More insurance companies are fleeing the state because of the growing threat from natural disasters.
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I shit you not Florida’s CFO blames corporate wokeness
Also I didn’t know florida has a CFO
Running government like a business = bad at capitalism
I mean, in their defense the insurance companies finally “woke” up to what a terrible business idea it is to operate in Florida.
No worries, now the Florida government will offer their own insurance in retaliation, to show them corporates who’s boss.
And that’s how, children, the capitalists became socialists.
It already exists. It’s called Citizens Property Insurance and I’m one of over a million subscribers to it. Every private company is at least 20% more expensive or the state could sell my policy to the private company.
Howdy fellow citizens customer! As a token of our new friendship id like to give you 2 of the giant grasshoppers and 1 albino lizard.
They already do.
“Unfortunately, Florida’s insurance market has become challenging in recent years,” the company said in a statement emailed to CBS MoneyWatch. “Last year’s catastrophic hurricane season contributed to an unprecedented rise in reinsurance rates, making it more costly for insurance companies to operate.”
This is hilarious and sould crushingly unsurprising. People actually ended up needing to use the insurance the companies were offering soooo they are just no longer offering it. Proving once again (for the millionth time) insurance companies have absolutely zero desire or feel any moral obligation to actually help people. It is 100% purely a money making operation. The millisecond they actually have to help any of their customers out, they will bend over backwards to get out of it and if they can’t, they’ll just leave entirely and not insure you. Beautiful. God I hate insurance so much.
Are you actually surprised that an insurance company is not there for the good of the people, but to make money? They did keep their contractual obligations and paid out their customers, so you cannot fault them for that.
And what the insurance companies are doing is quite normal behavior. They analyze business risks and move out of fields that are not profitable. They are now telling you that they will no longer cover you so you can find another insurance to take over business. That those other insurance companies are more expensive is just founded in the fact that Florida is already a risky state, and the risks just skyrocket through global warming. And with the water temperatures rising as they do, I expect this year to have an interesting hurricane season.
People complain again that they cannot afford to move to safer places. Maybe now they can start thinking whether they can afford not to move to safer places instead.
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Not saying insurance companies are good but I’ve read a lot of the problem is with insurance scams where a roofing company will tell the homeowner they can replace their roof for free with insurance, even if it’s not necessary. Then that company will sue the insurance Co if they don’t pay for it.
That’s part of it but it’s state law that made that possible, even with tort reform.
They are a business and their business model shows they can’t make profit in Florida any longer. It would be morally unjustifiable to continue operating in Florida, to their employees and shareholders.
These aren’t non-profit companies.
If only the gays would stop marrying the hurricanes would stop and premiums would be lower! - Florida republican voter, probably
Not probably, they have been on record saying so.
Our Baptists in Illinois when I was a kid blamed 2000s hurricanes on “sin” such as gay marriage, so that’s correct.
(In case you are wondering, I am no longer Christian— let alone Baptist. I am agnostic theist though!)
If the hurricanes had guns this wouldn’t be happening.
It’s the fault of the trans athletes and books that use the word “gay”!
Insurance companies are about the purest form of capitalism around. If they aren’t making money, they aren’t going to participate. This is going to be a problem for California, Florida, Louisiana, and places in the Mountain West.
Mountain west? Why? I don’t see anything particularly concerning in Utah but maybe I’m not paying enough attention?
I think the whole western half of the country is strained for water, so might have to do with that.
Ah gotcha. Why would a drought increase my insurance premiums?
It’s probably the fire
So serious question, does the fact that insurance companies are giving up millions of potential customers prove that climate change/disaster is real?
IIRC, that’s part of why they’re pulling out of Florida. DeSantis made it law that they can’t change premiums based on climate change, so they’ve decided it makes more sense for them to pull out than risk huge payouts when they can’t change premiums.
Honestly I’m pretty sure a similar problem is happening in California.
Just look at the rising water temperatures. It will be an interesting hurricane season this year.
No fucking kidding, eh?
I hope that the wind shear from the el Nino holds up for the people in the US and parts of Canada. It seems like the NOAA are thinking that this el Nino might not be as much of a saving grace as usual. The current temperatures are worse than they were at the peak of any other hurricaine season, and this one is still just getting started. I’m concerned with how bad the temperatures will be at the peak.
From what I read, we haven’t really experienced this before. This year’s sea temperatures are the hottest on record. We’re already getting to the point where things will become increasingly difficult to predict.
Wait, this El Nino was supposed to be a saving grace? I’ve only heard of it meaning hotter surface temperatures. Hot summers, mild winters are what I associate with El Nino, and the opposite with La Nina.
The things I’ve read have been saying that the last few years of La Nina have made the warning trend seem more mild and now this El Nino will show how much things have actually progressed in that time.
I meant that mainly in terms of the hurricaine season. During an el Nino, the Pacific ocean begins to heat more than it normally would during a la Nina. This heat creates an undraft of sorts that pushes a lot of air towards the east. These updrafts can kind of “axe” a developing storm. They can obliterate a small hurricaine or tropical depression.
