459
Insurance 'nightmare' unfolds for Florida homeowners after back-to-back hurricanes
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
459 points (99.4% liked)
News
23655 readers
2792 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is why insurance should be nationalized as part of your taxes.
Anyone thats not a brainwashed rightwing lunatic would see that paying 100-300 dollars a year on taxes would be a hell of a lot better than 100+ dollars a month just to buy a CEO a golden parachute and another yacht
But as long as right wing lunatics are out there literally hunting aid workers and evaluators, its never gonna happen.. because they want misery, pain, and destruction. its why Project 2025 wants to get rid of all of it.
I agree with nationalized healthcare insurance, but I don't know if I agree with using taxes to fund an underwriting account for houses in Florida that are guaranteed to get destroyed year after year.
Hurricanes are not getting smaller. Continuing to rebuild in Florida seems like building in the shadow of a smoking volcano.
Insert Bugs Bunny sawing off Florida from the mainland
Go a bit deeper. Everywhere is fucked. Nowhere will be insurable soon. Now what? Maybe we should get serious about degrowth and climate change instead
What if we threaten meteorologists and FEMA instead? /s
Insurance can still payout and people can still be made whole for property that's deemed uninhabitable. You do not have to "continue to rebuild in Florida", but you can make sure people's lives aren't completely ruined as a result of natural disasters.
I think a similar strategy is used with Federal flood insurance. When properties are destroyed multiple times I think they offer a buyout.
So just stop helping people in florida specifically?
Or we just gonna go full republican hatemonger and tell everyine from California earthquakes, To Midwestern Tornados, to Northern Blizzards, and more, to just get bent and that they should have thought to live somewhere without regular disasters? That they deserve what happens to them for "choosing" to live there?
My insurance company has determined that my house would cost about $450k to completely rebuild in the event of a total loss. Thankfully in the Northeast the risk of my house being destroyed is low, so they charge me $1,100 annually. Even with a few houses in my area being destroyed by fire, flood, or extreme weather, they still make enough to build up their reserves, pay their employees, and kick back some to the investors.
How much would that company need to charge in Florida so they could still pay to fix the houses and pay everybody that works for them? Definitely not $1,100/yr because replacing just a single broken window costs $1,100.
Now think about if the Federal government began covering Florida. They would have the same issue as private insurers - there is no amount they can charge that will not deplete their funds faster than they take in premiums.
Gee, if only there was some kind of pooled money that people could pay into so they could cover such things. So people could pay small, affordable amounts to get taken care of and helped if tragedy strikes them.
You know, like spreading the risk out, like some kind of..insurance?
And besides, Sounds like you specifically just want to hang people out to dry in Florida for the sin of living in Florida since you conveniently neglected/ignored the biggest part of my post about where does the line get cut for telling people they don't matter because where they live.
And of course, I doubt you'd be so "Well I dont deserve help cause its my choice to live here" when disaster strikes where you live, or your mother, or family live. I bet you'd be full of righteous fury and indignation if anyone dared to say that to you.
But its different when it personally affects you, right?
If everyone in the US paid to rebuild Florida over and over that's not insurance that's practically a subsidy. Do you think it's fair for someone in Illinois who has no benefit of Florida beach front views pay the price to fix a snowbirds vacation home over and over?
Florida is different because the risk is perpetually high and living there is a choice. It's fine for people to choose that risk, but I would expect sky high coverage.
You're right. Its not fair for people to have lower insurance costs and a single unified pool.
It obviously makes much more sense to pay 3x the amount to a national, private insurance provder, have them take most of that for CEO and executive pay/bonuses/benefits, and then close offices and cancel policies in florida because they cant "afford" it.
Fuck off with your right wing bullshit already. You aint masking half as well as you think you are with this project 2025 shit.
I'm definitely not a Republican. Sorry my take seems to have struck a chord with you, but I don't think what I said was illogical.
So, in the post you're replying to, it's laid out how insurance wouldn't work, and your reply is "Have you considered insurance?"
Even making it a state plan would work better in Florida than what we currently have. They let private insurers cherry pick the less risky houses, and cover whoever is left with the state plan. Then those private for profit insurers take the premiums, pay big bonuses to themselves, dissolve the company and leave, rinse and repeat. It's a scam.
