How wonderful for Congress to act before they went home to face the music. I have lost track of how many times they have let this program expire. They are totally disfunctional and will be replaced in November.
Insurance people seem to complain that the government is too much into our business and that the market should be allowed to work. And then insurance people complain, gripe, scream that the Feds aren’t doing their job by providing flood insurance subsidies from which the insurance industry makes a lot of money.
How many sides of a mouth do we have in the insurance business.
I guess that it is $18bn in debt means nothing to you. An insurer with $18bn in negative surplus (making the comparison) would be seized and in liquidation. Congress essentially did nothing to alleviate the debt problem. That’s a bigger problem. This is a symptom of it.
this only proves with out doubt, just how ignorant & arrogant the bums ins the washington house of congress is, are we kidding our selves, when are people going to forget party affilation, and vote the bums out, and put 531 common hard working people in congress(senate) farmers,would be a good start, small business owners, no bankers,no lawyers, no rich people or their rich off spring, and begin to cut the fed. gov. down and once again it be subverant to the states, which formed the federated government, begin reducing entitlements, ect, emphizing ,if you don’t work, you don’t eat,unless you are ove 65yrs or obviously mentally or physically handicapped. oh,our fine army corps of engineers, also needs to be cut down, the fed.EPA,and kill the dept of education, and never, never, have ivy league people working for the people. in closing, i’v been trying to get a small increase on a flood program for over 5mos. and still no response after many appeals to process the request. a blistering note was of no help,my remarks,have only touched on the goverment of the people of these United States of America. ervin, webb ins. wv.
Doctor J, The government is the only entity in this country allowed to run a deficit. They are currently spending $1.3 Trillion with a T more than they are taking in. This $18Bil is pocket change to these imbeciles. I still believe that Flood exposures are too much for the private market to handle. They can handle Hail or Wind and the occasional wild fire which damages a fair amount of property, but these losses pale in comparison to a generalized flood for a community or several communities. The Corps of Engineers have done an average to poor job in flood control for the past 50 years and we keep having problems due to their poor planning and flood control construction.
By subsidizing flood insurance we get more building in areas subject to flooding. The same people get bailed out (sorry, I couldn’t resist) several times a decade. The easiest answer is not more regulation, it is letting market economics and nature take their course. Flood insurance is not a right.
Hear hear Jeff! You hit the nail on the head. If flood goes private, people in areas prone to lots of flooding will stop building there because they won’t want to pay the premium that it would cost to insure it.
But private insurers would STILL get a bad wrap from the consumers because if the insurer charges premium that is acutarily sound, then people will have in their heads “Oh its just the greedy insurance company’s fault. They are just trying to squeeze every penny they can out of me” You know what the correct reponse to that is. “Ok, DON’T insure it. Can you afford to rebuild the house without any finicial help at all?”
Yes! For all those of you who want to reduce the federal govt intrusion and reduce taxes and who crab about the healthcare bill, I say YES! Let NFIP end as the first step toward lowering taxes and reducing federal intrusion. Let it end! Let private business and the “free market” handle it for you, as you so shrilly yell at every opportunity.
Yes! Just as you are tired for paying for health insurance for illegal immigrants and other “irresponsible” people who happen to get sick, I, too, am mortally sick of subsidizing your seaside lifestyle with my tax dollars and my insurance dollars!
Let the Tea Party insist! Get Sarah Palin to speak about it…have Glen Beck give a rally! Oh the beauty of it all. Let’s all join our voices and TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT….REPEAL NFIP NOW!!!!!
One small step for states rights…who knows…could lead to a groundswell!!!!!
There is something in this for the states righters, also!
By repeal of NFIP we reaffirm the states rights to their own destiny with out federal intrusion! Yes, after all, these issues of floods and hurricanes are LOCAL issues best handled by the states who really, do know best, don’t they? I, who livew landlocked and without sinkholes or too many natrural perils would be now free to reduce my taxes that go to FEMA! Would be able to enjoy a 20% reduction in my homeowners rates! Thing os the stimulus that extra money could put into our economy…and the jobs it would create!
WOW…how constitutional is that??
