Insurance: Covers our health, lives, homes, cars, and workplaces. I am involved in the job because I happen to be a hands-on administrator of various insurance policies for my employer. And I personally struggle with that.
Unless you can put down $500,000 in cash for a standard 3/2 home, you’ll be stuck with a mortgage. Mortgage loans require insurance. In California, insurance companies have a seemingly irrational and widespread fear of large-scale fires and disasters.
I said I’m struggling with this. I recently received a nasty gram from my home insurance company saying they didn’t like that a satellite photo showed a climbing rose on the side of my house. It is said that it cannot be updated unless this is re-hacked. I trim this severely every two years, but then it grows back. But more importantly, I live in a suburban area in the coastal Humboldt fog belt, far from the forest interface. According to CalFire maps, my address is well outside the fire hazard zone. Honestly, this has to be one of the most fire-safe areas in the nation.
California’s state government is trying to help, but it’s unclear whether that help will help. But property insurance is such a big issue in our region that state Sen. Mike McGuire highlighted it as one of his legislative priorities during a town hall meeting in March. Just last Wednesday night, we had a town hall on wildfire preparedness and prevention, where the property and casualty insurance situation was once again brought to the forefront.
When it comes to health insurance, we have an absolutely terrible system. Americans pay more for substantially worse outcomes than in other developed countries. Recently, someone saw a presentation by him that charted global health care costs and outcomes since the 1970s. Correlation does not prove causation, but the presenter’s information shows that America’s mindset is divided, in a negative way, almost precisely with the growth of managed care.
Health insurance is designed to be very complex. I have an MBA degree and work with regulations and spreadsheets all day long, and I can barely understand what I’m looking at. My wife, who has a law degree, feels the same way.
When a small organization bravely offers health insurance, it costs more money and time than a large organization can afford, and is amortized across a large workforce. I simply cannot understand why small businesses do not take the initiative to collect something like National Health Insurance from this burden, at the risk of provoking the rebels.
This is starting to become less theoretical to me. As my time at a company with health insurance came to an end, I found myself considering jobs that didn’t offer health insurance, even though they were otherwise great. Or self-employed as well. Tying health benefits to the workplace reduces labor mobility, is inefficient, and remains a major competitive disadvantage for family-owned businesses and other small employers.
There is no good solution to the fire insurance situation. Smarter people than me are saying that given that this is the first significant market impact of climate change and that fire and flood-type disasters are increasing significantly, the system design no longer works. I’ve heard that. At least for the type of letter I received from the home insurance company, I would like to see them try to do a fairly detailed investigation into where the external fire actually poses a threat. On the other hand, be aware that unfortunate events may occur during updates.
When it comes to health insurance, call me a socialist. My mom loves Medicare. My Congressman has a great plan. I think it’s time for them to combine and for us all to participate.
Despite what this column says, Michael Craft has a favorite insurance agent. When he’s not working, Michael enjoys making beer, visiting the South Sandbar where his wife and dog lived, and gardening, although he regrets planting Cecil Brunner’s climbing roses. Masu.
