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0 pointsmindslight1y ago0 comments

Apparently in your book anybody that isn't effectively negative on assets (everyone needs a place to live) is so rich they're not entitled to an opinion on insurance rates? This kind of weird aggro-dismissal seems like an inevitable result of "privilege" politics based around dragging everyone down to the lowest level. Having a place to live where one isn't burning heaps of money on rent should be our expected societal baseline, not some exceptional thing to be attacked.

But back to the topic - a total catastrophic structure loss would indeed be a problem. But from what I've seen, most insurance claims are not for total losses but rather things like water leaks and roof damage that have much higher sticker prices than what it actually costs to maintain/triage/mitigate/calmly repair. I've known people that have submitted claims for ice dams, oil burner blowbacks, new roofs ("wind damage"), finished basement water damage, etc. I will never submit an insurance claim for those type of things, and so it makes sense to at least consider self insuring, especially when rates are doubling every few years.

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tptacek1y ago

You can have whatever opinion you'd like about insurance rates, but if insurers are sustainably incurring losses, rates have to go up, one way or the other: either insurers raise their rates, or they exit the market, decreasing competition and raising rates.

There's no way to moralize out of this!

Regarding minor claims: I think what I've learned about homeowners insurance is: don't make minor claims. That's not what the product is for. Homeowners insurance (1) protects you from total loss of your primary asset (ie, from fire) and (2) protects you from being bankrupted by lawsuits. If you use it to repair leaks, you're going to take a bath.

Have you applied for a homeowners policy recently? Literally one of the first questions insurers ask is: "have you made homeowners insurance claims?".

mindslightOP1y ago

I didn't try to "moralize out of this", apart from the condemnation of many types of personal liability people will find themselves on the receiving end of based on simply owning real estate? That could certainly stand to be reformed, but the criticism is aimed at the prevailing laws rather than the insurance companies for working with them.

Personally my gripe is that I wish insurance companies would update what are seemingly quite obtuse pricing models, rather than pushing customers into invasive surveillance tech. For example I'd appreciate if it were possible to raise my deductibles by an order of magnitude and see a meaningful drop in premiums. But instead it seems like the only coverage knob that has an effect is the max coverage limit (which when you think about it, actually shouldn't even be a thing. the whole point of insurance is to cover the long tail risk). My gripe is a little more pronounced for auto, where I quoted out dropping the miles driven on one vehicle to nearly zero and it reduced premium by a mere 10%.

Re minor claims, maybe I'm underestimating how much future premiums went up after those somewhat frivolous homeowners claims I mentioned, and they effectively just ended up forming loans rather than affecting the overall expected value of losses.

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