It’s really great that both major parties will do fuck all about this. The GOP will pretend that it’s not happening so they’ll do nothing. The dems might make some speeches about it but in the end they’ll do nothing too.
Emphasis mine.
In a webinar with journalists last month, Burt argued that US homeowners’ wildfire and flood risks are underinsured by $28.7 billion a year. As a result, more than 17 million homes, representing nearly 19% of total US home value, are at risk of suffering what could total $1.2 trillion in value destruction.
[…]
Burt’s estimate may actually be on the conservative side. The climate-risk research firm First Street Foundation last year estimated that 39 million US homes — nearly half of all single-family homes in the country — are underinsured against natural disasters, including 6.8 million relying on state-backed insurers of last resort.
[…]
“Every part of our financial and legal system at this point is devoted, singularly devoted, to keeping the status quo in place,” Harvard Law School professor Susan Crawford said in the webinar. “It will be difficult for us to adapt.”
LOL
For a very short time approximately a million years ago, I was a licensed property & casualty insurance agent. This article made me very angry.
The subheader:
Millions of US homes are underinsured because their premiums don’t reflect the risk of climate-fueled catastrophes.
made me suspicious, because that isn’t what underinsured means 🤦 Whether or not you are “underinsured” is relative to your coverage, not your premiums.
Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal
Okay, so it’s not just some noob freelancer, and he definitely has access to a dictionary. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Cool.
So, the vibe I got from that choice of deliberately misleading phrasing right up top was that this dude is just fearmongering because he’s worried that the profits of insurance companies could be at risk, and yes, that is exactly his concern:
First Street used a hypothetical California home to illustrate just how wildly divorced from reality insurance costs can get in some places. Say our imaginary Californians started out in 2010 paying an annual $2,000 home-insurance premium. If that increased by 7% a year — the absolute most the state will allow, and highly unlikely in any case — that premium would have hit $4,820 in 2023. Yikes! And yet that would still be $2,900 short of what the price should be to truly reflect how much Hypothetical Insurance Inc. has at risk, First Street estimated, considering climate change, inflation, reinsurance and other costs.
“other costs” 😂 come on, dude – we all know you mean “need for making line go up”
Do you know what reinsurance is? It’s insurance for insurance companies. 🙄 Yes, they literally cover their own asses to make sure covering your ass doesn’t cut into their profit margins too much.
Isn’t that fun to think about? You’re not only paying premiums to your insurance company to cover your losses, you’re helping them pay their premiums on having to cover that loss!
If your insurance company and their reinsurance company can’t cover a giant loss, the government will step in, though the $300,000 cap for property payouts should be lifted to something more attuned to the actual modern cost of rebuilding and refurnishing a home.
This writer has his hair on fire about risk to insurance companies, not their clients. He spends the entire article advocating for premiums to be raised, not the government guaranty program caps that would actually help homeowners.
Also, this guy apparently has no idea about what happened to Cassandra after the fall of Troy:
Cassandras seldom get opportunities to be right about two disasters. Even the original Cassandra scored no notable victories after predicting the fall of Troy.
Perhaps her low output after Troy fell could be because she was murdered almost immediately?? Oh and SHE PREDICTED HER OWN MURDER. jfc “no notable victories”
For this guy, Cassandra herself is just not as impressive a seer as the guy who predicted the '08 crash 🙄 The writer spends a couple paragraphs fellating that dude before getting on with the premiums bullshit.
I’ll charitably assume that his opinions on their relative skill levels are entirely derived from his poor literacy and have nothing to do with gender.
Anyway, Mark Gongloff should go read Agamemnon in a burning dumpster with as many insurance executives as possible.
