As the idea of a "public option" for health insurance has risen to become one of the most contentious political issues of the decade in America, perhaps it would be useful to point out a rarely acknowledged fact: we already have a federal government-run insurance program. Flood insurance.
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has been around since 1968, and is designed to provide people living in high flood-risk areas with the ability to buy insurance when private insurers refuse to. There's a huge political debate to be had here, but let's ignore that for the time being.
What's really interesting is what happens when you throw climate change into the mix. According to an enormous report by World Wildlife Fund and insurance company Allianz, the answer is "a lot of bad stuff. Like, really bad."
Case in point: the study suggests that if sea level rises about half a meter by 2050 as expected, a major hurricane hitting New York could cost $5 trillion. Depending on how you do the math, that's between 25 and 50 Hurricane Katrinas worth of damage.
Now granted, that's based on a worst-case scenario (and I refer you back to the report for details on how they did their calculation). But given the area's history of being hit by hurricanes, this is one of those "when, not if" situations. So, who's going to pay for it?
You guessed it -- the American people, but largely through disaster aid. You see, for all you healthcare haters out there, federal insurance is a good thing. In the case of Katrina, NFIP paid out about $21 billion to cover insured losses. That's a lot, but because NFIP amounts to a half-assed insurance program, it left a huge coverage gap that had to be soaked up by federal aid money, which came directly out of the average taxpayer's pocket (at least NFIP was able to defray the cost of payouts somewhat by collecting premiums). As this site points out, Katrina is not an isolated case -- repeated disasters have left the program in deep debt, with little prospect of recovery.
So if you think healthcare is such a big deal, consider the multi-trillion dollar price tag that will be hung around all of our necks if we don't do something fast about climate change and rising sea levels.
Hat tip to Clean Break for flagging up the WWF/Allianz study.
Image: EPA
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