<story><title>Home insurers cut natural disasters from policies as climate risks grow</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/03/natural-disaster-climate-insurance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pjscott</author><text>When insurance companies are legally forced to choose between providing insurance at a loss and not providing it at all, they&amp;#x27;ll predictably choose the latter. I have to wonder: who on earth thought those price-restriction laws were a good idea?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jfoutz</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not familiar with the price restrictions.&lt;p&gt;I thought, the way insurance worked was, I take a little money from a lot of people, and when some rare event happens, I pay out that one person whose house burned down. I don&amp;#x27;t know the math off the top of my head to calculate how likely a lightning strike, or bad wiring or whatever might cause a house to burn down, but I&amp;#x27;m sure such tables exist. So I bet every month that no more than one house will burn down. If no houses burn down, I&amp;#x27;m in great shape and put that money in the stock market or whatever and get a better return. Maybe I get unlucky and have to rebuild 2 houses.&lt;p&gt;The sort of sense I get is, the insurance companies can&amp;#x27;t calculate the probability of catastrophic weather. So there&amp;#x27;s no way to pick how much to charge for premiums.&lt;p&gt;I get that it&amp;#x27;s a continuous curve. But if the cost of the premium is half the cost of rebuilding the house, why buy insurance? If I can squeak by one year without having to rebuild, I should just keep the money and rebuild out of pocket.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I&amp;#x27;m way way wrong. But insurance is cheap. If it&amp;#x27;s not cheap, why bother? if it&amp;#x27;s annually a big chunk of the total value of the asset, is there any point? Why put a $100 lock on a $50 bicycle?</text></comment>
<story><title>Home insurers cut natural disasters from policies as climate risks grow</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/03/natural-disaster-climate-insurance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pjscott</author><text>When insurance companies are legally forced to choose between providing insurance at a loss and not providing it at all, they&amp;#x27;ll predictably choose the latter. I have to wonder: who on earth thought those price-restriction laws were a good idea?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dehrmann</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not convinced a lot of state lawmakers are smart enough to realize this, it&amp;#x27;s an easy policy to sell to voters, and when insurance companies do pull out, you just frame them as &amp;quot;greedy businesses.&amp;quot;</text></comment>