Is the world becoming uninsurable?

Post by trescenzi » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:03 AM UTC

redwall_hp wrote: post #63

teractiveodular wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the 173 million strong population of Bangladesh can attest, they can and do live in such places. "Each year, on average, 31,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi) (around 21% of the country) is flooded. During severe floods the affected area may exceed two-thirds of the country, as was seen in 1998." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Bangladesh Most of the world does not want to aspire to be Bangladesh, but hu…

Another example: Japan has many quakes per year and has a strangely high percentage of the world's active volcanos. People have lived there for a very long time, built to accommodate it (both traditionally, using timber and expecting to rebuild often, or with modern earthquake-hardened architecture), and is now a top five economy by GDP. And, well, most of the US is just a hanger-on to California's economy.

Post by orange_joe » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:12 AM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #93

bluedevil2k wrote: post #8

Like we see in California, when the government sets a price ceiling, insurance companies just leave. Same in Florida. If the free market truly was allowed run normally, the insurance rates in Pacific Palisades or on the Florida coast would be so high that no one could afford to live there. Is that a bad thing? If someone was living in a house near where they tested missiles, we'd call them crazy. At what point can we…

> when the government sets a price ceiling, insurance companies just leave… > the insurance rates in Pacific Palisades or on the Florida coast would be so high that no one could afford to live there… Seems like the result is the same — people will live there but without insurance.

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:14 AM UTC

mgiampapa wrote: post #22

underwater wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price caps always seem like such a transparent political move.

How about profit caps? I feel like government stepping in and being the insurer with a sufficiently large pool of risk to spread around lets them set a fair rate without the need to make a return or answer to shareholders. To some extent this has helped with health insurance. Each year I get a check back from my insurer saying they didn't spend enough on my care vs my premiums.

Post by jwagenet » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:19 AM UTC

wuiheerfoj wrote: post #80

Aurornis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately these discussions almost never go well, because it seems that most people have at best a surface level understanding of what insurance is and how it works, and everyone is convinced that it's a full scam and insurance companies are fabricating everything I have the exact same experience when discussing anything insurance related: People have wild assumptions about how much profit insurance companies a…

>When you point out that, for example, health insurance profits are low single digit percentage of overall healthcare costs Do you have any source for this? I’m assuming (because HN) that you had the USA in mind, and it doesn’t pass the sniff test for me given that US insurance fees are more than single digit percentages higher than other high quality care countries with privatised healthcare systems

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:22 AM UTC

paleotrope wrote: post #73

paleotrope wrote: post #44

It seems like "severe storms" have increased quite a bit, the other categories not so much. What does "severe storm" mean here? Doesn't seem to mean hurricanes or winter storms. So what gives? Is this just political patronage handed out under the cover of claiming a big storm knocked some trees down?

Ok so the source, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series/US says, "tornado outbreaks, high wind, hailstorms" So most of this cost is roof damage. Which is an area rife with insurance fraud and getting worse.