[mlinhares]

The elephant in the room is that hurricane insurance shouldn’t be a for profit business because no business can survive multiple cities being destroyed by a hurricane, this money should have been driven to a state fund that pays out when disaster strikes and the private insurance business should insure only the usual stuff.

[1123581321]

Public home insurance with unlimited risk appetite would create a hazard as too many people would move and build carelessly. For public health and financial reasons, the state of Florida shouldn’t encourage this.

Reinsurance already covers excess claims before an insurer exits the market. There is no systemic risk from an insurance confidence crisis as there was in banking pre-FDIC.

Any suggestion to compensate with additional burden on homeowners (“just charge them more”, “require stricter building codes”) can be handled by existing insurance regulation.

[mlinhares]

Oh yeah, because the "collect hurricane insurance, spend all the money, go bankrupt" pipeline has worked wonders in Florida.

The government already foots the bill when insurance doesn't cover the costs (which is every single time here in Florida) and when there is no insurer anymore Citizens Insurance (the government plan) also covers it.

Homeowners insurance wasn't made for natural disasters and the fact we continue to make it so only fills the purses of the fraudsters running the scams. The moment there is no more free money for these insurers in Florida the market will change overnight.

[1123581321]

Your tone suggests strong disagreement but I’m not seeing much other than what is the difference between a one-time backstop by public money prior to an insurer exiting the market, and an ongoing public insurer with unlimited obligations.

The question, as you put it, is how and where Floridians should be encouraged to build since home insurance doesn’t work in major disasters.

[mlinhares]

The issue is that if it becomes a government fund the insurers can't spend the money in the year when we didn't have destructive hurricanes, which is what they usually do.

The government would keep the money in the fund indefinitely until it was needed and would't be spending it.

[1123581321]

That is not something that's happening; surplus is tightly regulated now in Florida. Plus, reinsurers will not let insurers steal money that's meant to cover losses. It's cheaper for Florida to tweak the dials of surplus regulation than to become an insurance company because it would encourage loss-making behavior.

[JumpCrisscross]

> no business can survive multiple cities being destroyed by a hurricane

Then stop letting multiple cities be destroyed by a hurricane. We know how to engineer hurricane defences and build hurricane-proof structures [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane-proof_building

[whimsicalism]

democracies generally will not be able to insure at a sufficient level. i'm opposed to having the government force me to subsidize others poor choice of environ. if someone wants to live in a fire-prone or hurricane-prone area, that is their choice and they should be exposed to the true cost of insuring themselves and hopefully this will cause people to move somewhere safer instead or make changes (like a sturdier home, clearing brush, etc.) that reduce their rates.

[jghn]

It's not an elephant in the room. The fact that half of the populace is too brainwashed and/or stupid to understand truths like this is the elephant in the room.