When the Atlantic ocean is hotter, the storms that come from it tend to be stronger. We have never had sea temperatures this high, so it’s a bit of a guessing game to whether or not those updrafts from the Pacific ocean will continue to “axe” storms coming in from the Atlantic. The gulf of Mexico is also pretty hot, and it lies on the other side of the jet streams that come from the Pacific updrafts.
We have to hope that a hurricaine doesn’t make it beyond that jet stream, as those water temperatures are currently perfect for a bad hurricaine.
Unfortunately, we don’t really have much data on these conditions yet, since we haven’t really seen them happen before. We will have to wait and see which of the opposing forces is stronger.
That’s pretty cool! I love it when I think I have a basic grasp on something and get smacked with more complexity. Earth is neat with all of these carefully balanced systems that just happen to keep it in habitable ranges. I’m glad humanity is doing everything it can to respect that and keep Earth going and not change things so drastically that we just blast past or through the check mechanisms!
I don’t think most of deniers deny the climate change is real, they moved the goalposts to “it’s not caused by humans” a while ago and I’m pretty sure they’re currently shifting them again to “it’s too late do anything anways”.
Whoa now. That is some prejudiced and elitest reporting. How dare anyone acknowledge the problems in florida, the sunshine state that is perfect.
In all seriousness: It sounds like this is being a bit over reported, but the extent to which they are pulling out remains to be seen. And it is going to REALLY suck for florida as people are stuck holding mortgages for condemned and washed away houses.
But it also sets a really concerning precedent. California has already seen issues (but, being a functioning government, are setting up government programs to protect people from wildfires). But more and more of the country/world are going to become uninhabitable over the next few decades and insurance companies are likely to pull out of risky areas and just raise premiums elsewhere.
I’d say Arizona and Texas are at higher risk than California, unless earthquakes get way more frequent and bad.
Texas is always at a high risk of someone plugging their phone charger into the wrong outlet and taking out the grid for the entire state. They are a special kind of stupid
Arizona is interesting. They definitely have massive drought issues. But wildfire wise, they tend to be pretty okay. I assume because there isn’t enough moisture to actually grow trees to burn but I am sure it is more complex than that.
Still, compare these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Arizona_wildfires versus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_wildfires
And, for fun, New Mexico: Like Arizona but with fewer people, worse roads, and a little bit more water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_New_Mexico_wildfires
Wildfires aren’t the issue with Arizona, extreme heat is.
Which isn’t something insurance covers and thus not applicable here.
You can’t (easily) file a claim because “it is hot as balls outside”. You can (generally) file a claim for “my house burned down”.
The planet becoming more and more inhospitable is one side of this hell. But the issue with insurance companies pulling out is that it leaves the owners holding the bag. The bag, in this case, being a massive mortgage on a condemned plot of land.
“Hot as balls” raises workers’ comp. and health insurance payouts, people getting heat exhaustion and heat stroke, even heart and respiratory diseases can be brought on or worsened by heat.
The risk in CA is that they have built so many communities in areas that are prone to wild fires (and in some cases are even part of the natural eco system) that is inevitable that if they rebuild that it will burn down again. They also have high material costs, higher labor costs, and more stringent building codes (rebuilding to code can get really expensive). Lastly CA has a more highly regulated insurance market which protects consumers, but makes it less profitable for insurance companies. While IMO this is a good thing it has ripple effects on whether or not the private market wants to participate.
💀
What are you doing on the internet? You’re supposed to STOP, DROP & ROLL!!!
In all seriousness, I hope you are well and surviving.
florida as people are stuck holding mortgages for condemned and washed away houses.
I mean what is the issue with just not paying them? For a big enough hurricane there will be too many delinquent mortgages, so it might be easy to hide or just tell the bank that the free market is harsh mistress and sucks their risk didn’t pay off.
My grandfather told the family that his premiums are going up so much in September that he has decided to just sell his house and move to South Carolina. I don’t know what he was paying or how much they are increasing it but it must be bad if he’s moving after living there for 30+ years.
Bummer that he sold everything just to move to another future climate casualty
Even CBS does clickbait now. First sentence in article:
AAA will not renew the auto and home insurance policies for some customers in Florida, joining a growing list of insurers dialing back their presence in the Sunshine State amid a growing risk of natural disasters.Some customers. Will that be dozens, thousands, millions?
I bet even they don’t know the specific number. But certain conditions like being in a hurricane-prone area or zones not performing the maintenance on structures that help deal with natural disasters would probably cause those people to no longer be insurable as it predictable that they would pay out more money to more people when things go sideways. This is information for their stockholders, so they don’t get sued for not maximizing profit.
Take away their ability to offer car insurance in Florida too then.
People are downvoting you but that actually happened a few years ago in 2009 when State Farm wanted to pull out of Florida after the state refused their proposed rate hike: among other disincentives, Florida said uh uh, you don’t get to pull out of homeowners and still sell auto insurance. It worked, State Farm stayed.
I’m surprised I’m not hearing this talked about more because locally it was huge at the time. I no longer live in Florida but the back and forth between insurers and the state has been going on since Hurricane Andrew.
Is all of Florida a risk, or only down state?
