Should home insurers be allowed to stop offering coverage in disaster-prone areas?
As Hurricane Isaias bears down on the Gulf Coast with warnings across Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, insurers have increasingly pulled back from markets exposed to extreme weather.
The whole concept of insurance is that we all pool resources to take a risk together. The more finely we dice these risks the less it becomes shared. Government should take the action to decide where it is safe enough to build, not private for profit industry
Insurance companies are businesses, not social welfare organizations. The government can organize insurance of last resort as it does with flood insurance (NFIP) in some areas. But ultimately there are some areas in which people should not build because of unreasonable risk of catastrophic damage. No one should insure that.
The REAL question is, how long before we admit that profit-driven insurance is an entirely despicable idea and should not be permitted to start with?
That insurance companies are despicable is a separate issue. Insurance needs to be available and different people with different circumstances will wish to purchase different levels of insurance. I personally would prefer not to burden government with that task. Better to let corporate insurance companies issue policies while the government sets standards and guardrails.