Can I count on your support this November to INSIST…nay, DEMAND…that NFIP be repealed???
We can all think of numerous Federal Departments, Agencies, programs that need to be cut or eliminated which are sucking up our tax dollars. Energy, Commerce, Education to name a few. I would cut all these 50% in a heartbeat and we would not se a difference in our lives. Big Government simply does not work and is unresponsive to the folks.
Cassandra, Wake up and smell the coffee. Can you name a Federal program which works really well currently? Money to schools go to support teachers unions and schools still fail to teach our children. We have seen the claims for shovel ready projects which have done little to create jobs. They were more or less political payoffs to the unions and local political supporters. Bureaucrats and Unions are the big issue in our society and we as a nation are bleeding profusely.
You want to know why Beck, Palin, and the others aren’t talking about this? Its because the media is not reporting it! think about it, have you heard CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or any other news program talk about this? No.
The only reason why we know about it is because we are in the industry. I shudder to think what other things the media is not reporting on that we do not know about because we are not in a perticular industry.
Nice try, but I have seen several commenters on here that are against the health care bill AND against the NFIP.
Before we allow NFIP to go the way of the dinosaur, we need to have a proper private option up and running first.
But I ask you this. It seems that you are for the health care bill, but not for the NFIP? If that is true, please explain why.
I am just so sick of everyone knocking the healthcare bill due to “states rights”, or “taxation” or “socialism” when they all want that fed subsidy (not to mention FEMA money) for NFIP. Furthermore, they in that geographic location would also seek to destroy insurance contract wording that has stood for decades as well as disrupt the “free market” that is not allowed to charge for the risk of coastal perils.
Not really. I see it as a strawman. I have seen very few people that are against the recent healthcare legislation but for NFIP, but I’m sure there are a couple out there. But yes, if I found someone that was anti-healthcare bill and pro-NFIP, I would hope they would see the irony and I would question them why they are for one but not the other.
I can understand why congress wanted the healthcare bill passed. I don’t think its a “grab for more power” or other such non-sense. I think their hearts are in the right place, but they are going about it backwards. The bill did not address the biggest reason why health insurance costs so much, because health CARE costs so much. It floors me when people complain about how their health insurance premium keeps going up every year, yet they don’t mention how much health care costs have gone up. It doesn’t take an acuary to realise “Hey, if health care costs go up, health insurance costs have to go up as well in order for the insurer to stay in business”.
I don’t know how a discussion on NFIP has degenerated into Healthcare. What we all should realize is that Big Government doesn’t work at anything they do. Healthcare is the biggest grab for power the government has ever done. They want to run the insurance market out of business so they can have their single payer system just like Great Britain and Canada. It hasn’t worked for them and it won’t work for America as well. If you are in favor of rationing, death panels, limited coverage and bureaucrats telling your doctor how to treat you, good luck.
Your concern about death panels, rationed care, etc is well founded. As that is rather what we have now what would be your solution?
I think your solution should include lowering our cost to the same percentage of product as Canada (about 10.1%) while increasing our life expectency to theirs; 81.23 vs ours of 78.11.
Hey Chucker, the solution to the coming Obamacare nightmare would be to repeal or defund it. How about common sense things like real Tort Reform so the doctors don’t have to practice so defensively? How about selling across state lines so the competitive marketplace can exist? How about expansion of HSA’s? All these things would lower cost and keep the bureaucrats out of our business. These mandates are already killing the market. Most have stopped writing kids only policies since they have to cover regardless of pre-existing conditions. The tax implications of this bill are too numerous to mention and individuals and small business will suffer. By the way, Canadians have been coming to the US for many years to get treatment and operations because of rationed care in Canada. Do you really want to wait a year for a needed operation?
1. We had real tort reform in Texas. Malpractice rates went down, health costs did not.
2. The number of lawsuits went down, medical care did not improve. I have personal experience with a man whose doctor left a sponge in him, the infection lead to his death. As he was 80 and retired, and as we have a $250,000 limit on non economic damages, there is no one to take his case.
