California Will Require Insurance Companies To Offer Coverage In Wildfire Zones (fastcompany.com) 105
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: Insurance companies that stopped providing home coverage to hundreds of thousands of Californians in recent years as wildfires became more destructive will have to again provide policies in fire-prone areas if they want to keep doing business in California under a state regulation announced Monday. The rule will require home insurers to offer coverage in high-risk areas, something the state has never done, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara's office said in a statement. Insurers will have to start increasing their coverage by 5% every two years until they hit the equivalent of 85% of their market share. That means if an insurer writes 20 out of every 100 state policies, they'd need to write 17 in a high-risk area, Lara's office said.
Major insurers like State Farm and Allstate have stopped writing new policies in California due to fears of massive losses from wildfires and other natural disasters. In exchange for increasing coverage, the state will let insurance companies pass on the costs of reinsurance to California consumers. Insurance companies typically buy reinsurance to avoid huge payouts in case of natural disasters or catastrophic loss. California is the only state that doesn't already allow the cost of reinsurance to be borne by policy holders, according to Lara's office. [...] The requirement is under review by the Office of Administrative Law before it takes effect within 30 days. "Californians deserve a reliable insurance market that doesn't retreat from communities most vulnerable to wildfires and climate change," Lara said in a statement. "This is a historic moment for California."
Opponents of the rule say that could hike premiums by 40% and doesn't require new policies to be written at a fast enough pace. The state did not provide a cost analysis for potential impact on consumers. "This plan is of the insurance industry, by the insurance industry, and for the industry," Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said in a statement.
Major insurers like State Farm and Allstate have stopped writing new policies in California due to fears of massive losses from wildfires and other natural disasters. In exchange for increasing coverage, the state will let insurance companies pass on the costs of reinsurance to California consumers. Insurance companies typically buy reinsurance to avoid huge payouts in case of natural disasters or catastrophic loss. California is the only state that doesn't already allow the cost of reinsurance to be borne by policy holders, according to Lara's office. [...] The requirement is under review by the Office of Administrative Law before it takes effect within 30 days. "Californians deserve a reliable insurance market that doesn't retreat from communities most vulnerable to wildfires and climate change," Lara said in a statement. "This is a historic moment for California."
Opponents of the rule say that could hike premiums by 40% and doesn't require new policies to be written at a fast enough pace. The state did not provide a cost analysis for potential impact on consumers. "This plan is of the insurance industry, by the insurance industry, and for the industry," Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said in a statement.
Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
No insurance company is going to write policies when there is a government-mandated price cap that makes the risk way too high for the profits that one can potentially make. Rather than allow for market pricing, we get a situation where the government is still mandating the price, just through a more complex formula. If the state continues to "reform" by making the government-imposed pricing structure more complex, eventually things might get to a point where the imposed price nearly matches the free market price.
Of course there's a better and less dramatic way of getting to a market price. You can just allow market to dictate prices.
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Once the sticker shock comes, Sacramento will somehow blame Trump for it. Meanwhile, the rest of us just point to CA and laugh. You get what you vote for, folks
Re:Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
Buildings that aren't really insurable (not built to survive any weather, in a flood zone, and not maintained) are covered by government issued policies. Of course those premiums aren't enough to match the actual risk. No problem. A surcharge is added to the insurance of low-risk properties to make up the difference!
Insurance is expensive many places simply because development was done in a way that resulted in unacceptably high risk. People see that insurance is the highest component of their monthly mortgage payment and demand the government do something even though the problem wasn't really of the government's making other than perhaps allowing such ridiculous building. Populists on the left and on the right make impossible promises. Rinse and repeat.
It's true that you get what you vote for. But voters across the political spectrum continuously choose promises that are disconnected from reality and end up with bad policy.
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Many of the high-risk sites actually are financially viable, even with very high insurance premiums. There are very high-priced ocean-front properties with a good view, for example. Their market value can still drop a lot from where it has been to compensate for high insurance before the land value reaches $0. Maybe these plots will end up siting bungaloes with the same total cost of
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Yeah, but the point is that the people who buy and live in high-risk properties need to pay for the insurance. It is not right that everyone pays so the people living in high-risk scenic areas can get a new $5M house when their existing $5M house falls into the Pacific, burns or slides down into a canyon. Or is washed away by a hurricane, as may happen in Florida (not much room for sliding down there!).
