In a recent debate, I quoted a source from the Casualty Actuarial Society that jokingly referred to beachfront property as a "pre-existing condition". Well, apparently to at least one senator it's not a joke.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2555

The way property insurance works is an insurance company insures your property then pools policies based on risk and takes out insurance policies of their own on those policies. It's called reinsurance. For about a century and a half the reinsurance market has been working quite successfully in the private market because they employ strict oversight to prevent fly by night insurance companies from issuing policies at too high a risk level and depending on their reinsurer to do the due diligence they failed to do.

Now, a Florida Democrat senator (no surprise there) wants the federal government to be the "reinsurer". Let me explain why. In the past, the insuring of properties that the private market would not insure due to their inability to get reinsurance on it due to the risk of the property (hurricanes) necessitated the creation of state funded regional insurers. The best example is TWIA. You can read about them here: http://www.twia.org/AboutTWIA.aspx

This has always been state run and state funded and for good reason. If you don't want to underwrite insurance for a hurricane prone area - don't live there. To make a long and overly technical story short. If this legislation passed, every American everywhere would be underwriting the insurance for rich people's beachfront property. Allow me to explain this one to the liberals in case they think they want to like this because a Democrat proposed it. You're going to be underwriting the insurance policy of Rush Limbaugh's beachfront property.

Tim