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I ask the question, "is the world becoming uninsurable?" not as an expert on the insurance industry but as a homeowner who can no longer obtain hurricane insurance, and as an observer of long-term trends keenly interested in the way global risks pile up either unseen, denied or misinterpreted until it's too late to mitigate them.
This is not an abstraction, though many are treating it as a policy debate. As noted previously here, the insurance industry is not a charity, and insurers bear the costs that are increasing regardless of opinions and policy proposals. Insurers operate in the real world, and their decisions to pull out of entire regions, reduce coverage and increase premiums are all responses to soaring losses, a reality reflected in these charts.
There's a ton to unpack on this topic, but a few points come immediately to mind:
  1. People build much more in disaster areas than they used to, even when insurance can't be obtained. Sometimes, that's due to a belief that there will be federal disaster relief for their uninsured property losses.
  2. CPI likely understates price inflation, so that graph is something of an upper bound on the trend.
  3. Insurers would offer more coverage if they weren't subjected to arbitrary government regulations.
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