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Scary Stories
Jon Gorman | Editor-In-Chief
In college, trying to discover what I wanted to do with my life, I chose journalism as a field of study due in large part to my creative interests, ability to tell stories, and the national reputation of my university’s journalism school. A unique part of the school’s curriculum was that it required every student seeking a bachelor’s degree to explore another field of study as a second concentration. I chose Western European politics because of my dislike for what I perceived, at 18 years old, to be the current landscape of our political system – a polarizing debate driven by and for the parties, not by and for the people.
As a college freshman, I considered politicians to be a part of a greater evil empire consisting of lawyers, consumer advocates, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and the pharmaceutical industry. All of these groups, in my generalized opinion, existed for the sole purpose of pursuing their own agendas, not those that are to the betterment of man, but to the betterment of their man…or in the case of politicians: not their constituents but their parties.
Which leads me to today and the state of Florida. The politicians in that state are ratcheting up consumer/industry/political relationships a few notches. At the beginning of 2007, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist called a special session of the Legislature to address the homeowners insurance crisis afflicting the state’s citizens. On the surface, and from a consumer’s perspective, the immediate result of that special session was seemingly good. Citizens Property Insurance, the state’s insurer of last resort, would enter the insurance marketplace to serve Floridians facing significant property insurance increases or loss of insurance coverage due to the state’s sustained threat of hurricane losses with lower insurance premiums. And the private market was forced to decrease rates as a result of the expansion of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund.
But when you look at the issue in greater depth, the approach that the Florida Legislature has taken is at its core an enormous calculated gamble. As Citizens and the Cat Fund liabilities grow, so do potential future assessments on Florida citizens. Using a poker analogy, the state is essentially pushing all in with an unsuited 2-7 (statistically the worst starting hand in poker) in a no-limit game of Texas Hold’em. If (some say “when”) a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, or series of smaller hurricanes, strikes the state in the coming years, all bets are off on the state’s financial ability to cover its losses. While many consumers, especially those along the coasts, appear to be cautiously content now with lower homeowners insurance rates, that content may turn to financial peril and disaster. We talked to many of the characters in this significant story to report on Florida’s actions, and what may lie ahead.
Like Florida, the citizens of South Carolina and Louisiana fear catastrophic storms in the form of hurricanes every year. We asked the insurance commissioners of those respective states to write for IN magazine on how their approaches – vastly different from those in Florida – are improving the marketplaces in their states.
From the fields of politics to the fields of farmers across this country, IN magazine welcomes Staff Writer Lindsay Robison who presents a bee story that isn’t as amusing as the holiday blockbuster starring Jerry Seinfeld. Robison’s reporting starts with the disappearance of an invaluable role player in the growth of one-third of this country’s crops. It seems that honey bees are disappearing – not dying, just flat out disappearing – in cataclysmic numbers, and the insects’ disappearance could have an enormous impact on the availability of the foods we eat, the farms that provide those foods, and the farm equipment and property that many of NAMIC’s members insure.
With these stories and the regular departments and columns that this magazine features, this issue of IN magazine promises to be entertaining, informative, and maybe a little bit scary. Maybe, just maybe, that pre-flop unsuited 2-7 all-in bet by the state of Florida will be met with a 7-7-2 flop – also known as a full house. But the statistical odds of that happening are…well, unlike the poker pros you can watch on television, I can’t calculate the odds in my head. But it doesn’t take a math or statistics degree to know that they aren’t good, but not a mathematical impossibility, either.
Posted: Monday, January 21, 2008 12:00:00 AM. Modified: Monday, January 21, 2008 3:16:28 PM.
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