California earthquake insurance?

I'm in Florida - Tampa Bay area. There has not been a hurricane to hit this area in 90 years. When I moved here my first year the insurance was $325 a year.... last year it was almost $2000...with good old State Farm (who I had been with for 50 years) long before moving to Florida. Now I can only get insurance from one company -- its Citizens. Run by the state of Florida....and it's what everyone in my county has. There is a sinkhole problem in this state -- and it is very hard to get coverage for that. I am not covered....I would have been glad to pay for it but the agent said I probably wouldn't be able to get it. My neighbors all have the same problem. Most of us are senior citizens and our houses are paid for so we don't have to have insurance. Most of us do have it -- in addition to FEMA flood insurance -- because we are responsible adults and want to do everything to protect ourselves. But the price is high and is getting higher -- and our income isn't rising in proportion to the price of insurance. If we have a hurricane or sinkhole -- a lot of people will just move away and abandon their property. Won't have much choice. Its the world we live in. People in the mid-west have problems with tornadoes and still choose to live there. Its silly to say "they chose to live there so they should pay" .... what we should be doing is trying to find a reasonable response to these problems. The people in charge of regulating insurance need to find a better way to handle this and stop bending over backwards to protect the insurance companies.

OK. Lessee.

Floridah - hurricanes (every freakin' year!) the Carolinas - see above Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi - see above, with crawfish, catfish and rednecks, and levees The Eastern Seaboard - see above and Nor'westers Georgia - see above, and still pissed about Appomattox the Dakotas - snow and ice and darkness; too effing close to Canada Kansas, Arkansas and most of the midwest - tornadoes, seasonal. Too much Jesus. Don't buy a trailer. Jesus hates trailer parks Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico. Nevada - drought, steer manure, oil, millions of acres of cactus, prostitution (hey! It's not ALL bad!) Oregon, Washington - deluge, vegetarians, Starbucks, Mt. St. Helens, no black people Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa - fat, stupid people; birthplace of Walmart, where your bacon comes from; Ted Nugent Idaho, Montana - no speed limit (hmmm), highest ratio of guns per capita (watch your speed, pardner, you're slowing me down.) New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania - politicians, terrorists and other rude people The Appalachian states - Deliverance, dueling banjos, Foxfire Maine - how much lobster can one man eat? And why are those trees orange? Seriously? The frost level is 3 inches? Hawaii - A loaf of bread costs $10. (Also, tsunamis) Alaska - bears, Sarah Palin

California - 10 miles to a pristine beach, 30 miles to a pristine mountain, 30 miles to a pristine desert, 2 hours to one of the most beautiful parks on Earth, 60 miles to one of the major cities on the planet, bikinis, oranges, almonds, movie stars, no toll roads, fresh air.

And a nice earthquake once per decade. The ultimate E-ticket ride.

For which I am currently uninsured.

-Frank

I'm with you there. But at least you don't have the Democrats (well, in NC, there are some tokens, from New York).

Crawfish are yummy. The Mississippi doesn't cover the whole state. Rednecks are mostly good people. Sure beat Kalifornika lefties.

Daddy, what's a Nor'wester? Noreasters aren't a big deal.

Your bigotry is showing.

Well, you have a point there.

You're going to hell!

I guess I'm in good company.

What's not to like!

There's no prostitution in Californica? Gee, what were those bimbos (or whatever) doing in SF who wanted to show me a good time? I was *sure* there was a pay for play angle going on there.

You sound a little racist, as well as full of other bigotry.

Wow! There's some (false) bigotry. Wallmart comes to us from Arkansas, BTW.

Cool. Both are great! Illinois sucks almost as badly as Californica, though.

Cool! Sounds like a plan! Though I think you're mistaken, again.

Yeah, too many Democrats in Eastern Pennsylvania, too.

More nonsense from Mr. Bigot.

You mean 30ft.

And birthplace of Obama. Gack! That puts it on par with Illinois!

Neat! Both would do a good job of keeping me warm!

No bikinis in Hawaii? I coulda sworn...

No, Californica is 163,695 sq mi of flat broke, with (yet another) governor who wants to double down and a legislature that's even worse. It's dead, Jim.

It's dead, Jim.

It's a big problem, but just part of the Florida landscape. Here's a couple articles that show how complex it is.

None of this affected you? Twenty years ago, Hurricane Andrew roared into South Florida as a category 5 storm. Its toll: 15 deaths directly from the hurricane, $30 billion in property damage, 250,000 left homeless, 82,000 businesses left damaged or destroyed. The stories below reflect on the changes that came out of this catastrophic event. We also wanted to take this time to remind you about Hurricane Charley, a storm that had been predicted to come ashore in Tampa Bay as a category 2 in 2004. Instead, it took a hard turn right and slammed into Punta Gorda as a Category 4 storm. The devastating storm caused 10 deaths in the United States and $14 billion in losses. Many in that area were caught unprepared, thinking the storm was going to hit Tampa Bay. And what if it had? Would you have been prepared?

Why is it silly? If you choose to live in a high risk area, why should I have to pay for your losses?

Are you willing to pay more for car insurance because teenagers cause a lot of accidents and they don't want to pay higher rates? Should we all pay the same?

Insurance or where you live (in the world) would be of no benefit if that goes off:

John

How about health insurance? (Serious question)

Smokers should pay more.. (Serious answer)

Smoking is a choice, same as living in a beach front house. Or below sea level.

