Perhaps the most interesting part of the article:

8 points

wow, its almost as if we should cut off the heads of insurance CEOs and nationalize them all into one low cost government plan thats paid for with pennies on the dollar in taxes.

lol, who am I kidding. Idiot Americans will always prefer paying 3000 dollars for bad coverage, rather than pay 100 in taxes for great coverage.

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3 points

BUT MUH TAXESS

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5 points

With climate change, there is no option for “low cost” plan, government or no.

You can’t constantly have massive losses like these fires in a single area all paying out claims and expect to pay them off with low premiums.

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-2 points

Did you pull a muscle? You know, stretching that hard to intentionally misconstrue what I said.

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2 points

Seems to me that’s exactly what you said.

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1 point

Yeah the point flew way over that guys head

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4 points

Yeah, I really do wonder when the government and rest of the people start to seriously consider if it is worth it dropping $50 billion on places like SoCal and South Florida every few years or so. At some point you need to do the math and ask hard questions about whether it is worth it, and the answer damn well may be no.

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6 points

I haven’t seen it in the comments yet but this is just the death spiral of climate change. Everything will just get worse from here on out as long as society operates the way it does. To everyone’s “surprise” I’m sure.

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6 points

You had me at cutting off the heads of CEOs.

Guillotines go brrrrrrrrr

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2 points

Woodchippers. Guillotines are too 18th century. Put em’ in head first.

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3 points

In that case my vote would be feet first. But I think they’ve caused enough pain to deserve a little on their way out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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5 points

Or, you know, tackle climate change. But both are equally unlikely.

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5 points

You’d think that insurance companies would be on the forefront of pushing climate change mitigation and prevention specifically because the impacts of worsening climate change will have a massive impact on their bottom line.

Maybe they can counter some of the petro company propaganda with their own marketing.

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1 point

TBH, if insurance companies started pushing for climate change policies it would probably make those policies less popular. If there’s an industry less trusted than Big Oil, it’s Insurance.

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2 points

Their time preferences have been shortened to “this quarter” just like the rest of the economy. We would need to buy insurance plans that last decades and not renegotiate every year.

So long as we live in an economy designed to maximize GDP, this can’t work.

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1 point

They’re in the business of making money, not fixing problems. It’s easier to just pull out of an unprofitable area than fix the Republican party’s head-in-their-ass ideas about climate change.

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1 point

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1 point

Why would they do that rather than just not offering plans in areas where they project they will lose money?

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2 points

That is what confuses me. Nationalized Healthcare, even an extensively covered one (with dental, optical, and prescription meds included) will be much cheaper overall than the private bullshit happening now.

I never understood how privatization advocates so routinely get away with bullshit. How can anyone not see how public program failures are almost always the result of deliberate sabotage.

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2 points

deliberate sabotage bought and paid for by the private industry, to increase public pressure to move more healthcare to the private sector, so CEOs can make more billions.

and i have no idea. americans are fucking stupid. “Do you want to pay an extra 100 dollars in taxes for great health coverage and no declining what you need?” "NO! I WANT TO PAY 5000 FOR COVERAGE THAT DENIES EVERYTHING, BECAUSE A POOR CEO NEEDS A NEW GOLDEN TOILET ON HIS 8TH YACHT "

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-1 points

Absolutely sucks, but these are also some of the wealthiest homeowners in the US. Cut your losses and move to less vulnerable areas. Nobody should be building homes in flood plains, lake beds or fire prone areas, particularly the ultra-wealthy. Save FAIR for normal folks and low income families.

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1 point

I agree when we’re talking about Malibu… But lots of other places burnt down where regular people lived (eg. Altadena).

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8 points

Good news! Everywhere is becoming a vulnerable area, so there won’t be anywhere that fits your criteria :D

Entire west coast is fire and earthquake prone.

Entire east coast is flood/hurricane prone (as shown by hurricane Helene absolutely destroying asheville, which is in the mountians

Central US keeps getting extreme weather / tornadoes.

Shit’s on fire, yo.

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4 points

Did the CEO’s house burns down in the wild fire as well?

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16 points

Insurance, both property and health, is completing it’s morph into a parasitic value extraction tool with zero actual use. They are committing straight fraud at this point, daring people to sue them for contract breach, knowing many won’t

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1 point

Always has been.

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1 point

Health insurance yes. But property insurance has a use, but these companies have ceased actually providing that service.

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3 points

I agree with the first sentence, but I don’t think there’s a lawsuit here as the contracts that you sign with them have a limited term and they are simply not renewing

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1 point

I’m sorry, are we just skipping over the regulations that caused these companies to pull out? Most of these homes would still be covered. They’d be paying a higher price, but they’d be covered.

When you put a legal cap on costs, the company will pull out.

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0 points

Turns out when you say you cannot charge more than x for a service that costs y to provide, and y>x, no one can sell the service.

Insurance companies fucking suck, but too many think their profits are the ONLY reason there is a problem.

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0 points

Yea that’s just basic economics.

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1 point

Maybe we should have rules in place that provide more protection for actual human beings instead of prioritizing profit margins or pretending that “Basic Economics” is a universal law rather than a guideline of how people interact with each other. Sorry, I’m not mad at you, just the system we live in

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0 points

We, did, they were pushed to the side. Those rules and protections were building more reservoirs, keeping those and the current ones full of water, continuous upkeep on fire hydrants, rehiring firefighters who were fired for not taking the vax, regular controlled burns, clearing out the undergrowth, not dumping water into the ocean after rainfall… So, so many that were completely abandoned.

You seem to think the prices for fire protection came out of nowhere, but they don’t. As these precautions were abandoned one by one, fire insurance went up, because the likelihood of a fire grew exponentially. When government put a cap on price, that effectively made it clear that the company would go bankrupt, completely, because they knew a fire was going to happen eventually.

We should be mad that those very protections put in place to help people were taken away by the government, not the companies.

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