Home insurance and climate change have collided — and we're all going to pay for it
Home insurance and climate change have collided — and we're all going to pay for it
Even as insurers flee California, lawmakers couldn't hammer out a deal to fix the collapsing market. Inaction will only make disasters more expensive.
If insurance companies don’t want to do their job, nationalize them.
Fuck this whole “we don’t want to lose all of our obscene profits, so we won’t insure those most in need of insurance” bullshit.
This is why preexisting conditions can no longer be used to deny health insurance or ratchet up the price. Those are the people most in need.
10What are insurers supposed to do when the risk of a large area has changed?
6Idk, but pulling out to leave their customers completely fucked probably isn’t the right answer. At that point, the rest of us pay the “insurance” through disaster relief, and we might as well just cover insurance with taxes nationally. Cut out the middle man and their cash grab entirely.
If they can’t figure out a solution that works, and keeps everyone covered, they simply shouldn’t exist since they aren’t providing the service they claim to.
2
Eh. I'm not sure if I'm really cool with compensating mega mansions in the Florida coast when everyone has been telling them this was going to happen.
I'd be ok with helping middle class people relocate to lower risk areas though.
4The problem is that the polluters like oil companies were allowed to externalize costs.
Cheap gasoline, cheap products, cheap electricity, cheap food - those are all things that drive climate change. If they forced companies to actually pay the costs associated with producing their goods and services, the associated taxes could be used to offset the costs of climate change. The government could subsidize insurance costs by making those responsible for the rising dangers pay for what their actions actually have done.
Let’s say I’m a chemical company and I make an industrial cleaner that I sell for $5 per bottle. If I treat my waste product so that it’s safe, it will double my manufacturing costs, meaning I will have to charge more and lose market share and money. If I can just dump it into the river, I pollute the environment, kill wildlife, and drive up cancer rates. In the days before pollution regulations (and in many states where republicans have rolled them back under “deregulation”), that’s exactly what happened. There’s a cost associated with what I’m doing that I simply expect someone else to pay.
An added bonus of forcing internalization of costs would be a drop in consumption, with a corresponding reduction in pollution.
We’re not going to do it, though, because no one is going to vote to raise gas prices to $10/gallon.
3
Jokes on you, I can't even afford a home!
2This is part of why you can't: lenders won't lend if you can't get insurance
3
Honestly, since I haven’t been able to afford a house yet and the prospect is looking questionable at best, this won’t affect me.
1The insurance thing is part of why: lenders won't lend if you can't get insurance, and insurers want to charge premiums commensurate with the risk, which is much higher than they have been charging.
Without being able to borrow, builders won't build, and there is less housing to go around.
1