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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
478 points spking | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.245s | source
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bluedevil2k ◴[] No.42733208[source]
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 say the same about people building and rebuilding over and over in these disaster areas.
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underwater ◴[] No.42733293[source]
Price caps always seem like such a transparent political move.
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mgiampapa ◴[] No.42733332[source]
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.

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cowsandmilk ◴[] No.42733396[source]
> How about profit caps?

What period do you put it over for property insurance? Profit caps work for health insurance because claims are typically not correlated. The percentage of your customers with cancer won’t 5x one year and go back to baseline the next. New drugs or treatments (or a drug going off patent) can cause correlated swings, but generally costs to health insurers don’t change a lot year to year.

For property insurance, you need to bring in profits most years to fund the year when there are multiple category V hurricanes or large fires.

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1. mgiampapa ◴[] No.42734670[source]
The book of business has to be large and the pockets deep. Which describes our current insurance market and the government. The way we handle this now is with reinsurance.