Movie Review
Like the movie states, “No one in 1744 ever would have thought two Scottish ministers would have created a financial milestone.” Wallace and Webster were two Scottish ministers just as the above sentence declares that established the Scottish Widows Fund, which was the first insurance company. It only became possible after they deduced the exact calculations for how many widows and orphans would remain after their husband’s deaths. They went over and over the formulas until they determined the exact number. Also, they developed the idea of a premium and a pay-out plan from a fund of the premium payments that was invested. The pay-outs would come from the returns on that investment. By 1815, the rest of the world began to catch on to Wallace and Webster’s invention and insurance was a major player in the Battle of Waterloo, where the odds that a soldier would die were 1 out of 4. By the middle of the 19th century virtually everyone had some kind of insurance.
Of course there are differences between different kinds of insurance. There are insurance plans for nearly every event in life that are exclusive only to that event. That is a major difference. The movie used Japan as an example of providing insurance as a welfare state, which means the state is responsible for insurance coverage. That certainly is a different kind of insurance.
Insurance companies certainly did contribute to the financial crisis in New Orleans and is still affecting it. This is because insurance companies refused to pay out the premiums on homes damaged from Katrina and then would not allow people to insure their homes. Eventually there was a legal battle over the situation and the insured parties were victorious although their attorney was jailed for five years over trying to bribe a judge. The insurance companies fought back, however, by listing some areas of the Gulf Coast as uninsurable or making the insurance premiums so high people cannot afford it. Therefore, they must build homes elsewhere or forego purchasing a home in those areas at all.
