With the start of last week's hurricane season and continued congressional inaction on legislation reauthorizing and reforming the National Flood Insurance Program, the issue of dealing with catastrophic storms is reaching crisis proportions.

Moreover, adding to the problem is the perilous state of the Florida and Texas programs for catastrophic losses. Indeed, several strong hurricanes could force the federal government to pony up as much money to bail out those states as it is spending to prop up General Motors.

While this might seem like hyperbole, even a cursory examination of the issue will reveal that a habit Congress can't kick–delaying decisions it doesn't want to make–is exacerbating the problem and will make it even more expensive to solve.

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader

Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.