Heckuva job, says Bradley

Take Sandy...please, laments a National Flood Insurance Program exec in congressional testimony.

The government has 80 people overseeing a flood insurance network of hundreds of thousands of vendors and has lost control of how the program is administered, [testified] Brad Kieserman, deputy associate administrator within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which manages the NFIP....

.... “Hurricane Sandy showed us why the 47-year old NFIP is the proverbial melting iceberg: its product is stale and not well understood by consumers; some of the vital services the program delivers to disaster survivors have decreased in quality over time; the outdated business model we use to deliver the program makes increasingly little sense in the 21^st Century; and many property owners required by law to purchase flood insurance fail to do so,” he testified.

What could go wrong with these incentives in place;

According to the FEMA executive, a major part of the problem is the Write Your Own (WYO) program that was begun in 1983 as a cooperative effort between the government and private insurers that its designers hoped would increase sales and improve service. Under the WYO, private property/casualty insurance companies are allowed to write and service the standard NFIP flood policies in their own names, while the government retains responsibility for all losses

Needless to say, the government is currently defending itself in courtrooms from enraged victims of flooding who haven't been reimbursed for their losses.