So, essentially, we have an insurer that doesn’t have a rainy day fund, which makes for a pretty lousy insurer.

Florida’s elected officials have slowly begun to realize they can’t keep demagoging on insurance rates—they’ve got allow insurers to raise them or else leave their constituents vulnerable to storms, which will likely continue to grow in intensity and frequency as ocean temps rise due to climate change.

Unfortunately, this realization has come at the worst possible time—during an economic downturn. This, sadly, is the price ignoring a problem.

It gets worse. State Farm, one of the largest property insurers in the state, is pulling up stakes because insurance regulators told them they couldn’t raise rates by 45 percent. Many of their customers will likely look to insure their homes with Citizens, which is, as we’ve established, woefully undercapitalized.