Is the world becoming uninsurable?

When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

> In most cases, the Department of Insurance would be required to act on an insurance carrier’s rate request within 60 days, unless extensions are necessary.

> The proposed bill expedites the timelines laid out in Proposition 103, which requires insurance companies to have changes approved by the Department of Insurance and dictates how quickly the department must act on change requests.

> Critics fear that shortening approval timelines will allow insurance companies to jack-up premiums without room for public appeals and sufficient review by the Department of Insurance.

https://sfstandard.com/2024/05/30/california-insurance-crisi...

Obviously. Such a move by the government is just plain stupid.

> When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

No need to overgeneralize. Not every stupid move is immediately "socialism" and everything smart is "capitalism". It's obvious to every socialist that this move was stupid. In contrast, it's pretty clear that a purely market-based health system costs lives. Nobody is claiming though that "whenever societies dabble in capitalism it results in deaths". Pick your optimization target and then the right tool to reach that target. Sometimes that tool is to let prices regulate risk, sometimes it is laws to regulate risk, and sometimes it's something else entirely.

That was literally the take about insurance. And here we are, again.

Is it? Or is this post hoc rationalization? I really dislike playing the “both sides” card, even for a moment, but it’s hard to deny that there are questionable takes on both ends.

I agree with you that not every regulation equates to socialism, and it’s ridiculous to claim it is. However, the narrative of “insurance companies bad” is incredibly prevalent among left-leaning perspectives, and any regulation around insurance premiums tends to be automatically celebrated as a clear victory.

Ironically (because it's a free market argument), it’s a not-uncommon argument that if insurance companies can’t provide their services for no more than some arbitrarily-decided amount annually, they’re being inefficient or greedy and should go bankrupt and let a new competitor take the market.

Perhaps it is, I don't have enough insight to know. It's obvious (to me) that this is clearly over-simplifying things.

> Ironically (because it's a free market argument), it’s a not-uncommon argument that if insurance companies can’t provide their services for no more than some arbitrarily-decided amount annually, they’re being inefficient or greedy and should go bankrupt and let a new competitor take the market.

Is it actually a free market argument? Maybe it's not possible to provide that service at that price point. I'd think that the free market argument is that the price is already as low as possible, otherwise such a competitor would already exist and have outcompeted everybody. Such an argument has other issues though, like inertia, scaling effects, price-fixing and such, all of which are working against a free market though. Which is why a truly free market needs regulation, otherwise it ceases to be free.

> I really dislike playing the “both sides” card, even for a moment

Honest question: Why? I've found that reality is complicated. It's rare to find saints on "one side" and "pure evil" on the other. The truth is often times that there are many issues, many interests, many world views, and typically even more than two sides. Uncovering the truth usually requires avoiding partisanship and have an open mind about understanding the interests of every involved party. That necessarily leads to "both sides" arguments. Not common in hyper-polarized discourses, unfortunately.

You can spot it in this post, too.

> Is it actually a free market argument?

The argument is:

Large corporation A offers service B at price $C. $C is an extravagant amount, and is due to the greed and inefficiencies of A. A can only charge $C because of regulatory capture, or using capital to elbow out upstarts, or whatever other argument you want to assume (ie it's not a truly free market).

If A should leave the market (forcibly or not), company D can now flourish by offering B at $E, where $E is much less than $C. Because D doesn't have the inefficiencies and greed of A, everyone profits.

Seems like a pretty standard "free markets/Econ 101" argument to me.

> Honest question: Why?

Frequently it’s nothing more than a flimsy pretext for cowardice, a lack of knowledge, or simple indifference.

I don't disagree with you, many topics are complex. Generally though, people dislike those who refuse to take a stance even if it's a weakly-held one (thus Machiavelli's famous advice).