Quote:
Originally Posted by janmcn
The insurance companies have a fiduciary responsibility to protect themselves and their shareholders from waste, fraud and abuse. Since they are unable or unwilling to carry out that responsibility, they are now allowed, by the FL legislature, to punish people who never commited any fraud by not providing them with sinkhole insurance (other than the catastrophic ground coverage).
What other states have natural disasters; ie tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, fires, mudslides, etc, that are not insured?
If posters on here think it's no big deal to write out a check for $200,000 to $300,000 to cover a sinkhole in their yard, so be it. That's what the homeowners in Buttonwood would have had to do if they hadn't had sinkhole insurance.
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WOW...you went right by the underlying situation here, and took the road many travel because it is easier...not right or correct, but just easy, and just as an aside...most of the critique comes from a political movement, not logic or goodness.
I am not in anyway a defender of any insurance company and recognize their lobby power.
However, this entire thing is a result of insurance companies being bilked over years in this arena.
You are not alone in saying this bill is not the best, but the astronomical amounts of money being "stolen" from them demanded some action.
No different than classes being held openly on how to defraud tax or welfare, and when the call comes to tighten everything up, we blame NOT those who caused the tightening, but those who want reform.
When folks were actually prosecuted for these scams, certain groups were outraged at insurance companies even questioning them.....hard to imagine but true.
There are two sides to all stories, and it's time we hear both before deciding that it is those "dirty, rich money grabbers". All of those May fit at times, but we need to stop with knee jerk political responses, listen and read before we espouse our opinions.
I offer no answer to this, but I DO understand what CAUSED it to happen, and hope someday we think in terms of who was actually the root cause, and HELP in weeding them out and punishing them
Those who practice this knee jerk reaction to situations like this need to understand it is ALWAYS the good hardworking folks who suffer, while those who cause the reforms are defended and protected.
I am a bit sensitive to this genre, having witnessed first hand those who "school" in stealing from our welfare programs, and then receiving passionate defense for their actions in certain quarters.
As an after thought, Citizens Property Insurance in 2009 paid
EIGHTY FOUR MILLION dollars in losses. In 2010, they received
THIRTY TWO MILLION dollars in premiums and the costs associated with those premiums was
TWO HUNDRED FORTY FIVE MILLION dollars. Staggering losses and the law would not allow an increase in premiums more than 10% a year, but finally in 2011, sinkhole coverage was exempted from that cap.