The Patriot Post® · Why Are Homeowners Insurance Rates Soaring?

Prices for goods and services are going through the roof. And despite what Joe Biden and the Leftmedia want you to believe, it’s not the fault of greedy corporations maximizing profits by taking advantage of consumers struggling in a tough economy.

Instead, the blame lies with the people in power who implemented bad policies leading to inflation.

“Under most of President Donald Trump’s one term in office,” reports The Daily Wire, “inflation hovered around 2%. The inflation rate was just 1.4% in early 2021 when Biden took over before it jumped to 7% by December of that year. In June of 2022, inflation reached a peak rate of 9.1% before it dropped again, and it now stands at 3.4%.”

Those numbers, though, can’t capture the real fear and stress that so many Americans feel in trying to make ends meet in Biden’s economy.

For example, as a poll by the National True Cost of Living Coalition reveals, “Sixty-five percent of Americans often considered ‘middle class’ — those earning more than 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) — are struggling financially today and don’t expect that to change for the remainder of their lives, according to the new poll commissioned by the National True Cost of Living Coalition.”

It gets even worse: “40 percent of ALL Americans are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck, and 46 percent don’t have $500 saved for a rainy day.”

For a while, the Biden administration found it easy to spin the reality of high inflation by blaming others. These days? Not so much. We have more dollars out there chasing fewer goods. That’s the definition of inflation, and it isn’t easily fixed — especially by an administration that printed so much money it didn’t have.

Now, in a novel idea of excuse-making, Team Biden is blaming climate change for higher home insurance rates. Indeed, spreading fear about the climate is their go-to strategy to cover up their failure to help the very people they claim to care about. But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

There’s no doubt that homeowners are paying higher premiums. “Since 2019, home insurance rates in the U.S. have surged 37.8% to roughly $2,478 per year, according to new data published by LendingTree,” Fox Business reports. “That is noticeably faster than the overall 24% increase in the consumer price index recorded during that same time period. Researchers have blamed the skyrocketing prices on a number of factors, including weather disasters, rising home prices and steep home repairs as inflation pushes the cost of building materials higher.”

The reality is that we’ve always had floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, but it wasn’t always so expensive to make home repairs. Now, inflation has made it an expensive proposition. Liberty Mutual, one of the nation’s largest insurance companies, explains that a variety of factors determine insurance premium costs, including industry trends like the volume of claims and costs for repairing homes or vehicles. “If those costs increase, the price of insurance premiums will likely increase as well,” they write. “Unfortunately, due to inflation these costs are increasing. Building materials for homes are more expensive, there’s a chip shortage driving up the cost of cars, and there’s also a labor shortage. These factors mean the cost to repair your home and vehicle have increased in the event of an insurance claim.”

With higher inflation, costs for lumber, shingles, windows, doors, and other building supplies are more expensive. As for hurricane season, according to the American Meteorological Society’s own data, the frequency and severity of storms have decreased in the last century.

Thus, climate change is just an excuse to empower government politicians and bureaucrats to force Americans to give up their cars and refrigerators and to leave others hoping for a sunny day to power their taxpayer-funded solar panels.

We can’t change the weather. Eventually, a powerful hurricane will hit the southern or eastern coast, so it’s probably best not to build a flimsy vacation home in a high-risk spot.

While we can’t change Mother Nature, we can change presidential administrations. In doing so, we can change the ill-considered government policies and regulations that stifle innovation and economic growth while leaving consumers worrying about whether to feed their families or pay the electric bill.

On November 5, we’ll have the opportunity to do just that.