After Florida was hit by a series of hurricanes, state officials decided to go into the
insurance business.

Writing for the James Madison Institute, Eli Lehrer says (report in PDF) that state taxpayers are in a fiscally precarious situation. He calls for market-based reforms that separate disaster relief from the insurance business, and says that a purely private market for insurance should be the goal of public policy. Though it's easy for residents to applaud some cost savings brought about by public officials in the state, they're going to be paying more in the long run than they ever saved through short-sighted political maneuvers.

I recently spent some a weekend along the Gulf coast, and, still seeing some post-Katrina debris, was amazed that anyone would build in a place that seemed to shout out "There's a disaster waiting to happen here."