Congressman Gene Taylor sends letter to State Farm CEO

"Taylor and his wife, the former Margaret Gordon of Bay St. Louis, have three children, Sarah, Emily, and Gary. After losing their Bay St. Louis home to Hurricane Katrina, the Taylors currently reside in Kiln, Mississippi, with family. They are planning to rebuild their home in Bay St. Louis, if they ever receive their insurance check. "

-This from his official online website. Read the whole article/letter. Understand our elected officials know little about how insurance works. They often view it as a government welfare entity. Put a little in and take out as much as you want.
If you ever want to know why something gets done or said, follow up on their motives. Looks like he had flood damage based on location (Bay St. Louis which was levelled).

Bring us your tired, poor, hungry masses. Welcome to the United Welfare States of America!

This insurer lowballing is rampant across the nation. Until there is a federal program to oversee the insurance companies the bad faith lowaballing will continue. The state insurance commission's are pushed by the insurer lobbiests, very little is done for the insured and the insured has little or no recourse unless they have enough resources to file suit or defend themselvs.

The insurers are now playing games with public adjusters, they just do not like insureds having any assistance at all. An adjuster wrote a kitchen fire claim for $15,000 and the insured decided to agree to a lower settlement of $7,000. The insurance company had their SIU dept file a fraud case against the adjuster for "inflating the claim". I see deflation of the claim here, the adjuster wrote a properr detailed estimate reflecting all the damage, the insurer cut the estimate and offered half what they owed. The insured was worn down and decuded to settle rather then fight for what they were rightfully owed. The insurer profited $8,000 and then filed a fraud case. This should be a bad faith case against teh insurer for deflation of the claim - defrauding the insured out of their rightfull claim settlement.

First, Mr. Taylor is a Congressman, not a Senator, as the first post states. There is a difference. Second, from the posts; some of these posters apparently don't know that a water surge from a hurricane is considered "flood." Exclusions read "loss from flooding is excluded whether driven by wind or not." As a matter of record, Insurance Commissioner George Dale put our several press releases while Katrina was days away from probably hitting the Gulf Coast, that any storm surge damage from water would only be covered by "flood insurance," not homeowners policies or fire policies or commercial policies or BOP policies. This was when folks still had time to buy flood insurance.

There is a thirty day waiting period between when the initial premium is sent in with an application and the flood policy goes into effect. Unless the announcement was made more that thirty days before Katrina hit, there was no "time to still buy flood insurance".

Katrina winds were damaging homes for several hours prior to the surge hitting the area. For an insurer to deny all the damage due to surge is wrong. At least the roofs, siding, windows, gutters should be paid due to wind damage. Keep in mind if a wind loss occurs 1 year prior to a surge or minutes prior to a surge it is still a separate occurance then the surge and a seperate claim. On slabber homes, most insurers were paying for roofs, gutters, spouts, windows and sheetrock ceilings under the wind policy and having NFIP handle the surge damage

the day of Pa is here brought on by thr carriers and ia companies hiring anyone

The FACTS are simple. Once the WATER from the storm surge touches the property, whether damaged or not, it becomes FLOOD DAMAGED. "Tag, you're IT... flood, that is". If people don't have the common sense to purchase flood insurance, then Uncle Sam the Welfare Man should not have to pay. Every dollar paid by the federal government to bail out people who did not buy flood insurance costs the rest of the taxpayers dearly. I HAVE flood insurance, so to see Uncle Sam pay those without it is an insult to me, and perhaps, I should request a REFUND for my premiums over the last seventeen years.

Let's not split hairs here, people. If you live near the coast, a lake, river or other body of water, WHY would you NOT have flood insurance? Those folks who DO have the coverage paid for that coverage every year. Those who were, for lack of a better term... STUPID to not have flood insurance SHOULD NOT GET PAID for their flood damage. PERIOD.

I could not agree more, if you own waterfront property and choose to save premium money by not having flood coverage you deserve to loose everything and you do not deserve any assistance from my tax dollars.
My argument is due to inspections I had handled on slabbers. There were still some homes standing with the lower floor blown out to the framing. When I looked up to the roof I saw the shingles pealed off - by wind. NFIP pays limits $250,000 and the wind policy should at least pay for the roof shingles; as a separate wind occurance which damaged the property during the policy period. A prior separate occurance is just that; weather it happens 1 hour, 1 day or 1 year prior to the surge. The insured needs to be indemnified for the wind damage.
I handled many single adjuster claims (NFIP - Wind), I was told by the carrier to write for the roof, ceiling sheetrock under the wind policy on any slabbers using the foundation footprint and scope accordingly on structures still standing. On the standing structures I found shingles off the roof and water stains on the second floor ceiling sheetrock due to roof leaks; the flood water line was 6 feet below the second floor ceilings...