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Comment by jjtheblunt | Hacker News Reader

I’m not seeing you motivate or justify the rate increases.

What I saw was "supply chain got more expensive so $/claim went up and is outpacing premiums".

Many industries are regulated and have to provide good faith justifications for price increases. The burden of proof is on them, not the service recipient.

I’m not sure you read my post then as it explains I’ve seen first-hand actual loss data because of supply chain & other costs leading to an unprofitable offering being denied by the state without any valid rationale other than “he didn’t see any cars outside his window”.

The point is that regulators have not been allowing rate increases with good faith justifications for years and now that they see their actions have caused companies to pull out they’re pointing the finger at the companies when it’s their poor judgment for years coming to fruition.

>“he didn’t see any cars outside his window”.

Whether this even happened is questionable. Regardless, we trust government regulators to operate in good faith 10x more than private sector corporations.

Value of claims going up while number might be slightly down... Means that outgoing money that is returned to buyers has increased. They are "winning". But house cannot keep losing or they go bankrupt.

The insurance companies are loosing money. Rates have to go up.

Or cut expenses, educate the insured on safer behavior, ...

or pull out of the market...

And not just a bit. Insurances have lost money for most of the last 5/6 years.

They are not all losing money.

And yet there's seems to always been enough money for stock buybacks and disgustingly excessive executive compensation.

In insurance companies?

In most publicly traded for-profit organizations.

i think "most" isn't necessarily right since selection bias applies : ones not making money get delisted from public trading, so don't pull down an average, skewing it.

another couple quirks: stock buybacks generally inflate the value of remaining shares (not bought back) for the public traded company shareholders...what they hoped for when acquiring shares. some companies increase dividends to return value, rather than fiddle with share prices.

but, yeah, agreed to your general observation.

I'm seeing it: "This was with actual data of losses increasing due to supply chain disruption of auto parts, labor increases and many more things."

Why should any seller have to justify their prices? Just don’t buy their policy, buy someone else’s.

Insurance in general is more heavily regulated than this. There are a few reasons: because society doesn't want these companies racing to the bottom on price and leaving their customers high and dry when the catastrophe does hit, because society finds insurance pricing based on certain personal aspects, such as race, odious, and because the government mandates some types of coverage and they don't want to let insurers rinse customers that are forced to buy their product.

For all these reasons, insurers typically must justify rate increases.

While it’s certainly accurate insurance is a regulated industry, nothing you listed explains why it’s a good idea to allow government to set or approve rates vs. ameliorating those social concerns through other means.

Because insurance isn't optional. If the law demands insurance then the law must assure equal access to the legally mandated insurance.

Which law demands home owners carry an insurance policy?

In the US, it's a requirement of mortgage lenders. This makes it less of a legal requirement and more of a de facto requirement, as most homes are purchased via mortgage in the US.

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