After just 5 years, Farmers will no longer write homeowners policies in FL.

  • Banzai51@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    No, just like the people that complain about the fat people in their same insurance pool, you’re facing less risk in the larger pool with everyone kicking in premiums. That’s what the actuaries say time and time again. Making the pool smaller is far riskier than excluding the “bad” bets. Our workplace insurance did that, separating everyone into the “healthy” and “unhealthy” pools. As I predicted, EVERYONE’s rates went up. It is a similar principle on why countries with socialized medicine have far, far cheaper costs than the US.

    The Gulf facing states have always had issues with hurricanes. Insurance bailing at the scale we’re seeing in Florida is new.

    • ramenbellic@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Sure, the Gulf (most warm coastal areas, really) has always had hurricanes - but they are increasingly severe, destructive, and expensive to recover from with each year.

      It seems like a false equivalency to compare it to health insurance, healthy people suffer plenty of surprise illnesses and costly medical expenses as a normal part of life, whereas the odds of my home in MN, 1,200 miles from the Gulf, being destroyed by regularly occurring hurricanes are incalculably small. Other risks, like tornado and flooding, can be more easily managed with regular tree maintenance and a battery backup sump pump. A blizzard might keep me snowed in for a day or two, but won’t ever result in the insurance company footing the bill to rebuild my house.

      The housing insurance market is one of the only powerful forces actively disincentivizing living in disaster prone areas. By contrast, the housing market has largely been ignoring climate science, instead trying to squeeze every last penny out before leaving regular folks with a inflated debt and land they can’t sell.

      It’d be politically toxic for the government to say that we shouldn’t build a FIMA subsidized suburban McMansion on every last vulnerable acre of land - but something needs to shift to permanently migrate people out of harms way before SHTF if we are to survive this climate emergency.

    • bdiddy
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      1 year ago

      Texas at least has wind storm insurance which is by the state and for hurricanes. So insurance companies don’t have to worry about that at all. Also flood is similar in that it’s handled by the national flood insurance program.

      AKA insurance companies don’t have to worry about climate related risks in TX… Thus they are not leaving Texas.

      Florida needs to consider these things.