Nothing of the sort will happen (Score:1)
This is an extremely roundabout way to do the kind of socialism we need but refuse to acknowledge we need. It's like how back in the '30s when we started doing social security so we didn't have tens of millions of homeless old people those old people argued and fought against taking th
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What exactly prohibits CA, bluest of the blue states legislatures from creating a state run insurance company? My guess is nothing!
There should be the political will to do it there if there is anywhere. So the reality is if the politicians have to lie about it, still as you claim its not actually something people really want. Government should be promoting the general welfare after all, there is no reason to afford people special protection to own property in some of the most desirable places in the natio
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Big one is lawsuits from the insurance industry against unfair competitive advantage of a publically funded non-profit system.
After insurance industry lawsuits and fierce lobbying against all attempts to create a state run home insurance system, the resulting analysis from the state showed it would be detrimental to state budget.
The risk pool of policyholders would be heavily skewed towards uninsurable and high-risk properties that commercial insurance wants to avoid. With a state option, this further ince
Re:Nothing of the sort will happen (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone that doesn't own my own property, why should my tax dollars have to go bail you out of your problems? This goes for corporations as well. My tax dollars shouldn't be getting pissed away on saving private companies. Let them fail and the market will buy up whatever is left.
Government also shouldn't be over-regulating the insurance market either. The cost of insurance needs to be able to increase to cover the continuing changing landscape of insuring properties. What wasn't a fire-zone at one time can very well become one over a few decades. What use to be a lake can dry out for 100 years and then come back (Actually happened in California recently, long dead lake came back. farmers are not happy).
Insurance will need to adapt but with burdensome regulations such as California's, this isn't possible. So instead, they stopped writing policies, are not renewing policies and are leaving the state. I can't speak for everyone, but I'd rather have an expensive insurance option then no insurance options at all.
I'd say, if you can't afford to continue to maintain a highly desirable property (aka California home), you may just have to sell and move to a retirement state, where everything cost less. It sucks but it's quite a common thing to do.
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Right now, insurance companies are only willing to insure "safe" areas. They're pulling away from every state if there's any danger around. You can blame climate change for that, because as weather gets worse, damages will rise.
So any area that gets any natural disaster will be affected. Plenty of places are simply non-insurable because they have a non-zero risk, and right now insurance rates have skyrocketed at the same time the most risky have been declared uninsurable.
So it's not even rates - they've bee
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California needs to let insurance go up to keep insurance companies interested in insuring high risk individuals. You don't want the insurance market to collapse, as it has a lot of knock on effects down stream. In complicates both home and vehicle sales as well.
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Re: Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:2)
It does bring up the question of whether companies will cycle in and out of California. Hop in, write the 5% the first year, 10% next year and then AAR about 20%, leave the state transferring policies to another company. Wait a bit, come back, rinse and repeat.
The other question I had is what is the enforcement mechanism? Is it just a fine? If so, that may be the chosen option for insurance companies. Pay a relatively small fine and continue as normal.
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Aren't all the nice places to live in CA warm and dry, on a major faultline, or in a dense forest where prohibitions exist on forest maintenance?
A mobile home in the middle of the California desert has very little fire risk. But few want to live there.
Most people want to live in risky areas and not pay for that luxury.
Some dude in Ohio is reading this, shaking his head, and getting ready to go shovel snow.
And probably anticipating that eventually he'll be paying for those people living the Cali Lifestyle. c
Re: Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:2)
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The nice places to live in California are traditionally pretty safe, but because much of the state is mountainous, desert and rapidly eroding coastline we're running out of space to build, particularly near large cities (also, why are our large cities, LA and SF so damned big?) with the result builders are now building into fire-prone areas. At the same time there are rich people who insists on building ridiculously huge houses on hilltops covered in chaparral (which regularly burns, government regulations
Re:Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:5, Informative)
It's poor because that's the official wording in every single published report, document, and presentation.
Getting to that (correct) statement, is not as intuitive to people seems.
Walking through it step by step
The law requires 85% of Market Share Percentage of high-risk units to be covered.
The other summary fault -- this is not mandatory. Insurers can choose to not insure in high-risk areas at all. There is nothing forcing them into this regime.
