398
Insurance is failing hurricane survivors: ‘People thought they were covered’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
398 points (99.3% liked)
News
23311 readers
4195 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Insurance companies get away with the most fucked up shit as a matter of course and nobody holds them accountable.
Private insurance used to offer flood insurance like 100 years ago, but to stay in business they had to raise premiums to a point where no one could realistically afford it (which is to say that living in a flood zone is not financially feasible for most people). The government had to step in with their own flood insurance program, which was tied to regulation intending to minimize the risk of flooding in at-risk zones so that premiums could remain affordable. Even these measures haven't been sufficient to keep the program from running out of money, and we've been subsidizing it with taxpayer bailouts to keep it afloat.
All this is to say that private insurance is literally incapable of insuring against flood damage, so you can't blame them for any of this. If you want to blame someone, blame Trump for rolling back standards that would have allowed FEMA to consider climate change in their risk models.
For private insurance, the key is "to stay in business with huge profits" for the gov version, it's politics of course, which you point out. They could easily fund it.
This is an actual logical take. Don’t live in a flood prone area if you don’t take adequate measures to protect your investments. That’s the customers/citizens responsibility. They aren’t blameless.
Hurricanes aren’t just a climate change issue. They’ve existed in the Florida area long before anyone settled it and many were MUCH more destructive in the past.
My family is from FL. Guess where I don’t live. My house is nice and dry (so is all of their’s but that’s because they got lucky and weren’t directly hit).
Also, read and understand what insurance you actually have. Can’t understand the legalese? Then ask the agent what you are covered for and what you aren’t. It’s really not that hard but some people would rather blame others instead of taking personal responsibility.
I had a partially flooded basement due to a rough monsoon season last year, one window well backed up, and I ended up doing all the work myself since I don’t have flood insurance either (where I live it’s super rare). I’m not blaming anyone but myself for that.
I think you’re missing the part where places flooded that have never flooded before. Places that never even saw a hurricane. Unless you plan on moving everything to the tops of mountains, or the middle of an empty plain, anything can flood when enough water hits it.
I’m not missing that. Florida is barely above sea level. I’m not talking about inland North Carolina here. That was truly nuts for all.