An army of volunteers and workers descended on the Northeast to help folks recover from Sandy. Electrical crews from every utility company on the continent were there to help restore power.
The American Red Cross pulled out all the stops. Auto and Home and Health Insurance professionals surveyed damage, assessed needs and poured money into needy hands as fast as they could tally up the needs of the insured.
Everybody is already busy rebuilding, businesses and individuals alike.
State governors and policemen and firemen and hospital workers worked overtime to coordinate all this. Sandy was a massive storm. The national response has been even more massive. Church groups from sea to shining sea are still lending a hand: Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals and Baptists working elbow to elbow.
The experts say the “insured and uninsured losses” could exceed $60 billion. The insured losses aren’t actual losses at all. Homeowners and businesses have paid insurance premiums for years, building up equity in their policies to pay for such an eventuality.
After Irene flooded part of the same area just last year most people should even have current flood insurance policies.
“Then there are the poor, mostly black and minorities, who have no insurance. They depend almost exclusively on FEMA and federal handouts.” This could be construed a racist statement, except that black leaders have been all over the news since before the storm even hit, railing on Romney for merely hinting in one of the debates that FEMA is an anachronism.
The media have zeroed in on this with a vengeance. Sequestration will cut FEMA to the bone. The conservative’s planned, hoped-for budget will cut it even more.
The simple fact is that a lot of the damage would be covered if FEMA never existed. People who have insurance are devastated, but they’ll recover okay. The utility companies will manage, even if they’ll need temporary rate hikes to cover their losses.
States have cash on hand to repair roads and bridges. Railroads and transit systems have insurance policies. Sequestration won’t hurt any of them.
If poor people can be required to have auto insurance to drive, why not home insurance as well? Doesn’t the Obamacare manate allow government to require this?
Other than a few who are desperately poor or unexpectedly so in the near term, virtually all losses could be covered by “the private sector.” That is, insurance companies; that is, via individual’s responsibilities for their own situation.
In bygone days, communities pulled together in situations like this. Churches and community groups like the Shriners and Red Cross and the Grand PooPah Moose Lodge down the road orchestrated the entire recovery effort for those without insurance.
For all their compassion, they do leave whose whom they help with a solemn lesson: get yourself insurance, or we won’t be there for you next time.
FEMA keeps anybody from learning that lesson. FEMA isolates people from their responsibilities.
The American way is self sufficiency not government dependency.
