Comment by pclmulqdq
14 hours ago
As the governments in the US get increasingly incompetent, insurance prices are going to have to rise. Government services are largely there to protect you during black swan events, so if those services get less and less effective, you're going to need more insurance for those events.
This was the whole issue. California made it illegal for insurance companies to raise rates, so the insurance companies stop renewals. Leaving everybody uninsured. Homeowners couldn't buy insurance at any price.
Public insurance. For housing, healthcare, maybe even cars (since the coprorate political complex insists that we HAVE to drive everywhere). At some point, we have to accept that the middlemen are siphoning value, not providing any. Vanguard it and let elected admins set the codes.
> Public insurance. For housing
This is California’s FAIR plan [1]. It’s a wealth transfer from non-homeowners to homeowners, homeowners in low-risk areas to high-risk homeowners, and from low-value homeowners to rich ones.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_FAIR_Plan
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Isn't this thing going to be subsidized by taxpayers in the end anyway?
California already a dumb communal insurance thing, the "California FAIR Plan" for people who can't get insurance due to high risk. They force insurance companies who operate in the state to fund it. So basically everyone has to subsidize the high-risk people... but then the insurance companies leave.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-fair-pl...
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As a British citizen by birth, I'm amused by the idea that Americans may get National Insurance for houses before they do for healthcare.
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Public insurance would provide no benefit. The issue in California is that people have built their houses in dangerous areas and have not taken any measures to reduce fire risk. The state has already set limits to how much insurance costs can be increased (from a past generation of economic illiterates who wanted to stop "middlemen siphoning value"). Therefore, insurance companies are just pulling out, which disproves the entire idea that they are "siphoning value", since obviously there is no value there to siphon.
The only thing that public insurance would do is to provide a way for the state to incur another massive unfunded liability. Except, unlike healthcare or pensions which have the somewhat laudable goal of taking care of poor people and old people, this would go to bailing out rich homeowners who made a bad investment of a house in a flammable area and then refused to spend money on fire safety measures, either in their home or their municipality.
Of course these fire zone bag holders are now clamoring for the state to take on their bad investments by pushing conspiracy theories about the evil insurance companies.
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> Public insurance.
That only guarantees you have insurance. It does not guarantee that you will be covered or made whole in an incident or emergency.
See FL Citizen's insurance and other insurances of last resort as examples.
What really needs to happen is premiums go up with the cost of risk. But this also means pricing people out of homes, vehicles, businesses, etc. And no politician will allow this.
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It does seem like it's time to stop letting this "industry" profit off the misfortune of its customers. Making all of these a public service instead of private industry makes sense at this point.
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It’s regulated, not illegal.
“Experts say the insurance landscape in California is particularly tricky because, in addition to the wildfire risk, the state has a law that adds extra approval measures, including board approval and review by the insurance commissioner, if an insurance company wants to raise the rate of insurance by more than 7%. That’s been in effect since the 1980s.” https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/05/what-homeowners-need-to-know...
Illegal seems fine as shorthand though. Same with housing -- "illegal" to build in many instances. Not technically illegal of course, but enough hurdles makes it effectively so.
If it's not permitted to raise the price of premiums to point where it covers the actual risk, then it's de facto illegal. Nobody will sell insurance policies at a loss.
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I don't think it is incompetence of the governments. It appears to be a goal of most US politicians to add to the coffers of private business, insurance companies included, at the expense of all but the most rich Americans.
Then why are private insurers being pushed out of California?
I'd finish your comment with "it's a goal of most US politicians ... to enrich the most wealthy Americans".
These aren’t black swan events. These are swan events, if anything.