About this episode

The episode explores the complexities of California's insurance market and the allocation of wildfire risk.

In this week’s episode we are digging into California's insurance market — and specifically, into the fight over who actually owns wildfire risk. Is it the insurers pulling back from high-risk areas? The utilities whose equipment sparks some of these fires? Or the ratepayers and taxpayers left holding the bag when the bill comes due? To help sort through it, I sat down with California State Senator Ben Allen, who's running for Insurance Commissioner. We got into reinsurance costs, catastrophe models, the FAIR Plan, capital requirements — and where the state's private-market approach diverges from the public alternative his opponent is proposing.

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