Comment by rewgs
1 day ago
Insurance should not be for profit, and things like e.g. State Farm suddenly cancelling people's renters/fire insurance just two weeks before the fires (I am one of those people) are what people hate about insurance. No one is arguing that insurance is bad at risk assessment, but rather how they wield their proficiency with it.
Why does State Farm in particular have a moral obligation to insure you against fire if it’s not profitable for them to do so?
To pick random examples of unrelated companies, McDonalds or SpaceX would also refuse to insure you against fire. Why should people hate State Farm for this reason, but not McDonalds or SpaceX?
If State Farm didn’t exist and the state ran insurance instead, and were willing to insure all comers, they’d be subsidizing people who can’t be insured profitably. That’s not crazy on its face (the state subsidizes lots of different things), but it’s at least worth asking why we should be paying for people to live in high-fire-risk areas rather than any number of other things the state could be spending those resources on.
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Why?
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>They don't, but they have the courtesy of giving myself and thousands of others a proper heads up. Perhaps any heads up? They quite literally just dropped me, no email, no letter, no nothing. This type of thing should be given 3 months minimum.
No way that happened, the state would not allow it.
https://ktla.com/news/california/state-farm-to-non-renew-720...
>It’s important to note that nonrenewal is not canceling. Customers affected by the decision will retain coverage until their current contract is up. The company said those impacted will be notified between July 3 and Aug. 20.
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> To answer your utterly moronic question
I don’t think it was moronic at all; the point is to get to the bottom of what assumptions and axioms you’re using. What is the moral framework according to which you claim State Farm has wronged you. Only then can we judge whether your claim is in fact correct.
> because they aren't in the business of insurance
So, if I understand your implicit argument correctly, it seems to be that anyone who sells a product be forced to sell it to anyone, no matter how costly it is to them.
There’s no McDonalds in Barrow, Alaska, presumably because running a McDonalds there would be prohibitively expensive. Is that immoral? Should they have an obligation to open a store there?
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If you only had two weeks notification, you should file a complaint with the commissioner here:
https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/101-help/index.cfm
It's likely that you are not alone, but I've not heard of anybody not getting notification, despite a lot of people not getting renewed.
Thank you, will do.
State Farm is a mutual insurance company, so it's owned by its policy holders. It's not quite non-profit, but it's in the same ballpark. I've gotten money back from State Farm one year when they (we, I guess) made too much money.
State Farm notified its customers in August of its non-renewal (not cancelling) of policies, plenty of time for homeowners to get new policies or fall back to the state fund.
And what is fire insurance? Is that something unique to CA?
My insurance was cancelled but I don’t blame the insurer at all.
CA regulation basically capped their premium increase and my insurer did calculations that said “this is a net negative business”.
If I had a business making a loss I would get out, so why would I blame my insurer for doing the same?