Sleeper Issues

21 August 2006



Hurricanes and Flood Insurance Decision Weigh on GOP

The war in Iraq, the price of gas and lack of affordable health care are on the list of things politicians and pundits talk about most in the run up to November’s elections. What hasn’t been on the list is the 2006 hurricane season and flood insurance. These could be decisive issues in the Republican heartland of the Deep South, and the GOP seems to be on the wrong side of the issue.

Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, Jim Davis, is running an ad that says “Hurricanes hit Florida. The Florida Legislature changes the law regarding insurance claims.” The GOP controls the legislature and the governor’s mansion in the state. Mr. Davis himself says in the ad, “They passed a law last year to create a loophole that makes it more difficult for you to get your money back from your insurance company if you’re hit by wind and flood. They [the insurance companies] wrote this bill. They own the process . . . Now, record profits for insurance companies, record rates for homeowners. Isn’t it time to have someone on our side?”

Meanwhile, over in Mississippi, Paul and Julie Leonard were suing Nationwide Mutual Insurance for damage done by Hurricane Katrina. The insurer, like all insurers in the area, will pay for wind damage but not flood damage, saying the standard policy didn’t cover the latter. The Leonards maintained that their insurance agent twice told them they were covered anyway. The judge decided that the firm owed the Leonards $1,288 to clean the outside of their home and for window replacement while denying them the $130,000 or so they sought.

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale, who has held the job for 28 years, has said, “The US is not prepared to deal with a major disaster the size of Katrina, and there has not been a hurricane to hit the Northeast Coast of the United States since 1937, before storms were named.” His solution is to let private insurance providers stockpile larger reserves, create an “all perils” policy, and institute government back up of private insurance companies in major disasters. Remember he is an elected official from extremely conservative Mississippi, but reality trumps ideology when one’s house is underwater. He told a Mississippi crowd, “What kills this is that all three ideas are propped up by the government. The opposition comes from areas that don’t have floods or earthquakes.”

Hurricane season is only two and a half months old, and there are going to be big storms this year, as there are every year. The anniversary of the drowning of New Orleans is a few days away. The Katrina aftermath did more to undermine Mr. Bush’s presidency than the mis-fought war of aggression in Iraq. It was a national disgrace unworthy of We the People. And it could well happen again. If it does, all bets on incumbents are wasted money.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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