Farmers Insurance will stop offering its policies in Florida, which includes home, auto and umbrella, in a change that will affect 100,000 people.

    • n0m4n@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      My family have had one home leveled, one home so badly damaged that after rehab, lost 2/3 of its value, and yet another home badly damaged by three separate climate driven events. One was a 1000 yr flood, and then, two different straight wind derechos. We were homeless three times.
      We live in the Midwest. Furthermore, we are only one of many thousands that have already been affected and are certainly not the first. When the insurance companies pass on the profits because of risk, we can accept that actuaries have seen the light.

  • Treczoks@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Well, it is a sound and sane decision by the insurance company. They can’t afford offloading the hurricane risks of Florida on the rest of their clientele (or on their owners/shareholders) anymore.

    With all the other companies withdrawing or being on a watch list for getting broke, insurance will go through the ceiling in that state.

    I’m afraid this will lead to a load of uninsured property in the near future, and horrid cries for government help after the next hurricane swipes through.

    • tikitaki@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      i think it has little to do with hurricanes

      sure, it increases the risk to a certain degree but companies can always just charge more to offset the costs of paying out premiums. the problem is that the state government has certain prohibitive laws in the insurance space meant to more or less subsidize homeowners insurance

      it’s not easy to be an insurance company in florida with the high rates of fraud and the state needing to approve all sorts of premium increases

      ultimately what i foresee happening in the near future is likely an increase in the state-funded insurance programs. which to be honest, i’m totally OK with. i don’t like insurance companies

      although it is ironic if it does go down that route - collectivism in the state that “woke goes to die” as our dear governor delicately put it

      • NotMyOldRedditName@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It’d be a great counter protest to fight the government doing that with all sorts of anti socialism signs.

        We don’t need no government insurance handouts, we’re real men and woman and if a hurricane knocks our house down fuck the government, we just need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and we’ll be okay!

  • SpaceMonk@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I have family in Florida. If a storm comes, DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY. Just let them be raptured like they want to be. It’s God’s waiting room and he’s about to empty it.

  • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I still remember this guy from Florida in the show of Bill Maher, telling him that global warming was fake, that he could see from his house in Florida that the sea level wasn’t rising. I remember him holding Bill by the arm telling him “trust me, it’s all fake”. Dunno if he was a governor or somethin’. If someone remember the episode, please post it.

    What this clown did not understand is that the problem is not the sea level reaching your house, it’s the risk seen by the insurance company. Any climatic event added to a higher sea level and boom, your house is flooded, even if 3 days later the event is gone and the sea isn’t in your house anymore. It will happen every year, become a systemic risk and you won’t be insured anymore. Even if your house is dry 350 days a year and only wet 15 days a year. Even if the sea level is below your house.

    It has some similarities to Brexit. During Brexit a lot of british people living in Spain believed that they would not be affected by Brexit and that they would be able to keep living in Spain. Until they received a letter from the government telling them they had to leave.

    It’s all virtual until the administrative machine start to walk over you. In their case it’s a letter from the insurance. It’s gonna happen everywhere.

    Now that the insurance have lifted the taboo of stopping insuring people for climatic reason you will see more of those action everywhere. The region around the lake Mead (Arizona, Nevada, California) will become really funky in term of war for water.

    And of course the fees induced by higher premium of crops insurance will be added to the price of food. Everybody lose.

    • EvilColeslaw@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The region around the lake Mead (Arizona, Nevada, California) will become really funky in term of war for water.

      It already is funky. The states have been fighting over water rights allocations for years. I seem to recall some positive movement once the federal government threatened to step in and solve it for them. But I know until that point they were using insane numbers for the Colorado river watershed – essentially all their calculations were based on a volume that the Colorado river had never even come close to having.

      • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Last time I checked, they gathered middle of last year to take measures for sparing water, but they eventually decided to do nothing, and instead they let the emergency measures trigger in as the level of the water got lower and reached a point of alert at the end of last year.

        Whatever the new emergency measures are, they refused to apply those themselves at the time and preferred to let the automatic mechanism do it for them. They were probably afraid to be the ones who bring the bad news to their farmers. It would be political suicide. That’s only speculation of course.

  • Jaysyn@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m just waiting for State Farm to tell me I no longer have insurance.

    Watch for the FLGOP to try passing a law making it illegal for insurance companies to quit the state or for the Congressional GOP to try passing a law that forces insurance companies to operate in all 50 states if they are over a certain size. / gross income.

    • Pohl@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Sigh, trying to convince my parents to sell the FL house and get out before this comes to a head. They get it, but they still don’t realize that it’s not going to get better or be fixed somehow.

      What happens to your mortgage when your insurer drops you? Does the bank call the loan in when you can no longer buy the required coverage?

      • NotMyOldRedditName@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It’ll just accelerate as well. You might think you have years to deal with it and a few back to back events change things and you’re suddenly and unexpectedly SOL

  • Hairyblue@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    They should start a national home insurance and compete with the private companies.

    It is only going to get worse with climate change. We need public healthcare too. Companies are only interested in money/profits. That is what they do.

    • comedy@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Florida already has a public insurance company called “Citizen’s,” which IIRC is legally required to always be the most expensive option available. It’s probably going to go bust when the next big hurricane hits, though

      • Hairyblue@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        We can have National insurance. And it may be the only option for us if the private insurance companies won’t even offer it to home owners.

        Not state, national

    • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      They should start a national home insurance and compete with the private companies.

      This won’t work. Take any US state that is not too much affected, and tell them that now they have to pay a premium to insure the people of Florida. They will never do it.

      I’m serious when I say that global warming and the lack of resources will break both the USA and China, and probably the EU too. The regions of those countries will be unwilling to pay for the others. Sweden won’t pay forever for Spain, same in the respective regions of the USA and China. Do you really see these agglomerate of people supporting each others? I don’t. The lack of food will have devastating effect on geopolitics.

      We are leaving a period of prosperity and it’s gonna shake a lot.

      • andyburke@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Florida is and has been footgunning with Republican leadership for a few decades now.

        I don’t mean to dismiss all your concerns, but there is a lot Florida could have done if they had been taking climate change seriously. They and their representatives chose not to act, calling it all a hoax.

        I am not sure we should be using Florida as the example of how it will be everywhere.

  • Haus@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Shit’s gone off the rails if the actions of an insurance company make laugh.