The carrot provided is: "By serving (distressed unit minimums), insurers will be allowed to use catastrophe modelling to determine risk and set rates, and allow to pass on reinsurance costs to customers. Both are not currently allowed due to state law."
The bad summary is due to how it's worded in all documents and publications.
Policy Announcement:
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This is an Economics 101 example of over-regulation that achieves nearly nothing. Insurance companies are generally willing to write policies for all but the highest-risk situations. If the risk of a wildfire where you live is so high that you can't get insurance, you probably don't want to live there. Without price controls, there would be insurance companies willing to take on most properties especially when reinsurance is available.
While reduced to a money figure, it is trying to tell people something. Don't build your gadamned house in an area where it will regularly burn up.
Or if it is so important to build there, allow those market systems to do their work, just like you say. I suppose they could exterminate every last chaparral bush as an alternative, completely change the ecosystem.
It is possible that a lot of companies will simply pull out of Cali if they continue to lose money.
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The location may have been fine, until someone destroyed some important fire break, warmed the climate, couldn't be bothered to maintain their high voltage line etc.
This is incentivize the insurance companies to get involved in fire prevention. We had a similar thing in the UK and it worked reasonably well. Insurers made sure flood defences were in place and maintained.
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The location may have been fine, until someone destroyed some important fire break, warmed the climate, couldn't be bothered to maintain their high voltage line etc.
This is incentivize the insurance companies to get involved in fire prevention. We had a similar thing in the UK and it worked reasonably well. Insurers made sure flood defences were in place and maintained.
The chaparral issue in Cali is that it's very nature renders it reliant on crown fires. In a natural setting, that's about every 90 years.
The problem is that humans have reduced that time for fires to around 10 to 15 years. This is not good for the Chaparral. As it eventually dies out, and is replaced with arid handling grasses.
I was deadly serious to note that there is only way to eliminate the problem if we insist on building houses in the middle of it is to destroy the Chaparral ecosystem. That is
It's just roundabout socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
America has dozens and dozens of cases where we do socialism but we find socialism icky so we let a private company scam 20 or 30% off of our incomes. This is just another one of those
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When the insurance companies can't pay because the claims are too high The government will just step in and pay it for them. The basically just lets the insurance companies collect premiums while offering no value whatsoever.
America has dozens and dozens of cases where we do socialism but we find socialism icky so we let a private company scam 20 or 30% off of our incomes. This is just another one of those
Pretty much this, any public program in the US meant to help people must divert huge amounts of funds to private businesses in order to not be "the socializums"... which makes them 3 times as expensive as they need to be. The US pays twice as much to maintains it's private health care system than the UK does for it's public system and most treatments are free at the point of use in the UK (no deductibles or co-pay).
Every now and then I meet someone in the UK who has a bee in their bonnet about welfare...
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A large portion of the entire world is at risk of wildfire, it's not feasible to simply say "you probably don't want to live there"
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This is an Economics 101 example of over-regulation that achieves nearly nothing.
Actually it's an economics 101 example of driving innovation. When you regulate something to be too expensive to be achieved, those affected by it typically look into alternatives. I've lived in places where insurance companies are mandated to do certain things. It's one of the reasons insurance companies where I live provide fire protection assessments as policy (I got a free fire extinguisher out of it for our kitchen after the assessment). It's the reason my medical insurance gifts me a new electric toot
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Of course there's a better and less dramatic way of getting to a market price. You can just allow market to dictate prices.
Except that market failure is a thing. And buyers that cannot competently evaluate the value of something they buy are also a thing.
Funny how all those "easy" solutions turn out to be crap and not easy at all, isn't it?
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If I, as a buyer, cannot competently evaluate the value of something, why should that be your problem? That's on the buyer.
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That is the most dementedly stupid comment I have ever heard on this issue. Seriously. You are an uneducated moron.
Ever hear of, say, UL certification because the average person cannot judge whether some electrical appliance is safe? And tons of other examples. Stop regulating what non-experts can buy and you end up with a society that goes up in flames. Literally, in part.
