Flood Insurance Insanity
With a thanks to Wayne for shooting me this article, someone … someone … needs to put this on their “to research and remind” list for when we retake enough seats in Congress/retake the White House to solve these crazy programs.
This article in USA Today begins:
In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978. Extraordinary as the damage may be, even more extraordinary is that an insurer has paid claims every time, required no flood proofing, never raised premiums after a claim and vowed to continue insuring the house. Forever.
The home’s value is $69,900. Yet the total insurance payments are nearly 10 times that: $663,000. It’s no surprise that the insurer faces huge financial problems. The insurer? The federal government.
The article goes on to detail specific instances and an overall incomprehensible system of taxpayers subsidizing tens of BILLIONS in insurance to homes which are flooded over and over. This is the epitome of the epidemic of lack of personal responsibility wherein homeowners in historically flood prone areas are allowed to continue their dependence on government programs to bail them at the expense of other American citizens. Sad and tragic situations the first time, perhaps the second. By the third, I’m beginning to feel a lack of compassion and more a feeling that I’m getting “got.”
Keep this on your list of issues to confront the new conservative majority. Tough decisions need to be made in restoring personal accountability, this is just one obvious example.
August 29, 2010
Tags: FEMA, Flood Insurance Posted in: National, Tax/Budget/Spending
One Response
jenneane Froman - August 30, 2010
I live in North Carolina but own a business here in South Carolina. Last year I got a letter from the President of Erie Insurance saying that the government had been providing flood insurance for homes along the coast for many years (at an extremely low rate) and had suddenly discovered they did not have enough money to meet their obligations to their clients. Their resolution to the problem was to have every home owner in North Carolina contribute into a fund to pay for flood insurance for these homes. The insurance rates would have skyrocketed. Come to find out that when the program started, they were only to insure properties within a few miles of the coast but because the rates were set artificially low, over half of the home owners in each of the counties along the coast were participating. It was also discovered that many of the homes along the coast that were being insured under this program belonged to politicians. The property owners in North Carolina revolted and that plan was killed.
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