Why home insurance is unaffordable, even in places without wildfires or hurricanes
: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION Nov. 14, 2025: In the audio version of this story, as in a previous web version, we incorrectly say that estimated hail losses in the United States in 2024 were $160 billion. In fact, they were $54 billion.]
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Delegates from around the world, meeting at the annual United Nations climate conference, are talking about home insurance. Insurance is getting very expensive in large part because of extreme weather. In the U.S., insurance is especially high in coastal states with intense hurricanes and wildfires, and there is another hot spot at the very heart of the country. NPR's Rebecca Hersher takes us there.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: It's been nearly 18 months since a hailstorm damaged the only hospital in Cozad, Nebraska. Robert Dyer, the CEO of Cozad's Community Health System, walked me through the construction zone, where ceilings are still being repaired.
ROBERT DYER: Softball-sized hailstones just punched a hole through the roof membrane.
HERSHER: Water came pouring through those holes, he says.
DYER: Tiles were coming down, hunks of old plaster. It was just pretty devastating.
HERSHER: And it wasn't just the hospital that got hit hard. Robyn Geiser is the housing director for the local Cozad Development Corporation.
ROBYN GEISER: It impacted houses, cars, businesses. If it was in the open, it was impacted.
HERSHER: She says virtually every car in town had a cracked windshield.
GEISER: Houses that - it shredded the vinyl siding.
HERSHER: Even now, some houses in town look like they were sprayed with bullets. Double-paned windows have spidery patterns where one pane was shattered by the hailstones. One local insurance agent estimated the storm did $100 million in damage in a town of just 4,000 people, which means there were a lot of insurance claims. Massive insurance payments for hail are getting more common, says Scott St. George, a climate scientist at Willis Towers Watson, an international risk analysis company.
SCOTT ST GEORGE: You've seen some big losses coming out of hail, mostly in the U.S.
HERSHER: He says the main reason is that there's more and more stuff in hail-prone parts of the country.
ST GEORGE: Roofs, siding, car windows and exteriors. You know, basically anything that's outside that's in the path of a hailstorm that's insured is very vulnerable to a lot of expensive repairs.
HERSHER: In 2024, hailstorms caused an estimated $160 billion in insured damage to homes in the U.S., according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry-run think tank. Insurers have responded by raising the price of insurance in the middle of the country, where damaging hail is most common. More expensive building materials and labor have also driven up prices nationwide. The upshot is that the Great Plains now have some of the most expensive home insurance in the country, according to two recent federal reports, which means average homeowners there are struggling with huge bills.
JOSH TAPIO: There's a lot of sticker shock when somebody opens their renewal bill from their company and they see that it's doubled from what they paid last year.
HERSHER: Josh Tapio is an insurance agent in Omaha.
TAPIO: It's just becoming unaffordable in our state, is the new reality.
HERSHER: Tapio says he doesn't expect insurance prices to go down in the future. Insurance premiums have increased 40% nationwide in the last six years, according to Lending Tree, and the weather is only getting worse. The risk of hail in the central U.S. is increasing as the planet gets even warmer, which means this is just the beginning of the insurance affordability crisis in places like Cozad, Nebraska. The hospital in Cozad is dealing with the new reality head-on. CEO Robert Dyer says they're paying a lot more for insurance these days and getting a lot less coverage, which is frustrating, but also increasingly common for both businesses and homeowners. Dyer is proud of how the hospital is dealing with the financial stress of rising insurance costs and more hail risk. He brings me into the new front lobby of the hospital, where workers are sanding drywall and installing new wiring.
DYER: We decided to try to turn lemons into lemonade.
HERSHER: There's a brand-new roof above our heads. And that roof has something called hail board in it, a hard layer that can withstand big balls of ice. The hail board means the roof costs more, says Dyer, but he's hoping the investment is worth it.
What would happen if...
DYER: Another one.
HERSHER: ...Another hailstorm like this happened next year?
DYER: Well, I would hope, with the mitigation that we put in place, we wouldn't have catastrophic failure on our roof.
HERSHER: The repairs would probably drain the hospital's cash, he says. It wouldn't be good, but it wouldn't shut the whole place down.
Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.
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