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The state established Citizens insurance. The state *also* passed new (long overdue) regulations regarding building to hurricane standards. The problem now i
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Dude, I just watched as a lot of Western North Carolina was obliterated by Hurricane Helene. How much more inland can you get than that? Houses were crushed and destroyed and roads were washed out. I don't live in Asheville, but Asheville didn't have running water that was drinkable for 2 months and a significant number of their touristy areas have been destroyed. The damage was everywhere and there are a number of areas that will take years to rebuild. It didn't matter where you lived. There is no such thi
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There are many plac
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If the risk of a wildfire where you live is so high that you can't get insurance, you probably don't want to live there.
The problem with your statement is that you just described pretty much all of California. I don't want to live here, but it is still the most highly populated state so lots of folks still do. This will just make the cost of owning a house here even more nearly impossible, further fueling the exodus of the middle class.
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That's been the program here for a long time. As someone that wishes I could be California Middle Class, I'd really advocate that anyone not making at least 70k should leave the state. Let all the rich folk figure out how to run the service industry without slaves that would all be better off dispersing throughout the rest of the country. I'm actively working on my exit plan. Sadly, so many won't ever leave. They'll pack more friends and family into smaller living spaces but hey, we live in California! It's
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Laissez-faire capitalism gets it upside-down. Government authorizes business to operate, not the other way around.
If they can't make it work, then don't run the business. If you want to run a business, then do it by the rules that the people dictate.
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Ideally, regulation reduces exploitation of the market by the major players. You have to strike a balance with these things, it is completely possible for the government to wreck an industry. But not every instance of regulation is such an event.
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The actual solution is condemning those home in disaster zones. However they tend to be rich and influential:
https://www.zillow.com/homedet... [zillow.com]
Take this random beauty, $4 million mansion in Los Gatos, literally on hills that catch fire every year.
The real market value for insurance is probably over $50,000 per month alone. But of course nobody will pay it. So, yes either the government will step in directly. Or they will force the rest of the state, which do not own hillside or cliffside mansions to subsidiz
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Re: Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
governments (normally) need to look out for their citizens safety. Cannot pay those property taxes if you die in a forest fire out a sink hole swallows your family home with you in it. So both are looking for ways to strong arm insurance companies into covering high-risk properties.
The only other alternatives are something like the federal flood insurance policy for coastal states (which does not actually operate as insurance, and forced tax payers to pick up the bill), to let those communities die by catastrophe, or legislate those areas to be uninhabitable (as was done in post Katrina New Orleans). That last one may be the a decision considering how little we are doing about climate change, but it is also the one with the worst political products for reelection.
Re: Convoluted way of getting to accurate pricing (Score:4, Interesting)
I ran a pipe from my pool equipment onto my roof with a deluge of holes so that in the event of a fire, I can turn an automatic valve on my pool and pump water from it onto the roof, soaking the house. I also covered all my exposed wood eve's with fire-retardant spray foam, in the hopes it would slow or stop my roof from catching fire. Lastly, I bought a whole house exhaust fan and automatic louvered attic vents that I can remotely control. This way my attic has positive pressure. I don't know if any of that would have saved my house in the event of a wild fire, but it might help. I have 4 Tesla power walls, and my backup internet is Starlink, so here's to hoping I can control my house even if they shut off power and internet.
When you buy low-jack your car insurance premium is lower. The same should be true for homes. Allow homeowners to mitigate their fire risk by putting in place fire-protective solutions.
If I evacuate from a fire, im going to run my pool pumps to 100% and redirect it to the roof. it would take a whole day to drain the pool IF the water is shut off and the refill is not working. it will soak the house and flood the ground around me.
I eventually got fire coverage when CA gave my neighborhood Cal-fire protection for $3k a year, which is much better than the $19k a year I was quoted.
California self sabatoging itself (Score:2)
Taking the proactive case to improve the fire retardant rating of your home should let you get a lower insurance premium. It's a good idea.
California forcing insurance companies to have much lower risk homeowners subsidize much higher risk homeowners is a short-term patch on a larger problem.
It may be more of a way to keep the existing political balance in the state house between high density cities and lower-density fire prone rural areas as well as keeping a property and economic sales tax base in fire p
Why is flood insurance federal government only? (Score:2)
This discussion raises an important point.
What does it take for an insurance risk to become so unprofitable or potentially unprofitable for insurers to stop selling it?
What does it take for the federal government to effectively nationalize a type of insurance, such as is now with government flood insurance?