The cherry picking is usually a compromise to keep the companies operating in the state at all. If the state says a company must offer coverage for all perils for the entire state or leave entirely, it doesn't take an underwriter to know Florida is a bad bet. There are similar carve outs for windstorm coverage in other gulf coast states, and I think for wildfire coverage on the west coast.
Edit: I couldn't find anything about a single peril state plan for California, but this article describes some of the recent insurance issues in the state: https://apnews.com/article/california-home-insurance-wildfire-risk-premiums-047bdfa514ce93dac83c82735a15554a
Florida is talking about a state windstorm pool (risk pooling, not gambling pool) like the national flood insurance. I guess that would be the compromise, but the insurance industry here really is plagued with fraud. The companies keep folding then coming back, I can only assume they are lining the pockets of the legislature with our money.
In the years I've owned a house (about 30) I have paid them enough that if I'd banked it instead at a reasonable rate of return I could buy another house. But have made no claims. So they are charging like every house will be knocked down once every 30 years, I guess, but again, my previous house and that whole neighborhood from 1925 is still standing.
The "California Earthquake Authority" provides the earthquake insurance for California: https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/about-cea/frequently-asked-questions
I had not realized before reading that now that it's actually not state-funded. It sounds like it's a pool of all insurers together.
Believe me, I'm with you. But a complication to this is that insurance companies employ millions of people. Nationalizing them needs to take all those livelihoods into account, and would be nearly impossible without going full on socialist (which I am completely for, I don't think it's feasible to continue a capitalist system when it is clearly breaking down and killing the planet while doing so.)
Flood insurance is nationally subsidized. People use it to afford their marina properties in Washington state.
The down vote shows you hit a nerve...
Why should taxpayers subsidize someone's dumb decision to buy a Florida beach house?
"Why should I have to pay for YOUR kids to go to school?"
"Why should I pay for social safety nets when I'm well off?"
"Why should I pay for roads when I don't drive?"
Because there will come a day where you may need the help, and it wont be there cause your pigheaded myopia, and then you'll cry and cry about the unfairness of it all and maybe, just maybe, if you have a functioning neuron in that brain of yours, that maybe the fraction of a cent of yours that actually goes to help people isnt such a bad thing afterall
None of your examples involve encouraging people to make stupid decisions like building a house that's almost guaranteed to be destroyed within a few years.
Unbounded risk-taking such as insuring people building houses in risky locations will lead to bankrupting the country.
If insurance is going to cover it, then there needs to be stipulations on the home owner to reduce the risk - for example, building the home out of steel and concrete, raising the structure high enough so that floods and storm surges cannot reach indoors, etc.
Bullshit.
Its a drop of piss in the ocean compared to all the ridiculous shit America wastes money on every single goddamn day.
Oh the hell it will.
We could have a functional colony on the moon and mars if NASA got a quarter of the military budget.
Maybe, just maybe, we stop spending billions to kill brown people for no good reason, and spend a tiny fucking fraction of that to make our own part of the world Less of a shithole, instead of more
The first step in not living in a shithole is to not build a house in a shithole, e.g. swampy Florida.
Are you stupid?
The vast majority of people living in Florida, didn't build a fucking house there.
Most of the people living there, can't afford a house.
Like yeah, fuck the vacationers, they're probably the reason we're reading an article about house insurance. But the people who were born there with all their family and friends there, what the fuck are they supposed to do
Self preservation
Call it Guillotine insurance
Edit: I see now the comment I replied to is about subsidizing losses, not about having a state run insurance program.
If the premiums are risk based, why not not? Ideally there would also be a buyback program for homes deemed to be uninhabitable due to climate risk. Maybe something like the state will buy the house at 80% of the value used for property taxes, up to a certain maximum (fixed dollar amount? Percentage over the county/state median?) This buyback program could be used when the premiums become unaffordable.
You know, not everyone living in Florida has a beachfront vacation home, right?
Not everyone living there chose to live there either.
Did you know people can be born places? With family? That aren't rich?
Until you get hit by a natural disaster, then it's different?
Of course you need a evaluation if the damage should be replaced and how the owner could have avoided some damages.... that is how insurances work.
Don't build zou house close to a wildfire spot. Don't buy property in a Hurricane path...
Thing is: This shit will happen everywhere anytime.