Sinkhole claims have become a serious problem in Florida, with thousands being filed for a problem that may not be as serious as the media is reporting. In a new article recently published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Don Brown, a senior fellow with The Heartland Institute, discusses the growing number of sinkhole claims [...]
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sinkholes
The James Madison Institute (JMI) recently released a new study written by Eli Lehrer, vice president for DC Operations at The Heartland Institute and James Madison adjunct scholar. The new paper, a James Madison Institute Backgrounder, examines Florida’s property and casualty insurance environment and its unique challenges and makes several recommendations for how Gov. Rick [...]
Letter from Tallahassee: Pacifying Everyone
Christian R. Cámara’s greetings from sunny Florida, the only state in the union free from that dreadful, invasive pestilence y’all refer to as snow.
Florida Should Avoid State Run Sinkhole Insurer
The Florida Senate Banking and Insurance Committee is calling for solutions to its growing sinkhole problem, which has cost thousands of dollars for homeowners and insurers alike. A new article in the Jan 5 edition of the Miami Herald examines some of the options that the committee and lawmakers will be considering. From the Miami [...]
Letter From Washington: Florida’s Sinkhole, And Whither The Cultural Elite?
Attending a conference in Orlando last week, I heard people propose that the state of Florida create yet another publicly-run insurer—this one to deal with sinkholes. It’s an awful idea even though, as a low-lying, swampy peninsula, Florida has more than its share of these chasms in the Earth.
Even in Florida, sinkholes aren’t really an insurance problem. The real problem is that, because they’re basically invisible, it’s very expensive for insurers to adjust claims related to them. As a result, writing coverage for sinkholes isn’t likely to produce underwriting profits for insurers and many would like to get out of the business. This sounds like a case for a residual market except that no type of homeowners’ insurance produces long-term profits.