My insurance agent called on a Tuesday to tell me the premium on the house was going up again. He sounded sorry about it. He is a good man and he has handled our policy since before our children were born. I told him not to apologize. I told him I took it as a compliment.
I keep a good horse. Not a show horse, but a sound one, and I have noticed over the years that the better the animal, the more it costs to keep. The feed is better, the farrier comes more often, the vet bills are higher. Nobody with a good horse complains about the vet. The bill is how you know what you have. A man who pays nothing to keep his horse probably does not have much of a horse.
That is how I feel about my house. When the premium climbs, I hear the world telling me that what I built is worth protecting, and worth protecting at a high price. I find that a comfort. My father’s house was never worth much, and nobody ever charged him much to insure it. I have done better than he did, and the bill says so in plain print.
Some of my neighbors do not see it that way. A couple at church has dropped part of their coverage because they could not keep up. A man I know in the next county let his policy lapse entirely and is praying the weather holds. I pray with him. But I also think there is a kind of freedom in what he has done. He has stepped out from under the arrangement. Whatever comes, he will face it on his own feet, and there is something old-fashioned and admirable about that, even if it is also a little frightening.
Some folks at the coffee shop want the government brought into it. They want a man in Austin to step in between them and their insurance company. I do not want that. I never asked anybody to stand between me and the people I do business with. A man ought to handle his own bills, even the ones he cannot handle. If the price is too high, that is between me and the company, and the company has always been very clear with me about where it stands.
I will admit I have never looked at how the companies themselves are doing. I suppose they are doing fine. I do not begrudge them. They took on the risk of my house, and they are entitled to be paid for it, at whatever price they find fair. I would not want a neighbor second-guessing what I charge for my hay.
When I vote for the Republican for Senate this fall, I will be voting to keep things that way. The other side, from what I can tell, would like to rein in what these companies charge, and I would rather my agent’s calls stay just as they are.
My agent says it will likely go up again next year. I told him I would expect nothing less from a house like mine.
D. M.