A few days back, Florida’s troubled Citizens Property Insurance Corp. announced a plan to “depopulate” its book of business through a program of loans to well-capitalized insurers. On its surface, this idea has a few merits. Depopulation of a residual …
A friend involved in the crop insurance industry recently wrote to me taking issue with a reference I had made proposed shallow loss “insurance” (my words) program in the farm bill currently pending before Congress. My friend pointed out that …
I’m in New Orleans at a conference on Preparing the Gulf Coast for Extreme Weather. Its lead sponsor is a reinsurer, the Institute for Building and Home Safety is here, and there are lots of insurance people around. The preponderance …
Mid-morning tomorrow, I’ll be attending a meeting in Sen. John Hoeven’s (R-ND) office to debate be educated about the Senator’s bill to exempt his state from requirements that it follow federal laws about preserving flood plains. Although I come to …
The National Conference of Insurance Legislators has a tendency to be a very deliberative and, yes, dilatory, body. During the meeting of its Property and Casualty Insurance Committee last Friday in Burlington, Vermont this past week, every single piece of …
Sometime around mid-afternoon on July 10th, Texas Insurance Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman will sit down at a witness table before the Texas Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee and launch into a discussion based an a new report on Texas insurance rates …
More than a few of my friends on the political Right have taken to comparing the Supreme Court’s decision on the individual health insurance mandate to the infamous Dred Scott decision that declared that blacks were not citizens and therefore …
When one strips away the posturing and insinuations of sinister corporate conspiracies contained in the new report on auto insurance rates from the Consumer Federation of America, you’re left with a pretty simple conclusion: If you shop around for things …
It’s almost time. After seventeen (count ’em–17) short-term extensions, almost a half dozen lapses in the program, and tons of political wrangling, a flood insurance reform bill–a real one–is going to come to the Senate floor as soon as tomorrow. …
It’s pretty clear that Florida’s state-run property insurance system is a total mess in just about every way. As Ray Lehmann, me, and others have written the legislature–given sufficient political will–could solve these problems. But, to date, they just haven’t. …
