{"id":509622,"date":"2026-10-27T15:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T15:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/509622\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T15:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T15:48:08","slug":"why-california-is-entertaining-disaster-insurance-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/509622\/","title":{"rendered":"Why California Is Entertaining Disaster Insurance For All"},"content":{"rendered":"

To address this sorry state of affairs, state legislator Ben Allen\u2014who currently represents the Pacific Palisades\u2014is pitching reforms to the state\u2019s rate-setting process; expanding grants that would make it easier for homeowners, businesses owners, and neighborhoods to protect their properties against wildfires; and bringing insurers back into the high-risk areas they\u2019ve fled over the past several years. Former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, meanwhile\u2014the top vote getter in the June 2 primary<\/a>\u2014is proposing an ambitious, publicly run \u201csingle payer\u201d disaster insurance program that is noticeably rattling the insurance industry. But for Kim, desperate times call for desperate measures. \u201cRight now California and many states are in a situation where we have two choices: we either let them raise rates, or they leave California, or threaten to,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s not a healthy market. That\u2019s a hostage situation.\u201d <\/p>\n

As households pay more, she points out, insurers have collected tidy profits<\/a>. Nationwide, property and casualty insurers last year enjoyed their most profitable underwriting year in over two decades. Insurers\u2019 underwriting income\u2014what\u2019s left over from premiums after operating expenses and pay outs on claims\u2014surged from $24.3 billion in 2024 to $68.7 billion in 2025. Insurance companies last year also earned $111.6 billion from investing premium income. For insurers, their business model worked as intended: a less intense disaster season for the rest of the country in 2025 helped balance out catastrophic losses from California\u2019s destructive Palisades and Eaton fires. Insured losses from those events reached $37.5 billion<\/a>, and insurance companies still had nearly $1.27 trillion in reserves. The cost of homeowners\u2019 insurance in California, meanwhile, jumped by 21 percent<\/a>. \u201cInstead of actually addressing risk or trying to mitigate risk to make a portfolio safer,\u201d Kim told me, \u201cwhat they\u2019ve figured out is how to make more money than ever before despite growing risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Insurance is regulated at the state level, and California is one of just 11 states that elects insurance commissioners. Kim hopes to leverage what she sees as an underutilized power of the office: its ability to license companies\u2019 ability to operate. Her campaign has, for instance, proposed mandating that companies that want to sell Californians auto insurance\u2014reliably profitable policies<\/a>\u2014must also offer home insurance. Her proposed nonprofit, public disaster insurer\u2014which would require legislative approval\u2014would be financed by a levy on insurers, collecting some of the income from premiums Californians are already paying. Like private providers, a public disaster insurer would invest income from premiums and buy reinsurance\u2014i.e. insurance for insurers\u2014while guaranteeing disaster insurance for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To address this sorry state of affairs, state legislator Ben Allen\u2014who currently represents the Pacific Palisades\u2014is pitching reforms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-509622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}