3. As long as we have 90,000 deaths by error in hospitals lets leave what is left of the tort system in place.
4. State lines – all that means is that companies domicile in states with lax requirements (I live in one) will sell poor policies across state lines. However, the cost of those is not going to very helpful, when Drifting Sands Mutual of Texas sells a policy for $50 a month to Bubba in West Texas are you thinking they will sell the same policy to someone in Manhattan at the same price? I think not.
And the mandates are not even a significant reason for increases. It is that medicine is not driven by economic forces. If you doctor does 100 xrays this year and 1,000 next year does he lower his x ray price? No, in fact he probably buys a more expensive x ray machine so that his patients will have the latest and greatest.
5. My agency happens to be in both the property and casualty and group benefits business. One of our p & c companies is trying to get us to sell overseas health procedure coverage. They claim that 600,000 Americans seek medical care overseas and that the number will go to 1,200,000 in the next few years.
That company is not a bunch of liberals, the owner was a co-state chairman of the 2004 Bush campaign.
We have very serious issues in this country over the cost of healthcare as well as access to it.
For instance, when I visit the doctor which I supposedly have to do every three months, I spend 10 minutes if that with a tech and a PA who take my blood pressure and temperature and renew my pill perscriptions. For this, the cost is $188 reduced to 50% of that to my carrier. My cost is $20 co pay. What’s wrong with that picture? You mean that had I had no insurance I would have paid $188 vs. 114 in total? What is the REAL cost of the care? Apparently, no one knows.
The health carriers have been content to raise premiums while denying claims (in some instances). Employers have not pushed back since costs are a write off for them. Rather, the small businessman has to drop out since he cannot absorb the increases. To blame this new bill for all the issues exacerbating how we deliver and who pays for healthcare in this country is ridiculous and so much political rhetoric….the very real problems antedated this bill by a decade at least.
How wonderful for Congress to act before they went home to face the music. I have lost track of how many times they have let this program expire. They are totally disfunctional and will be replaced in November.
Well I have to say I am surprised to see this …. I will have to quite saying thise things.
Insurance people seem to complain that the government is too much into our business and that the market should be allowed to work. And then insurance people complain, gripe, scream that the Feds aren’t doing their job by providing flood insurance subsidies from which the insurance industry makes a lot of money.
How many sides of a mouth do we have in the insurance business.
Whe
I guess that it is $18bn in debt means nothing to you. An insurer with $18bn in negative surplus (making the comparison) would be seized and in liquidation. Congress essentially did nothing to alleviate the debt problem. That’s a bigger problem. This is a symptom of it.
this only proves with out doubt, just how ignorant & arrogant the bums ins the washington house of congress is, are we kidding our selves, when are people going to forget party affilation, and vote the bums out, and put 531 common hard working people in congress(senate) farmers,would be a good start, small business owners, no bankers,no lawyers, no rich people or their rich off spring, and begin to cut the fed. gov. down and once again it be subverant to the states, which formed the federated government, begin reducing entitlements, ect, emphizing ,if you don’t work, you don’t eat,unless you are ove 65yrs or obviously mentally or physically handicapped. oh,our fine army corps of engineers, also needs to be cut down, the fed.EPA,and kill the dept of education, and never, never, have ivy league people working for the people. in closing, i’v been trying to get a small increase on a flood program for over 5mos. and still no response after many appeals to process the request. a blistering note was of no help,my remarks,have only touched on the goverment of the people of these United States of America. ervin, webb ins. wv.
And they think this is an accomplishment?
Breathe Ervin!
Doctor J, The government is the only entity in this country allowed to run a deficit. They are currently spending $1.3 Trillion with a T more than they are taking in. This $18Bil is pocket change to these imbeciles. I still believe that Flood exposures are too much for the private market to handle. They can handle Hail or Wind and the occasional wild fire which damages a fair amount of property, but these losses pale in comparison to a generalized flood for a community or several communities. The Corps of Engineers have done an average to poor job in flood control for the past 50 years and we keep having problems due to their poor planning and flood control construction.
By subsidizing flood insurance we get more building in areas subject to flooding. The same people get bailed out (sorry, I couldn’t resist) several times a decade. The easiest answer is not more regulation, it is letting market economics and nature take their course. Flood insurance is not a right.
