California bars insurers from dropping fire victims until 2026. What to know

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Independent

Friday 10 January 2025 18:28 GMT



California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has barred insurance companies from dropping fire victims’ policies for one year. “Losing your insurance should be the last thing on someone’s mind after surviving a devastating fire,” Lara said in a statement Thursday. “This law gives millions of Californians breathing room and hits the pause button on insurance non-renewals while people recover.”

This policy comes as several large blazes, including the Palisades and Eaton fires, devastate Los Angeles County. At least 10 people are dead as the blazes destroy more than 36,000 acres as of Friday morning. Here’s everything you need to know about the new policy:

Can my home insurer drop me if I live near the California fires?

Under Lara’s new policy, insurance companies can’t enact non-renewals or cancelations for residents of the areas scorched by the Palisades and Eaton fires until January 7, 2026. The rule applies to everyone living in the eligible zip codes, regardless of whether they suffered damage from the fire. Residents can use the Department of Insurance website to see if they live in an eligible zip code.

“As firefighters continue to battle wildfires across the region, the department may issue a supplemental bulletin if additional ZIP Codes are determined to be within or adjacent to a fire perimeter subject to this declared state of emergency for Los Angeles and Ventura counties,” the Department of Insurance said in a statement.

Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/california-home-insurance-palisades-eaton-fires-b2677425.html

[Lovie777]

1. What's the purpose of having insurance, really................

[Bluetus]

2. When insurance companies can afford to spend $5 billion a year on TV ads

I'm not sure that we should be too quick to let insurance companies abandon their customers.

Granted, most of that money goes into advertising car insurance, which tells us how lucrative that is.

This is late-stage capitalism where 100% of everything boils down to how much money the biggest companies can extract from working Americans, by any means available. Social conscience is completely eliminated from the equation at this stage.

[IbogaProject]

3. single payer health would help greatly

A lot of the costs for Auto, Home and Business liability insurance is for health claims. If we switch to a single national health scheme all that expense would be eliminated especially the dickering between everyone on who has to pay. yes property coverage and the liability for auto property damage would remain.

Obviously single payer won't help this but it would help every insurance company focus on Life, property and liability coverage.

[hueymahl]

4. Insurance over regulation

Is the primary reason so many in the affected zones don’t have insurance now. This is a laudable move by the fire commissioner, but like prior moves to protect consumers, it will have predictable unintended consequences of more carriers leaving the state.

California is a mess. Love this state, but wow.

[Cha]

5. TY Kick

[mathematic]

6. Why do people keep acting like you can put price controls on home insurance without affecting supply?

There are fire disasters year after year. Do people think home insurance companies can pay out in excess of the collected premiums on these disasters indefinitely?

Sometimes when it's pointed out that home insurance companies face massive losses when these disasters happen the response is "Oh well, shouldn't have taken the premiums if you can't handle the risk". What do we see now? Companies are saying, ok, we can't handle the risk, good luck with your home. And people are mad at the insurance companies for leaving? How are people this disconnected from the consequences of the government policies?

If you view fire insurance as a disaster fund that pays out during disasters the answer to running out of funds to recover from disasters is to collect more funds before the disaster. The money has to come from somewhere. Even in some world where you're a CA lawmaker and your plan is to successively bankrupt insurers to pay out for the now seemingly annual fire catastrophes that hit the state, you're eventually going to run out of insurers. You can't legislate disaster funds to be less than the cost of disaster forever.

[Angleae]

7. So they won't be dropped, what stops them from raising rates to something noone can afford?