Comedienne Kathleen Madigan has a cute line about a farmer whose home along the banks of the Mississippi has been flooded (again): "And he's just as surprised this year as he was last year!"
Which also summarizes the folks who run the National Flood Insurance Program:
"In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978 ... an insurer has paid claims every time, required no flood proofing, never raised premiums after a claim and vowed to continue insuring the house. Forever."
The home's valued at just under $70,000, but all those claims total over $660,000. It's been paid-for ten-times over.
By what brain-damaged insurance company, you ask?
The clueless folks at the McPaper want you to think it was "[t]he federal government."
But you and I know better: the government has no money. The correct answer is: thee and me.
The rocket surgeons at FEMA "manage" the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). This isn't our first brush with this brain-trust, either. As Bob wrote about NFIP almost 2 years ago:
"If you crash your car repeatedly, you can count on your insurance premium shooting up. Crash often enough and your insurer will drop you. But there's a special kind of insurance that doesn't punish you for having the same accident over and over again. And here's the punch line: It's a government program that's already left tax-payers like you on the hook for $17 billion—and counting."
The problem is that, although the goal is to be self-sustaining, the agency continues to run "deeply in the red." How deeply? How about almost $20 billion in crimson? But FEMA/NFIP isn't alone. As we also mentioned almost 3 years ago, Florida's "high risk" carrier, Citizens Property Insurance (a wholly owned subsidiary of the unfortunately non-profit Citizens of the State of Florida), has much the same structure, and (not surprisingly) similar results:
"[O]ver $400 billion (yes, billion with a "b") in liabilities ... [and] something like $3 billion in premiums."
Ooops.
These dollars are dwarfed, of course, by Hurricane ObamaCare©, which is slated to cost in the trillions, but serve as stark and sobering examples of government-run "insurance" programs which eschew risk for votes. We know that there are going to be at least a handful of hurricanes each season, and can infer, with some degree of accuracy, how many will strike land, causing "x" amount of damage. Same with floods. An exact science? No. A pretty good track record of estimates? Yep.
But how do you assess the risk for literally hundreds of millions of Americans - some smokers, some not; some fat, some fit; some healthy, some diabetic - and further, how do you price that risk with any degree of accuracy when you won't even acknowledge that the risk exists?
That is the insurmountable conundrum of ObamaCare©. Well, not "insurmountable," exactly. Feel better?
Which also summarizes the folks who run the National Flood Insurance Program:
"In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978 ... an insurer has paid claims every time, required no flood proofing, never raised premiums after a claim and vowed to continue insuring the house. Forever."
The home's valued at just under $70,000, but all those claims total over $660,000. It's been paid-for ten-times over.
By what brain-damaged insurance company, you ask?
The clueless folks at the McPaper want you to think it was "[t]he federal government."
But you and I know better: the government has no money. The correct answer is: thee and me.
The rocket surgeons at FEMA "manage" the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). This isn't our first brush with this brain-trust, either. As Bob wrote about NFIP almost 2 years ago:
"If you crash your car repeatedly, you can count on your insurance premium shooting up. Crash often enough and your insurer will drop you. But there's a special kind of insurance that doesn't punish you for having the same accident over and over again. And here's the punch line: It's a government program that's already left tax-payers like you on the hook for $17 billion—and counting."
The problem is that, although the goal is to be self-sustaining, the agency continues to run "deeply in the red." How deeply? How about almost $20 billion in crimson? But FEMA/NFIP isn't alone. As we also mentioned almost 3 years ago, Florida's "high risk" carrier, Citizens Property Insurance (a wholly owned subsidiary of the unfortunately non-profit Citizens of the State of Florida), has much the same structure, and (not surprisingly) similar results:
"[O]ver $400 billion (yes, billion with a "b") in liabilities ... [and] something like $3 billion in premiums."
Ooops.
These dollars are dwarfed, of course, by Hurricane ObamaCare©, which is slated to cost in the trillions, but serve as stark and sobering examples of government-run "insurance" programs which eschew risk for votes. We know that there are going to be at least a handful of hurricanes each season, and can infer, with some degree of accuracy, how many will strike land, causing "x" amount of damage. Same with floods. An exact science? No. A pretty good track record of estimates? Yep.
But how do you assess the risk for literally hundreds of millions of Americans - some smokers, some not; some fat, some fit; some healthy, some diabetic - and further, how do you price that risk with any degree of accuracy when you won't even acknowledge that the risk exists?
That is the insurmountable conundrum of ObamaCare©. Well, not "insurmountable," exactly. Feel better?
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