Need proof liberalism is destroying America? All one has to do is take a look at California. Here, even the nation’s largest home insurance company has decided that the once-Golden State is too much of a risk.
According to a recent announcement, State Farm General Insurance Co. will be dropping a whopping 72,000 home insurance policies in the coming months.
The first cuts will come on July 3, when the company will non-renew the policies for about 30,000 California home and other property owners. Then, on August 20, another 42,000 policies will be non-renewed. These latter ones are commercial apartment insurance policies.
In total, this equals about two percent of the company’s policies currently held in the state, so it may not seem like much.
But as California’s insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara warned, “This is a real crisis.” And it’s likely only the beginning.
Now, if you don’t live in California, don’t worry. Apparently, the company has designated the action as “California-specific.”
According to the news release, the decision comes after “careful analysis of State Farm General’s financial health, which continues to be impacted by inflation catastrophe exposure, reinsurance costs, and the limitations of working within decades-old insurance regulations.”
In other words, Biden’s disastrous economic policies and the liberal leaders of California have forced the company to make these cuts.
Now, the company has promised to work with state officials to find some kind of solution to this problem, to “establish an environment in which insurance rates are better aligned with risk.”
But I’m not holding my breath. And neither is Lara.
According to him, the state is at a make-or-break point when it comes to insurance. Either they are going to see much more of the same from insurance companies, or they are going to have to revamp their insurance regulations.
As he explains, unlike utility companies, insurance companies “don’t have to be here.” They can choose to pick up and leave town at any point. And they will if the state does not address the issue.
And they’ve already proven that in California once, in the days when most insurance companies still offered earthquake coverage.
But after one particularly bad earthquake in 1994, it became apparent that the state had far too many regulations for such coverage. So companies simply stop offering it, leaving residents of the Golden State high and dry.
The state was then forced to fund its own “not-for-profit, publicly managed, privately funded entity” known as the California Earthquake Authority or CEA.
Naturally, that’s millions more dollars each year the state now has to come up with and hand out on their own. Can you imagine if the same thing ended up happening for home insurance policies?
As it stands, the state is already drowning in debt. According to a recent report, it owes some $55 billion with a capital “B” in liabilities.
I’d say Lara is right. It’s high past time the state buckles down and reconfigures a few things, starting with the liberal leadership that has kept overregulation so prevalent. If not, they’ll end up being the smallest state in the Union. People are already leaving in droves due to sky-high taxes and insurance rates.
To summarize, liberalism is eating California from the inside out. And they have no one to blame but themselves.