[joering2]

My heart goes out to them but I hate seeing Gofundme campaigns used for such purposes. All the time I see campaigns to cover someones medical bills or accident costs. No, we have insurance for that! What happened in California was a natural disaster and will be covered by what every home owner in Cali is forced to pay out every month in mandatory tax for such cathaclism. We as a society will be in very dengerous spot when people start ignoring obtaining reasonable insurance and just hope for successful Gofoundme campaign when things go south.

[ridgeguy]

Your insurance coverage can vanish in a moment. A current anecdote..

I live in a neighborhood of ~80 small lots/homes a few miles west of Palo Alto. Since Oct.1, nine of our neighbors have had their fire insurance policies terminated immediately on receipt of the mailed notices. Most of the nine had their policies in place for >15 years. Not like they were dodging the need for insurance.

Gofundme has its uses. I hope it brings at lease a small measure of ease to the Godbout family.

[cagenut]

insurance companies are the vehicle through which the financial lunacy of suburban sprawl will be squeezed to death.

[walrus01]

from the perspective of a person that lives in a country with a single-payer healthcare system, that covers pretty much everybody, it is amazing to see Americans use GoFundMe for medical bills.

The fact that you can become completely bankrupt by getting cancer or any other "expensive" ailment is just... Ridiculous.

GoFundMe is a symptom of a much larger problem, not the problem itself.

[komali2]

It's also inherently unfair - if you aren't good at marketing, sorry, you don't get to recover from the disaster as well as your neighbor does.

Let alone room for other issues - English level, technological understanding, hell maybe you're just too ugly to put your face in a GoFundMe video and garner sympathy.

I'm with grandparent, this is boring dystopia shit.

Edit: more thoughts - the amount of "recovery" you get is entirely a popularity contest, and has nothing to do with need or really even the value of property lost. Tick enough arbitrary marketing boxes and you could even profit. It's a remarkably shitty thing.

[DanBC]

Insurance doesn't always cover the cost. This is because there is severe demand for builders and building materials after a fire; but also because building codes and regulations have got tighter which pushes up costs. Not everyone includes that in their insurance.

https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/insurance-fo...

> Wildfires are like hurricanes. Thousands of homes must be rebuilt at the same time when there is not enough building materials or contractors to go around. This, of course, leads to skyrocketing price increases in labor and materials, making the replacement cost of a home destroyed by the wildfire 50 percent or greater than what it would've been before the fires. Assuming you have enough structural coverage, you are entitled to receive the cost to rebuild your home at today's materials and labor costs.

[...]

> It will pay the cost to rebuild what you had up to the insured amount if you insured your home for 100 percent of its estimated replacement cost as computed by your agent. Then, if you have an "extended replacement cost" endorsement, it will pay an additional 25 percent, 50 percent, or more of that insured amount, depending on with which company you are insured.1 Finally, if your home is a little older and building construction laws have tightened (such as making your home more earthquake resistant), thereby dramatically increasing the replacement costs, it will typically pay another 10 percent and possibly up to 100 percent additional for those costs, depending on whether you purchased "supplemental building ordinance" coverage.

> For example, if you insured your home for its estimated replacement cost of $500,000, but because of the cost increases following a disaster like a wildfire, the replacement cost is $800,000 for what you had, and an additional $200,000 for added costs from building ordinances, you need $1 million to rebuild. Assume you had purchased the optional extended replacement cost endorsement of 150 percent and an optional ordinance endorsement for 125 percent, you could collect up to an additional $375,000 for a grand total of $875,000. Still short of what you needed, but considerably better than the $500,000 original coverage.

[purplezooey]

Insurance is pretty much a scam. They can decide to cover all, some, or none of the cost.

[lamarpye]

It is surprising that the insurance industry isn't regulated.

[cagenut]

lol, no other market is more regulated than insurance, except maaaybe utilities. you can almost think of them as a financial utility because they are given special state licenses to allow them to collude on setting prices, which they basically have to do because of how extensively regulated they are.

[lamarpye]

Right. I was being sarcastic.