Flood insurance, while premiums are paid to individual insurance companies, are essentially backstopped by the federal government to keep rates economically viable for homeowners.
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It will be interesting to see (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: It will be interesting to see (Score:4, Insightful)
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California already offers an "insurer of last resort". It's prohibitively expensive.
https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0... [ca.gov]
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I just checked, the policy is 3x the cost of my private policy, and provides for less coverage.
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Just ho may insurance companies cut there losses an just leave California altogether there’s a point where you have to consider a location to hostile to do business in and just go.
My prediction is, wait, let me carry the one... None.
Just as no business has left the EU... They'll bitch and whine but still be making money hand over fist, probably more so as they'll put their premiums up from "ultra profiteering" to "m-m-m-m-mega profiteering", blame the government and people like you will blindly lap it up and pay.
A lack of federally uniform regulations will already be costing insurers far more money.
Wildfire damage includes smoke damage (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the key reasons insurance companies are fleeing my state of CA is that smoke damage must be covered, and large swaths of housing is close enough. My home in the middle of the San Fernando Valley (near CSUN) is miles from a "wildfire zone" yet has high insurance premiums because of this.
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The worst possible insurance product is one that costs money but doesn't cover the biggest risks.
Criticizing current policy without providing an alternative isn't very productive.
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Don't get government involved and let the insurance companies and people find a reasonable equilibrium.
If the government enforced insurance lets people repaint everything at minimum cost, that's what they will do. Even if it's far more reasonable to just pressure wash the siding with detergent most of the time.
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The worst possible insurance product is one that costs money but doesn't cover the biggest risks.
Indeed.
Again, my home is miles away from wildfire zones. Lawyers have made it so that if I can merely "sense" the smell of smoke from a wildfire hundreds of miles away, I can file a claim for all-new insulation, paint, and carpeting. Not a "biggest risk" by any measure.
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"Fascism" is a completely meaningless term because there are two contradictory definitions of it in common use:
Insurance prices in California will spike (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can't mandate coverage and expect insurance to absorb the cost. This will result in all insurance in California to drastically increase and with some insurance companies even pulling out of California.
Exactly. If people are building in places of high risk, then they should either be paying crazily high insurance or get the message that playing with fire isn’t worth the cost. Building out of wood in a fire prone area is also crazy. How about in incentivising people to use materials and building designs adapted to the area?
Re: Insurance prices in California will spike (Score:2)
Most homes in Cali are made out of wood due to earthquake risk. Wood is more flexible and less dangerous during a quake.
Climate change is also a factor. Many places that used to be considered safe are now higher risk for fire.
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Most homes in Cali are made out of wood due to earthquake risk. Wood is more flexible and less dangerous during a quake.
Climate change is also a factor. Many places that used to be considered safe are now higher risk for fire.
From what I have read reinforced concrete is fine for earthquakes. The problem is that most people aren't willing to spend the money they should for a house and the insurance is left to pickup for that reason.
Re: Insurance prices in California will spike (Score:2)
I haven't read much on the subject.
Chatgpt lists weight, brittle failure risk and cost as the disadvantages of reinforced concrete. Whereas for wood, it's vulnerability to fire, rot, and height limitations.
The vast majority of homes in CA is wood construction.
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Or it may drive them to introduce more in their insurance plans than simply sending people a bill based on an equation. Where I live our insurance companies take an active interest in reducing their risk.
For example, dental needs to be covered legally. So insurance companies have started giving people electric toothbrushes as part of their insurance plans knowing full well there's a negative correlation between electric toothbrush use and tooth problems. Also I just got sent a fire extinguisher for the kitc
Let the insurance force them to chop trees (Score:5, Insightful)
Manicure the first 100 feet near the home, fix the silly eaves, use roof sprinklers, then give them insurance.
People who want to live right on the edge of a forest should bear the burden of it themselves. It's comfy, until it's not.
The calif way (Score:3)
This is California's way of forcing me to pay for others' either stupidity or lavish lifestyle.
Left or right, same lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics can alter how people perceive reality, but it can't alter reality itself.
There is an increased risk, so insurance has increased costs. To maintain profits, this means increased premiums. If you legislate the coverage, either the premiums go up (spread around or just on the extreme risks), or the insurers leave the state because it's no longer profitable enough for them to bother.
