disaster

Idea re: Emergency Insurance

Let's change FEMA’s (and similar disaster response agencies’) regulations as follows:

1.   People can receive help from them no more than three times in their lifetime and
2.   No one may receive assistance more than once per type of disaster within a ten year period.

For example: if a person lives in a hurricane prone area and their house is destroyed by a hurricane (or related disaster such as a tornado or flooding caused by a hurricane), they can receive help to restore their lives to some semblance of order. However, they may not receive any more hurricane-related bailouts for the next 10 years.

Why is this a good idea?

Because right now we are subsidizing people who think it is a good idea to build their house in areas which are prone to natural disasters on a regular basis and everyone who does not live in such areas is paying for them to do so.

We help them, year after year after year, to rebuild in the exact same damn spot they did before. This is insanity.

By removing the incentive which allows them to spread their risk among everyone else, we will begin the process of forcing people make truer assessments of the amount of risk they are willing to take on than they are currently doing.

The positive results? 

  1. People will move away from areas prone to certain natural disasters or
  2. Have to buy proper insurance to ameliorate the risk they are voluntarily taking.
  3. Also cost to everyone else will go down as the government stops forcing them to pay for someone else’s willful disregard of reality.
  4. "Worst-disaster ever" will be used less frequently as fewer people are at risk to harm.
The trade-off? 
  1. Areas like South Florida would see a drop in population or
  2. Their inhabitants would see a rise in the cost of living commensurate with the true risk they are taking to indulge their preference to live in the area.
This new policy would also apply to places like Tornado Alley in the Great Plains, flood-prone areas like New Orleans, California and its earthquakes, etc.
 
Thoughts?

 

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