“My dad’s sleeping under a dining table because there’s no space,” he said. “My mom had bladder surgery at the end of April and [in] early May had to recover from bladder surgery while basically being homeless.”
Comey’s experience is a stark illustration of what experts say is a common misconception among people who forgo homeowners insurance “that the government will come riding in on a white horse and save me,” said Bach from United Policyholders. As Comey now knows all too well, the government will not swoop in and provide meaningful financial assistance.
Grants from FEMA are not free government money for rebuilding a home. They are tied to household income, with a maximum grant of $42,000, not enough to rebuild most homes. Comey said replacing just his family’s kitchen would cost around $40,000, and they only received $13,000 to cover lost property.
Consumer advocates believe that the more people go without home insurance, the more exacerbated racial and income inequality will be. Data from the Consumer Federation of America show that low-income homeowners and people of color are disproportionately uninsured. Low-income people from marginalized communities and immigrants are more likely to go without health insurance, too, according to Sood of New York’s Office of Health Care Access and Policy, which works to improve access to healthcare for people in the city.
Not having health insurance can result in catastrophic medical debt and worse health outcomes due to delayed or inaccessible care, experts say. It also forces people to visit the emergency room for routine care, because they lack a relationship with a primary-care provider.
Going without car insurance is also a big financial risk – and it’s illegal in every state except New Hampshire. Getting in a wreck when driving uninsured can result in high out-of-pocket costs and potential legal repercussions.
A lack of consistent data from insurers or government agencies tracking policies and their costs makes it difficult to fully quantify the size of the uninsured population. Comprehensive data collection and stronger consumer-complaint mechanisms could provide a clearer picture of the problem and empower regulators to take more effective action, said Michael DeLong, a research and advocacy associate at the Consumer Federation of America.
One way to keep insurance-premium inflation down is stronger rate regulation at the state level, he added, to keep costs as low as possible and expand access. For home insurance specifically, mitigation efforts that strengthen homes against natural disasters can go a long way, too.
“Some states are now implementing these programs where they give, say, a $10,000 grant to homeowners to strengthen their homes against a hurricane or a wildfire or something else,” DeLong said. “These programs are good, but every state should adopt them, and they need to be massively expanded so that basically anyone who is at risk and needs the assistance can get it.”
Consumer watchdogs also believe more policyholders would be incentivized to weatherproof their homes if insurers offered discounts for people who took these mitigation measures into their own hands. The Insurance Information Institute plans to launch a private resiliency program led by the insurance and real-estate industries as soon as December, according to its CEO, Kevelighan, who describes it as a win-win for insurers and consumers.
With “the more severe storm events that we’ve been seeing the last two, three years, more and more people are living in areas of harm’s way,” Kevelighan said. “We’ve got to figure out ways to predict this stuff, prevent it and not have losses the way they are.”
Millions of Americans, meanwhile, are expected to lose health insurance over the next decade due to Medicaid cuts. Research shows that cutting access to free and low-cost health coverage worsens health outcomes and piles medical debt onto people who are already struggling financially.
ActionHealthNYC, a New York City program that ran from 2016 to 2017, provided direct access to comprehensive primary care for uninsured people making less than or equal to 200% of the federal poverty level, including many low-income immigrants.
Over a 14-month period, the program found that patients who received more primary care tended to not go to expensive hospital emergency departments for conditions like high blood pressure and instead saw a primary doctor, according to Sood, whose office ran the program.
“That’s good for the healthcare system,” said Sood. “It saves money for everyone.”
-Genna Contino
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