Tuesday, October 11, 2005

The Embodiment of Evil in Our Time

I think the insurance industry in the USA is the incarnation of evil. Why should evil wear horns when it can mask disregard for human life with paperwork?

Example: I toured a home in my neighborhood yesterday. The home belongs to an older woman who moved away to live with her daughter. The home has mold watermarks up about four feet inside. This home, like a many in my neighborhood is not in a Flood Zone, therefore, no coverage will help the woman rebuild.

When you buy a home, the mortgage company requires insurance to protect your/their investment. You are made to buy what is needed to protect your home. You pay your premiums whose costs are added to your mortgage payment or billed to you directly.
You live on the Coast but are far from the Gulf, bayou, river, whatever so you do not have flood insurance. You have wind damage insurance but somehow, this covers wind driven rain but not wind driven flood water. You out of luck. You lose.

We have flood insurance at our home which did not receive any water. I called up the insurance gal and bought flood insurance several years ago after a tropical storm overwhelmed city drainage and we received about four inches of water. The water came entered then receded quickly but damaged my carpet, wood floors and nerves. We paid for repairs because we didn't have flood insurance. After this, I called the insurance gal and asked to buy flood coverage. "You don't need it," she said, "You aren't in a flood zone." I asked her if she'd forgotten that I called to ask for an adjuster when my home was filled with water. I proceeded to get flood insurance for $317 a year. She attempted to talk me out of buying the insurance.

Do you get it? Insurance people sell insurance. That's their business. If they think there is even a glimmer of misery in your future, they sell you a policy. Every. Single. Time.

Down here, behind the Razor Wire of our new lives, people are losing their homes because an adjustor comes by eventually and tells the shell-shocked sunburned people, "we don't cover flood, you don't have a policy for this."

Who decided the perimeter of the Flood Zone? The Army Corp of engineers and the insurance industry.

The insurance industry is attempting to do two things with us: limit their losses, save their own bonuses. We don't matter. Using ambiguous language they developed 30 years ago, insurance people are crushing the policy holders whose annual payments funded the giant growth of the industry.

Get out the garlic! Go get the crucifixes! Go get the silver bullets, stakes and townspeople! The Insurance Industry Vampires, Devils, Demons and Golems are inside our gates!

11 comments:

mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpe said...

Twouldn't be surprised if there is some legislation proposed about this here in Your Nation's Capitol...it certainly is needed.

Anonymous said...

I have made a fist and am shaking it at them! Curse you, evil insurance people!

Anonymous said...

Get ready for what is coming next...(I lived in a part of Florida unaffected by Hurricane Andrew, nevertheless)...in the next year or two insurers will decide that they cannot offer any insurance at all, the state will have to create an "insurance pool" where one is arbitrarily assigned to an insurance company. The homeowner has only two options: no insurance or pay whatever the assigned insurer demands. It gets really ugly.

Jules said...

This makes me sick to my stomach!

Karen Sapio said...

Yup--after Ivan blew down all the trees in my parents' yard there was some riduculous stipulation in their policy limiting the number of trees their policy would pay to remove.

Jody Harrington said...

I'm shocked at the flood insurance quote you got. Between Katrina and Rita we applied for flood insurance.We're not in a flood zone either but I thought we were uncomfortably close to the Brazos River and what if a hurricane came up that way from the Gulf? We only had to pay about $200.
The other problem is the catch-22. We can't pay you without documentation of your damage. But you can't get into your home to document it and the adjustors can't get there either because the area is still closed. So then they don't pay people for their rent elsewhere as the policy requires. Fie.

Anonymous said...

In the last few years, tort reform has swept through many states with insurance companies belittling and degrading attorneys. Perhaps we will re-think our position about attorneys and insurance companies! Mr. C

reverendmother said...

I love that Mr. C.

A pox on their houses!

Norma said...

Can't say I agree with this one. Flood insurance is just that, and these people didn't have it. We are near a creek, and I'm thinking we probably need flood insurance because something can happen up stream that may turn it into a raging river for one day.

Anonymous said...

Norma,
Certainly, if you live near a creek you might imagine flood damage because your property is in a flood zone, but if you are not in a flood zone (often both a governmental and insurance decision), you are told you don't need flood insurance. What people get upset about is where, like me, you are almost 20 feet above sea level, not in any government or insurance flood zone, have tremendous insurance, but, because you can't prove the wind blew it away before the water came, the insurance doesn't want to pay. There are several thousands of people like this on the Coast. What the insurance companies do is say to people who cannot afford to litigate and who are desperate without home or biz or both, take this smaller amount of money or sue us. The adjusters, God love them, are their to lessen the costs to the insurance company not to pay full claims. I can assure you, people here don't want hand outs, they want fairness. Mr. C

Anonymous said...

Mr & Mrs C ---
I leave you with this observation: drive into any major city. Whose buildings are new, huge, gaudy, and skyline-dominant?

The insurance companies.

Enough said.