You can't legislate affordable insurance in unaffordable circumstances. Even if the state takes over, that's just pushing the cost onto all taxpayers, not making it disappear.
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It absolutely can. Restrictions drive innovation. Innovation changes reality. For example restrictions on maximum power of vacuum cleaners in the USA has driven a mountain of research into how to remove dirt and dust using lower air volumes which is why most consumer vacuum cleaners now have a motorised brushing mechanisms in the vacuum head. New reality: turns out you can remove dust with more than just sucking.
It's also why my local insurance company did a fire assessment of our house and sent us a fire e
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Maybe that's the actual endgame for California. Socialize the insurance pool so all the poors can pay for the rich folks houses. Sounds pretty Californian to me.
Insurance companies will respond (Score:2)
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California's population is greater than all of Canada's. Seems more likely insurance companies will figure out ways to make things work with the new rules rather than give up all that business.
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And yet people buy homes with mortgages every day in California.
The housing market in California would be crashing right now if people couldnt get the insurance necessary for a loan.
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The new legislation isn't mandatory.
It's a carrot.
IF an insurer meets the threshhold of covering 85% of MarketShare% of HighRiskUnitInState.
THEN the insurer will be allowed to use catastrophe modelling to detetrmine future risk (as is done in most other states)
AND the insurer will be allowed to pass on reinsurance rates to clients (is currently not legal to do so)
So, by extending policies in high risk areas, they gain two huge benefits to set rates, and offload costs to policyholders.
And it's not a huge
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That's insane.
85% of their policies must be high risk policies. That is what that is saying. *85%* High Risk.
What kind of insurance company can support itself when most of it's policies are high risk?
I bet they just get out of the market instead.
Calif. premums vs.other states and Going Bare (Score:2)
Insurance costs are currently a bargain in California compared to other states such as Florida or Texas.
The re-insurance pass-through costs are going to raise premiums for everyone in California by 30-40%.
For those who can't afford these 30-40% premium increases and own their home free and clear, they might have no alternative but to "go bare". This is especially true of of retired people on fixed incomes. Going bare means not having homeowners insurance at all. There is no state law on requiring homeowners
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Insurance companies will find a loophole (Score:1)
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All aspects of insurance policies must be approved by the state regulator before any changes in payout, pricing, or coverage is allowed.
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That means you get to pay for stupidity (Score:3)
This affects everyone and everyone should be opposed to this kind of market behavior. The first people that should oppose this are Californians, their premiums must go up because now every Californian must pay for the increased risk of people building their houses in the woods and in fire prone areas. If you would let the markets run the way they should, people would build less houses in fire prone areas because they can't get insurance. This is how markets should work and this is how they need to work in high risk areas such as fire prone and flood prone areas.
Insurance risk gets underwritten and bundled... so you will pay for this type of activity if it continues, because when a house burns down, everyone pays for it due to market forces even if its a fractional amount.
Subsidized by everyone else (Score:2)
It's the same as requiring you to have uninsured motorist coverage even though by law you're supposed to have auto insurance.
Maybe California wouldn't have such a problem if they managed the forests properly. But but but... old growth forests!!! Yeah, those burned up last year.
"The Case for Letting Malibu Burn" (Score:2)
I wonder how many more companies will leave Cali (Score:2)
Counterpoint view (Score:2)
I live in San Luis Obispo, CA. It's a town of about 50K folks. I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and I look around and this is not substantially different geographically from there (about 200 miles away). We don't have the classic fire corridor valleys and our ridge lines have very defensible breaks in them. In the past 50 years, the big disasters between those places have been earthquakes, not fires.
For some reason, fire insurance companies started abandoning the area 3-4 years ago. This is aft
Can't make companies stay (Score:2)
More and more insurance companies are already just flat out leaving California. You can't make them stay, Nannystate.
Move (Score:2)
Can't we tell all those people in high risk areas to move, just like we tell people prone to flooding all the time?
Sorry, but it is unsustainable to support your lifestyle. Not our problem.
I hope insurance companies adjust by stopping doing business in the state, as they did in FL after the "reforms" there.
Next story... (Score:2)
"Insurance Companies pull out of CA completely...."