Insurance companies just keep getting better and better. First there was news that the Blue Shield health insurance company in Texas was denying coverage to offshore oil drillers and athletes, because they felt that these were high-risk jobs that could require more than normal healthcare. And now, here's something to not look forward to, hurricane season this year, starting August. The Florida home insurance industry, well, one company at least, is locking out 125,000 of its clients. They are doing this right ahead of the hurricane season when they expect a slew of damaging hurricanes to blow homes away, and they're doing this to their most vulnerable and defenseless subscribers.
That company, that many in Florida are calling the devil incarnate, is State Farm Florida, and the company is sending out cancellation devices to lots of subscribers who live along Florida's high risk coastline. Of course, State Farm says that this is not its fault. Florida had three hurricanes in 2004, and two major ones in 2005, Katrina one of them, and they nearly bankrupted the state's home insurance companies. The industry suffered about $50 billion in claims those years. So State Farm went up to the state's insurance regulators, and asked for nearly a 50% raise in its insurance rates in those high-risk areas. The government regulators balked at such a steep rise, and turned them down. State Farm said that this way, the company would need to close down in another three years, from its losses; and it went and did the one other thing it could do to keep itself from getting claimed out of house and home the next time a hurricane struck - it unhitched all the needy people who lived where the hurricane would strike. And also, it stopped accepting new applications from those areas.
Thankfully, there have been no major hurricanes in the last two years; but one knows that it is only a matter of time before one turns up and wipes the company out. Florida has about 200 home insurance companies, and most of them are running losses on the state. And so, State Farm is adamant; if it is not allowed the rate hike to end all rate hikes, it will shut up shop in that state. That went and put a scare into the insurance regulators in Florida, and they granted them a 15% rate hike, and let them drop the high risk customers. The government allowed the company to give its customers the mandatory six-month notice. Of course, that inconveniently places everyone right in the middle of the hurricane season without insurance. But depending on how other home insurance companies look at it, they get a chance at snagging all those extra customers. If they want them, that is.