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loses the other eye, he's got total, permanent disability under the law. So it is with deafness. So it is with injuries to the legs and arms. So you never take anybody who's got any defect whatever, or got diabetes, or got arteriosclerosis, or healed tuberculosis, because a serious injury will light up healed tuberculosis and it will settle at the cite of the injury or otherwise make a total, permanent disability.
They began to see that any injury to a man, who is less than perfect or who is past the age limit where he is likely to be in perfect health, is likely to be expensive. So this merit rating is one of the great curses that we've got on the workmen's compensation system. I was always trying to preach against it and trying to persuade the insurance companies, as we did the legislators from time to time, not to hold with merit rating. My argument was that insurance is a socialization of the risks and the hazards that one man can't bear alone, so you spread it over the whole population. That's what it was when Lloyds of London invented it for ships, and it's been like that always. It's a socialization of my hazards. I pay fire insurance for years and years and years. I don't have a fire, but what I pay goes to pay the costs of the man who does have a fire. His risk has been socialized.
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