California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, above, seeks to impose on all California property owners insurance rates based on computer models of possible catastrophes that use estimates of future weather and other variables rather than facts, Thomas Elias writes.In the insurance business, there are different kinds of black boxes.
Lara calls this a compromise. Others call it capitulation. The uncontested fact is that since California Proposition 103 with its public insurance rate reviews passed in 1988, the state’s consumers have paid $13 billion less in insurance premiums than if they’d lived in other states. Rather than telling insurers they would not be able to sell any car coverage or do other business in California if they did not sell quake insurance too, Quackenbush got the Legislature to create the California Earthquake Authority, which charges more for quake insurance than the companies did before and provides less coverage in standard policies. Now Lara proposes letting this industry use black boxes here as they do in many other states where regulators decline to fight back.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s current effort to speed up insurance rate hikes would only add to the negatives of Lara’s plan. Meanwhile, the industry has also begun clamping down on urban, nonwildfire-area neighborhoods that they consider too dense for their fiscal safety.