymore.
 
Would anyone care if basic med went to two years instead of 4?

I kind of see the the insurers side on that part

Ultimately, most people prefer to live, so they don’t fly when they are under the weather…right?
 
Randomskylane said:
Would anyone care if basic med went to two years instead of 4?

I kind of see the the insurers side on that part

Ultimately, most people prefer to live, so they don’t fly when they are under the weather…right?
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Why shorten it? Don’t undo all the effort that went into us getting this. Screw the insurance companies.
 
Pilot's with 1st Class medicals have medical issues in the cockpit.

So what are we really accomplishing?
 
Anthem said:
Let’s be real - basicmed hides a lot of things that someone /could/ fail on for a medical.
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Yet the FAA data does not show a significant difference in medical incidents between BasicMed and Class 3 medical holders.
 
Clip4 said:
Are insurance companies raising rates for basic med?
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My insurance rates went DOWN for a couple of years after transitioning to Basic Med. Basically, my insurer just doesn't care about whether I am on Basic Med or a Class 3 medical. I think they do care about my age and annual hours. Increases in the latter are a positive, but the former probably not.
 
Randomskylane said:
Would anyone care if basic med went to two years instead of 4?

I kind of see the the insurers side on that part

Ultimately, most people prefer to live, so they don’t fly when they are under the weather…right?
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I wouldn't mind. I see my physician every year to discuss overall health issues, and often obtain a fresh Basic Med signoff every year or two anyway during my annual. I don't have any disqualifying health issues, and my PCP is well aware of medications I must avoid as a pilot (like sedating antihistamines for allergies), so we work together to keep me flying. At a fraction of the cost and paperwork of a class 3 medical.

But the reality is that after a Basic Med or Class 3 medical, we are all self-certifying anyway until the next time.
 
StraightnLevel said:
Thanks - that's the point I was trying to get at with my earlier question.

I had a doc a few years back who refused to sign off on my racing license without running a treadmill stress test, and it's also part of our basic annual exec physical, as is a complete blood screening panel. That's definitely not a Class 3 requirement, last I checked. If I went to either of those two docs to get a BasicMed signoff, they're going to be more stringent before approving than my AME would be.
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:yeahthat:

I had a doc who wouldn't approve my racing license without running an EKG, even though it wasn't required. Similarly, my primary care doc runs an EKG and a complete set of labs on me every year, and neither Basic Med nor a Class 3 requires that.

The simple truth is that Basic Med and Class 3 don't really do much to improve aviation safety. The reason for them is more a matter of optics and politics than anything else, not to mention the self-preservation behavior of an entrenched bureaucracy.
 
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