MSNBC's Morning Joe discusses impacts of climate change on insurance costs and payouts
Scarborough: “A lot of Florida residents may wake up next year and find out they can't get property insurance there because there are just too many storms”
Published
Citation From the October 8, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe
JOE SCARBOROUGH (HOST): The price tag from Hurricane Helene has already surpassed 50 billion. Let's bring in the co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box and New York Times columnist, Andrew Ross Sorkin. Andrew, I've told this story before. It bears repeating again.
I'm out golfing five, six, seven years ago with a Republican. Or maybe it was eight or nine, I remember I was a Republican too. The guy never voted for a Democrat before. And he worked for an insurance company. He was one of the leaders of an insurance company. And I asked him about climate change. We'd had a big debate about climate change. And this very conservative, capitalist, pro-free market Republican laughed. He goes, pfft, climate change? Of course, there's climate change. He said I can show you our payouts for property damage from catastrophic weather events and they're going like this, Joe. They're skyrocketing. He goes, yes, this is the dumbest question to ever ask, Joe. And I doubt this guy ever voted for a Democrat. And if you take from when I had that conversation with him, seven, eight, nine years ago to a decade later? Man, it's gotten just so much worse, which is why a lot of Florida residents may wake up next year and find out they can't get property insurance there because there are just too many storms.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Right. Well, I think that is the big issue. Look, there's going to be unfortunately — and we have to pray and hope there's not an enormous human toll, but the economic toll, the estimates are already starting to come in. Hurricane Ian was a $56 billion dollar event in terms of losses. And you look at all the big insurance companies, Allstate, Chubb, AIG. They have huge exposure to Florida. And so there are real questions about what those losses are ultimately going to look like depending on how hard a hit this is. The thing though that I think you're referring to which is even more important is what happens in the aftermath of losses of that kind of magnitude? Well, they start restricting the kinds of insurance they're providing. They tighten up the language. They charge more — if they even offer the insurance at all.
And so I think these are going to be some very large issues which we're going to have to look at and potentially grapple with. I'm crossing my fingers hoping they won't be. But it's going to be, depending on how hard hit this is, a real conversation about the economic peril of what's taking place in Florida and the insurance issues. So it's something to watch this week in addition to the human issue.