Hear hear Jeff! You hit the nail on the head. If flood goes private, people in areas prone to lots of flooding will stop building there because they won’t want to pay the premium that it would cost to insure it.
But private insurers would STILL get a bad wrap from the consumers because if the insurer charges premium that is acutarily sound, then people will have in their heads “Oh its just the greedy insurance company’s fault. They are just trying to squeeze every penny they can out of me” You know what the correct reponse to that is. “Ok, DON’T insure it. Can you afford to rebuild the house without any finicial help at all?”
Yes! For all those of you who want to reduce the federal govt intrusion and reduce taxes and who crab about the healthcare bill, I say YES! Let NFIP end as the first step toward lowering taxes and reducing federal intrusion. Let it end! Let private business and the “free market” handle it for you, as you so shrilly yell at every opportunity.
Yes! Just as you are tired for paying for health insurance for illegal immigrants and other “irresponsible” people who happen to get sick, I, too, am mortally sick of subsidizing your seaside lifestyle with my tax dollars and my insurance dollars!
Let the Tea Party insist! Get Sarah Palin to speak about it…have Glen Beck give a rally! Oh the beauty of it all. Let’s all join our voices and TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT….REPEAL NFIP NOW!!!!!
One small step for states rights…who knows…could lead to a groundswell!!!!!
REPEAL NFIP NOW
Oh, fellow citizens…I forGOT!
There is something in this for the states righters, also!
By repeal of NFIP we reaffirm the states rights to their own destiny with out federal intrusion! Yes, after all, these issues of floods and hurricanes are LOCAL issues best handled by the states who really, do know best, don’t they? I, who livew landlocked and without sinkholes or too many natrural perils would be now free to reduce my taxes that go to FEMA! Would be able to enjoy a 20% reduction in my homeowners rates! Thing os the stimulus that extra money could put into our economy…and the jobs it would create!
WOW…how constitutional is that??
Can I count on your support this November to INSIST…nay, DEMAND…that NFIP be repealed???
Can I???
We can all think of numerous Federal Departments, Agencies, programs that need to be cut or eliminated which are sucking up our tax dollars. Energy, Commerce, Education to name a few. I would cut all these 50% in a heartbeat and we would not se a difference in our lives. Big Government simply does not work and is unresponsive to the folks.
Sure, MR, and when your property taxes go thru the roof for school taxes, I will hear you screaming.
Do you have any idea at all how much fed money went to local school systems? To local road building and infrastructure improvements?
I will grant a very inefficient way of getting the money to those entities…but why don’t you start with the pork if you want lesser govt?
Cassandra, Wake up and smell the coffee. Can you name a Federal program which works really well currently? Money to schools go to support teachers unions and schools still fail to teach our children. We have seen the claims for shovel ready projects which have done little to create jobs. They were more or less political payoffs to the unions and local political supporters. Bureaucrats and Unions are the big issue in our society and we as a nation are bleeding profusely.
You want to know why Beck, Palin, and the others aren’t talking about this? Its because the media is not reporting it! think about it, have you heard CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or any other news program talk about this? No.
The only reason why we know about it is because we are in the industry. I shudder to think what other things the media is not reporting on that we do not know about because we are not in a perticular industry.
Nice try, but I have seen several commenters on here that are against the health care bill AND against the NFIP.
Before we allow NFIP to go the way of the dinosaur, we need to have a proper private option up and running first.
But I ask you this. It seems that you are for the health care bill, but not for the NFIP? If that is true, please explain why.
You clearly missed my sarcasm.
I am just so sick of everyone knocking the healthcare bill due to “states rights”, or “taxation” or “socialism” when they all want that fed subsidy (not to mention FEMA money) for NFIP. Furthermore, they in that geographic location would also seek to destroy insurance contract wording that has stood for decades as well as disrupt the “free market” that is not allowed to charge for the risk of coastal perils.
CAN’T YOU SEE THE IRONY???
Not really. I see it as a strawman. I have seen very few people that are against the recent healthcare legislation but for NFIP, but I’m sure there are a couple out there. But yes, if I found someone that was anti-healthcare bill and pro-NFIP, I would hope they would see the irony and I would question them why they are for one but not the other.
