It's like up along the Mississippi. The Corp of Engineers would rather spend their money on flood control dams up on the various tributaries in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa rather than levies in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, etc. But flood control dams are out-of-sight and therefore it doesn't look like the Corp is doing anything in those states where Senators and Representatives want to show their constituents that they've been able to "deliver the bacon" as it were, so the levies get built. It would be better to just tell the farmers that if their farmland floods, the government will pay for their lost crops, but after a levy is built the farmer decides instead to develop the land and build houses, which now really raises the cost to taxpayers when a levy fails. It would have been better off to just let the bottom land flood once in awhile, spend the levy money on flood-control dams upstream and cover the losses in those years when there is flooding. Besides, levies merely raises the average level of the river so that when there is a flood it's much worse than what it would have been if there were no levies and excess water had been allowed to flow onto the traditional flood plains rather then trying to keep it in the river so that it can do even more damage downstream somewhere.
IRstuff - levies are still involved in creating levees.
The economic problem is a decent levee allows a developer to make money by using land that is otherwise unusable, but is near already fully developed areas. That's what pushes states/localities to allow levee building.
If it hadn't been for Hurricane Harvey, the national flood insurance program would have expired at the end of September, which is the end of the fiscal year, as the current administration had recommended that its funding be cancelled, however they've now agreed to extend it to at least December.
Flood insurance, to me should not be run by the government. The issue, as I understand is some insurance companies issued too many policies in one area, and were to become insolvent.
The government took it over. I believe that was before reinsurance, and as much regulations as we have now.
Some business regulation are necessary because of stupid decisions, but a government takeover is over the top.
Here's the kicker, you could have higher taxes to pay for flood control measures, that may not meet the minimum, and still be required to purchase flood insurance by your lender.
I still stand behind a class action on the developers, who should have known better. This sounds like a greed issue (I am not a friend of developers).
Someone told me today that it might help to keep stuff from water damage, to place it in your dishwasher before you leave your house (any thoughts?).
TIL... if your house is about to be flooded out, Pull some wires loose on a socket and set the place on fire. Insurance covers the latter, but not the former.
"Flood insurance, to me should not be run by the government."
That's ironic, the reason the government is running it and earthquake insurance is precisely because the free market doesn't want to. Floods and earthquakes have no upper bound on damage costs. That's not something that's covered by classical actuarial risk analysis, since the near infinite downside is not adequately compensated by the low probability.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
The other issue is that unlike what most insurance products are designed to cover, hurricanes and earthquakes don't really have a low probability, not when you consider that they are confined to specific geographical areas. For example, unlike fire insurance or simple accident insurance, you can't spread the risk over almost the complete population. After all, not many people more than say 150 miles from the Atlantic or Gulf coast would ever buy insurance that would cover the damage from a hurricane, and even flood insurance would still be limited to a rather small geographic footprint compared to the entire country. Earthquake insurance is probably even more limited, to basically the Western 1/3 or 1/4 of the country. Yea, there have been quakes in places like Missouri and more recently Oklahoma, but I suspect not many people in those areas would ever consider buying earthquake insurance.
Traditionally underwritten insurance only works if the risk pool is relatively large compared to the statistical rate of having to make payouts, which is what actuarial tables are used to project or estimate, and as has been already noted, any financially sound actuarial table designed to predict the payouts for earthquakes and floods would be so horrendous that no for-profit organization would touch it at any price.
Yet another bad side of government run insurance is people with influence and money (like cities and big developers) get the government to change the insurance rules so areas which should not be insurance-able still get covered. You've got the insurance companies saying "no way" which strongly discourages development in an flood plane but then along comes the FEMA coverage so the flood-plane gets developed in a way it should not have anyways.
How do you sell a huge expensive project that may mitigate a 500 year disaster when allowing for development helps mitigate money problems you already have today? The army corp of engineers or someone ,in my opinion, should have pushed really hard for a project because FEMA gets stuck with the bill for the city's shortsighted priorities.
A little off topic, but FEMA also sells volcano eruption insurance. What are the chances of that happening?
If companies can sell spacecraft launch insurance, why can't they sell flood insurance? Part of the reason is simple, government regulations in each state limit the ability of companies to sell usable insurance.
By usable I mean the states add requirements that increase the costs.
Yes I know the insurance commissions are there to protect the customers, but they also add baggage to what products are sold in each state.
I suspect another reason insurance companies don't want to sell flood insurance is the agents don't know how to rate the property. I've seen flood maps, and in cases they were wrong. It led me to find a different lender who had better maps. Here again, people could be looking at lenders with bad maps to get lower payments on homes, due to the fact that the lender does not require flood insurance.
But in the case of hurricane Irma with 15 foot storm surges, how many homes are above 15 feet above high tide level?
Another detail on electric utilities, most public companies are in part or completely self insured, like many city owned electric companies, but RECs will turn to FEMA for the cost of rebuilding.
This detail will eat into the payouts from FEMA, and we the taxpayers pay for that.
Probably should ask the residents near Mount St. Helens.
"If companies can sell spacecraft launch insurance, why can't they sell flood insurance?"
Launch insurance is for a single launch, and is limited to the actual cost of the hardware; which is fully bounding, i.e., you know the maximum loss is $250 million or whatever. You can insure a multiple of launches, but those are all separate events, and the loss of one satellite does not in any way affect the potential loss of a different satellite. The premiums have historically been sufficient to cover the losses.
When you sell flood insurance to, say, 500,000 people, if a few get flooded, the premiums can cover the losses; if 100,000 get flooded, at $500k per loss, that's $50 billion dollars. If that only happens once every 66 years, the premiums at, say, $1500 annual, could cover the losses, but that's obviously not happening.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
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