Posted on 05/31/2006 8:09:54 PM PDT by paulat
ping-a-ding-ding!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1641477/posts
Home Insurance Cancelled...You Too?
y'all just don't try to move to philly. it's already too congested here.
Say WA? Evergreen State ping
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.
I think the word "jolt" would be more appropriate in this case.
All over the world the last couple of decades you've really seen an explosion of studies of paleoseismology - dating and studying past earthquakes by digging trenches through faults, extending well beyond human written records in time.
It's proven quite valuable in identifying risk, especially in areas that have had civilized settlement for a very brief time, like Seattle, Salt Lake City - but it's clear Insurance companies are taking a look at the information and going "Holy Crap, there's a lot more risk here than I thought."
Good. Insurance is the biggest scam in the world anyway.
This never would never have happened if President Palmer was alive!
More seriously, I imagine this is the inevitable result of the government bailing everyone out of disaster who neglects to buy insurance. The insurance companies can bail out of a high-risk area and leave EVERYONE in the government's hands.
Ruh-roh!
Insurance works like this...
You estimate the probability of a claim being filed and the amount of the claim, then you set your premiums such that you can make a profit even if the claim gets filed.
Now, if the probability of the claims and the amount of the claims are such that you must charge a premium that is either unreasonable (won't get customers) or insufficient, you are going to lose money.
You could always bump up the premiums of others who have less risk but then, that is called socialism.
Perhaps what needs to happen is to simply prohibit mortgage companies from requireing insurance.
That or simply allow mortgage companies to make loans without requiring insurance.
what did these people expect? You cant live on the ocean front (or in a earthquake area in this case) without having consequences. Deal with it.
Maybe they know something we don't.
More seriously, I imagine this is the inevitable result of the government bailing everyone out of disaster who neglects to buy insurance. The insurance companies can bail out of a high-risk area and leave EVERYONE in the government's hands.
How's Jack gonna fix this on a slow boat to China????
More seriously, I think you've nailed it.
The insurance business is the only one I know of where the companies fire their customers on a regular basis!
I can see a lender going along with that as long as they can write you a mortgage at 25% or 30% interest.
When we were still paying for our house we had to have flood insurance. Strangely I don't think there was much danger of a flood here above the dam.
One of the happiest days of my life was the day we were paid off and I could tell everybody to stick it. Now we get calls every day offering us a good deal on a second mortgage.
All the scientific studies of the Cascadia megathrust, and also the smaller faults directly under Seattle, are public, as is the USGS seismic hazard map.
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