Insurance spreads the risk, a good thing, but if you knowingly and intentionally increase the risk, you should pay for it.

On 5/27/2012 5:31 PM, Frank J Warner wrote: ...

...

A) +1 w/ the observation that it isn't so much "can't" as it is "can't at single-loss actuarial rates".

B) They're not "hedging a bet" they're adjusting the odds to reflect actual risk for widespread events. If "you end up owing the casino" there's no benefit--they're bankrupt and all you've got is the return of what assets there were which clearly wouldn't have been sufficient to cover the losses or they wouldn't have the problem...

In reality, the spate of hurricanes the precipitated the insurance problems in the SE US was a result of them not adequately addressing the first point above. As hard as it is to believe they could be so oblivious to the realities, actuarial rates had been set on very similar models as those used for individual homes and had not adequately addressed the "common-mode failure" factor of large-scale events and the exponential growth in total value in the coastal regions over a period of years.

It's a reflection of changing to meet the real risk and higher potential payouts that are the root cause. It's not clear to me whether the state mandates help or hurt more in terms of actual coverages offered--I tend to think likely it's counterproductive in that companies will simply choose to not accept the risk rather than face excessive regulatory burdens.

There's severe weather here but it's much more isolated in general altho when a large metro area gets a direct hit like Joplin did last year it can add up pretty good. Still, it doesn't cover anything like the area nor have the tremendous flood damage potential of a major hurricane. So, rates here aren't terribly affected by the tornado risk.

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The biggest problem in health insurance imo is the selective creation of pools that many are shut out of--like the self-employed, etc., that are forced into individual policies that prevent any benefit of pooling w/ a larger multi-age group of similar general health levels.

Here is where I think there should be some additional regulation that creates a general pool for the population as a whole rather than the present employer-based pools that skew the market.

The issue of voluntary "opt-out" by the young and relatively healthy is a problem as well--they tend to either not participate at all or to have very minimal coverage so they skew the system in two ways--they don't add much (relatively speaking) to the premium base and so when do have a major illness are added to the un-/under-insured pool essentially no differently than the indigent. 'Tis a quandary; I don't have a good answer on how to improve the maturity of the immature...

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How about other things like obesity? How about with medical conditions that cost extra?

I would argue that we don't have health insurance any more and haven't since the demise of the old Major Medical policies, but that is a story for another day.

This is an almost inevitable result of employer-based insurance system that evolved out of WWII.

I don't know. I have, however, long advocated a reinsurance pool. It is well established that really small numbers of people spend the overwhelming largest % of the money, with 5% of the population spending almost half of the money. I think it would make sense to have an extra surcharge on health insurance premiums to fund it. Then when a person hits a specific amount spent (which could vary based on the size of the group), their care would be paid for by the reinsurance fund. It is used in many area for Property and Casualty insurance for instance. The REAL problems with the small groups and individual insurance occurs when they have an expensive patient and few people to spread the costs around.

OK on obesity, but pretty much anything else should be nixed. They are behavioral traits that you have some control over. Heart disease, blood disorders, and that sort of thing happens potentially to anyone and is just part of the pool. See my comment below.

Sure is.

Well, yes, I recognize that--the comment was on current situation owing tb demographics and employment patterns having evolved markedly since the 60's and that model doesn't fit an increasingly large fraction of the present population.

Possibly at least a partial solution although I still think the pools ought to be something like a state overall population or somesuch instead of simply a group of employees--after all, employees are for the most part the healthy sub-group since they are at least still employable (if perhaps not all productive :) ). Thus it is, in essence, cherry-picking the cream of the crop and leaving the rest to make up the problem cases.

Thus the self-employed has the problem of the latter above that I raised earlier.

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Yes.

There are problems with that. Without the statistics, I can only speak in generalities. Much of that 5% are elderly and can least afford the surcharge. Since I'm getting closer to elderly every day, I'm well aware of it. In addition, in 2010 my wife's medical bills were about $150,000. Most covered by a good insurance policy. My employer could have chosen a less costly policy with less coverage and more expense to me.

We do have choices as to coverage. Since that time, we are both on Medicare and we both have the top supplement offered. To get that good coverage, we pay a higher premium than others. I guess we are paying that surcharge you speak of.

The company I work for has 17 employees. Of the 17, one is under 30, but seven of us are 60+. That is bad for the census that determines the rate. It may be a benefit though, that some of us are now out of the company plan and into Medicare.

Getting back to that 5% again. much of the money is spent near or at end of life. At some point, it is probably best to say "goodbye" rather than keep a poorly functioning body alive so family members can sit and watch it. In a few rare cases, the euthanasia advocates make sense.

Should those who have chronic illnesses pay more? They use more.

So is going without insurance.

So you approve of Big Brother.

There is nothing stopping you from creating your own pool. The real problem is that those pools are limited to the states. You couldn't have members from the various states and have insurance companies compete for the business. In several states there is *very* little competition at all.

On 5/28/2012 1:55 PM, snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote: ...

Actuarially-based rates owing to behavior reflect the realities of the resulting consequences (on a statistical basis, not individual outcome) and it's actually more nearly reflecting personal responsibility to shoulder the additional burden for that choice.

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My health insurance *is* insurance. It has a ~$1500/yr deductible, then covers 80$ up to an out-of-pocket $5000 (or $6000 out-of-network), then everything else. I don't get reimbursed for every stubbed toe or sniffle. It's "insurance" in that it covers what I can't afford to lose, much like my auto or homeowner's policy.