I can understand why congress wanted the healthcare bill passed. I don’t think its a “grab for more power” or other such non-sense. I think their hearts are in the right place, but they are going about it backwards. The bill did not address the biggest reason why health insurance costs so much, because health CARE costs so much. It floors me when people complain about how their health insurance premium keeps going up every year, yet they don’t mention how much health care costs have gone up. It doesn’t take an acuary to realise “Hey, if health care costs go up, health insurance costs have to go up as well in order for the insurer to stay in business”.
I don’t know how a discussion on NFIP has degenerated into Healthcare. What we all should realize is that Big Government doesn’t work at anything they do. Healthcare is the biggest grab for power the government has ever done. They want to run the insurance market out of business so they can have their single payer system just like Great Britain and Canada. It hasn’t worked for them and it won’t work for America as well. If you are in favor of rationing, death panels, limited coverage and bureaucrats telling your doctor how to treat you, good luck.
Your concern about death panels, rationed care, etc is well founded. As that is rather what we have now what would be your solution?
I think your solution should include lowering our cost to the same percentage of product as Canada (about 10.1%) while increasing our life expectency to theirs; 81.23 vs ours of 78.11.
Hey Chucker, the solution to the coming Obamacare nightmare would be to repeal or defund it. How about common sense things like real Tort Reform so the doctors don’t have to practice so defensively? How about selling across state lines so the competitive marketplace can exist? How about expansion of HSA’s? All these things would lower cost and keep the bureaucrats out of our business. These mandates are already killing the market. Most have stopped writing kids only policies since they have to cover regardless of pre-existing conditions. The tax implications of this bill are too numerous to mention and individuals and small business will suffer. By the way, Canadians have been coming to the US for many years to get treatment and operations because of rationed care in Canada. Do you really want to wait a year for a needed operation?
Mr –
1. We had real tort reform in Texas. Malpractice rates went down, health costs did not.
2. The number of lawsuits went down, medical care did not improve. I have personal experience with a man whose doctor left a sponge in him, the infection lead to his death. As he was 80 and retired, and as we have a $250,000 limit on non economic damages, there is no one to take his case.
3. As long as we have 90,000 deaths by error in hospitals lets leave what is left of the tort system in place.
4. State lines – all that means is that companies domicile in states with lax requirements (I live in one) will sell poor policies across state lines. However, the cost of those is not going to very helpful, when Drifting Sands Mutual of Texas sells a policy for $50 a month to Bubba in West Texas are you thinking they will sell the same policy to someone in Manhattan at the same price? I think not.
And the mandates are not even a significant reason for increases. It is that medicine is not driven by economic forces. If you doctor does 100 xrays this year and 1,000 next year does he lower his x ray price? No, in fact he probably buys a more expensive x ray machine so that his patients will have the latest and greatest.
5. My agency happens to be in both the property and casualty and group benefits business. One of our p & c companies is trying to get us to sell overseas health procedure coverage. They claim that 600,000 Americans seek medical care overseas and that the number will go to 1,200,000 in the next few years.
That company is not a bunch of liberals, the owner was a co-state chairman of the 2004 Bush campaign.
Thanks, Chuck. well said.
We have very serious issues in this country over the cost of healthcare as well as access to it.
For instance, when I visit the doctor which I supposedly have to do every three months, I spend 10 minutes if that with a tech and a PA who take my blood pressure and temperature and renew my pill perscriptions. For this, the cost is $188 reduced to 50% of that to my carrier. My cost is $20 co pay. What’s wrong with that picture? You mean that had I had no insurance I would have paid $188 vs. 114 in total? What is the REAL cost of the care? Apparently, no one knows.
The health carriers have been content to raise premiums while denying claims (in some instances). Employers have not pushed back since costs are a write off for them. Rather, the small businessman has to drop out since he cannot absorb the increases. To blame this new bill for all the issues exacerbating how we deliver and who pays for healthcare in this country is ridiculous and so much political rhetoric….the very real problems antedated this bill by a decade at least.