Gird Yer Loins, Ye Scum Ridden Florida Weevil Shaggers.
…Nationwide Insurance be comin’ ta call and mean t’be plundering yer treasure!
Nationwide Asks To Raise Rates 70%
The Nationwide Insurance Company of Florida announced Wednesday that it plans to seek state approval to raise property insurance rates by an average of 71.4 percent.
The move makes Nationwide the latest big property insurer to insist that higher premiums are necessary for it to operate profitably in the hurricane-prone state.
Arghhhh.
Life | tree hugging sister | 
July 6, 2006 10:36 am
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Why are you upset? Don’t they have a right to charge the prices they want to provide services to willing customers?
The real problem is with the government getting involved at all. Freedom means that people are able to enter into contracts as they see fit, not as the government tells them to.
Government HAS to get involved. Otherwise, insurance companies would just invest their profits as they see fit, disperse their reserves amongst their shareholders, pay the first three claims, declare bankruptcy, and go on about their merry way. All other claims would go unpaid.
I’d back off the ‘willing’, Mike. There’s no ‘willing’ about it.
It’s your money. Is anyone putting a gun to your head and forcing you to buy insurance? Are they forcing you to buy Nationwide insurance?
If you live in the land of hurricanes, you should expect to face the risk of living there. That’s life.
Is anyone putting a gun to your head and forcing you to buy insurance?
Yes. It’s called the mortgage company. Duh.
Are they forcing you to buy Nationwide insurance?
No, because they won’t insure you. They’re dropping customers. This is for folks who still have them. State Farm has asked for a 71% increase for those customers they STILL insure. USAA won’t write policies, Allstate has pulled out completely and others smaller insurers have gone under rather than pay claims. Citizens Insurance, that pesky government you’re always railing against, is the State of Florida’s version of insurer of last resort. The state even has a catastrophic fund all insurers have to pay a profit percentage into to make sure the aftermath of Andrew didn’t happen again. You know: where all those ‘willing’ customers got fucked over by the insurers of their choice, who just threw up their hands and split the state?
you should expect to face the risk of living there
Tritely said and we expect to. Again, duh. As well we should expect the insurance companies to pay for losses they’ve been collecting premiums based on Florida’s penchant for storms for year after year with NO insurance claims, right? I mean you ARE paying for a service and should expect the return on your payments specified by your insurance contract, Mike. All anyone’s asked is that they meet the obligations they agreed to when they accepted your premium check all those years. It’s tres easy to be smug sitting where you are. I’m sure you think you’re completely covered for whatever may barrel your way. But if there’s more than 200 of you wiped out by, say, a tornado (and you EXPECT those, right? Since you live in the land of tornados?), I sure hope your insurance company feels the same way about your coverage that you do.
Well that sucks. You need to buy the insurance to keep the mortgage. I agree, that is terribly unfair.
But your need should not obligate others to supply you.
I’m a hard core capitalist and if a tornado hits my house or some other catastrophe, I would be very upset. But I would know that there is an immutable law, made into a famous acronym, TANSTAAFL by Robert Heinlein.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. You can’t morally force someone to insure you. Why pick on Nationwide? Heck, they seem to be the only ones who actually want to do business there. Seems like they’re the good guys.
Yes, Mike, mortgage companies force homeowners to have homeowner’s insurance and, in some cases, mortgage insurance, too. They’re not forcing you to do so for your own protection against your will. They do so to protect themselves. Like the old commercial used to say, “It would be so much easier if you could just pay cash”. People who own their house outright or can pay cash for a home aren’t required to carry it but I guarantee you most of them do.
Oh, I swear you drive me nuts. “A free lunch” ~ WTF is that? And who asked for one? All anyone’s asked for is that the insurance companies follow through with what you’ve PAID for. PAID, Mike. That’s the opposite of ‘free’.
I’m guessing you haven’t read our ongoing FL insurance posts here, or you would know that we’re not ‘picking’ on Nationwide by their loneselves ~ we’ve been listing ALL the insurance companies as their requests hit the state insurance board, as they drop people, as they jones their insurees, etc., since we started blogging. Hopefully it’s been educational for the folks in Katrina land, as it’s only starting there and they don’t begin to have half the experience the state here has. And folks who sit back in their armchairs in tornado land and tch tch without the facts.
And I’m sure you’d be MORE than ‘very upset’ (considering YOUR attention to detail), when the insurance policy you’d been paying for for years didn’t pay for the tornado damage you thought was covered. That’s been the crux of the story here. If Nationwide came along and PAID to fix my home per the policy I had been PAYING for, then a rate increase, even a big one? Hey, sh*t happens, my stuff got fixed, they lived up to their end of the bargain like I did PAYING for that protection all those years ~ okay. Fair enough. But that’s NOT what’s happened. The tremendous rate increases are insult to injury, not just fodder for bitching.
As far as ‘morally FORCE someone to insure you’? How about they just ‘morally’ uphold their end of the bargain? How about they ‘morally’ see fit NOT to drop customers arbitrarily, when those same customers NEVER filed a claim, PAID their premiums on time and in good faith? How about ‘morally’ fixing the water damage in the house that was caused when the wind damage you were covered for blew the roof off, instead of fighting tooth and nail to call it a ‘flood’ and ergo not covered? ‘Morally‘? Please.
Sure, and if I can’t afford to buy a house, I won’t buy it. If the insurance goes up on a house that I don’t own and the mortgage company owns, to the extent that I can’t afford it anymore, then I have to sell it.
That sucks.
So does life. Sometimes.
But the answer to those times when life sucks is not to force others to enter into contracts unwillingly. Doing so is not quite the same as slavery, but it’s pretty darn near it.
Okay, I didn’t get to see your last post.
I didn’t realize that they didn’t pay off the claims on your policy.
That is fraud and they would be clearly wrong. Have you sued them yet? I must be missing a lot here.
Not our policy, Mike ~ tens of THOUSANDS of Florida policies ~ we’re talking big picture here. And lawsuits abound if you have the means and many DON’T, and we’re working on TWO years later. Anectdotally, a renter in the house next door has a husband living in the shell of their house for the past year and a half. The insurance company said their house wasn’t worth what it was insured for because of the damage (!) and then paid the mortgage company the $35K it was willing to fork over. Like she said, how do you fix the house? And our neighborhood’s FULL of horror stories like that ~ our little 2 square miles, with NO flood damage. So maybe you get my drift about the state of affairs here?
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