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Insurance Companies' Katrina Cop-outs
After our initial - and instinctive - thoughts regarding the regrettable loss of life due to the Minnesota bridge collapse, our second thoughts (understandably), soon turned towards all involved individuals' insurance - or lack of it.
Then, while still reading latest online updates, like a bolt from the blue a BBC breaking news flash lit up our monitor screen. And we could barely believe what we were witnessing.
Eh?
Read a bit about Allstate.
Read a bit about The Travelers.
Read a bit about State Farm
Is this actually the authentic 'American Way' - or what?
If you're a corporation you're 'quids in'. Period.
If you're a meremunchkin citizen - tough shit. Period.
Have there ever been more exasperatingly awful, excruciating examples of some of the "unacceptable faces" of Capitalism than the world constantly witnesses coming out of America? And, on a damned daily basis at that.
Profits before people - at all costs?
Companies and/or corporations rule? For better or for worse?
Conglomerates 'ubber alles'?
What an perfectly perverted, putrid Philistinian philosophy. And amazingly, still seen as the norm in this the 21st century;at any rate, in the (entirely erroneously), supposed home of the brave and land of the free.
Regular Americans have a right to receive better treatment than this. Indeed, they (so self evidently) downright deserve better. Much, much better.
Read the rest of this heartrending BBC reporting right here.
Read it and bloody well weep.
*
Then, while still reading latest online updates, like a bolt from the blue a BBC breaking news flash lit up our monitor screen. And we could barely believe what we were witnessing.
Court backs insurers over KatrinaYet another clear-cut case of W-T-F?
A US federal court has ruled that insurers do not have to pay for the flood damage in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Eh?
The court said the insurers were not liable even if there was negligence.(snip)
The court's decision overturned an earlier ruling by a lower court.(snip)
The insurers involved in the case were Allstate, Travelers and the mutual insurer State Farm.
Read a bit about Allstate.
Read a bit about The Travelers.
Read a bit about State Farm Is this actually the authentic 'American Way' - or what?
If you're a corporation you're 'quids in'. Period.
If you're a mere
Have there ever been more exasperatingly awful, excruciating examples of some of the "unacceptable faces" of Capitalism than the world constantly witnesses coming out of America? And, on a damned daily basis at that.
Profits before people - at all costs?
Companies and/or corporations rule? For better or for worse?
Conglomerates 'ubber alles'?
What an perfectly perverted, putrid Philistinian philosophy. And amazingly, still seen as the norm in this the 21st century;at any rate, in the (entirely erroneously), supposed home of the brave and land of the free.
Regular Americans have a right to receive better treatment than this. Indeed, they (so self evidently) downright deserve better. Much, much better.
Read the rest of this heartrending BBC reporting right here.
Read it and bloody well weep.
*
Labels: insurance companies, Katrina, Minnesota, New Orleans, US federal court
posted by Richard at Friday, August 03, 2007
2 Comments:
The rogues are getting away with murder. I heard They're using the 'flood' exclusion as a pretext to renague on all the storm damage caused BEFORE the levee ever broke.
The little guy in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast has had to battle this kind of crap EVERY DAY since the storm hit. Especially in anything involving the federal govt., which has repeatedly thrown bureaucratic roadblocks in the path of necessary actions and shown no particular inclination to consider the human cost.
In general, though, the court ruled correctly -- most insurers in the USA are not required to cover flood damage: the only insurance available for that is a (costly) federal flood insurance policy. And even if someone should be called to account for the negligence in design, maintenance, and failure of the levees, it's not the private insurers. (That would be, again, the federal govt. -- which can't be sued unless it agrees to be.)
I do believe I'll live to see a real revolution in the USA if there's much more of this crap. And it likely won't be of the Gandhian variety, either.
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