Insurance = bailouts?

I'm sick of idiots who think that an insurance company's job is to bail you out of whatever problem you're in. It's bad enough when people think that's the government's job, but it's the idiots that think an insurance company is screwing them over because they didn't take out a policy to cover the loss they're claiming.

An article in Esquire discusses two individuals, husband and wife, who ran a nursing home in New Orleans. They chose not to evacuate when the mandatory evacuation order was given. An official from the government called them and offered them the use of two buses to evacuate their patients. The couple declined. They figured they knew better than the state officials who gave the mandatory evacuation order. The hurricane came, the two of them left the nursing home, and the residents were left to die - some of them physically restrained to their beds. The couple was charged (and convicted) of negligent homicide. Esquire wrote up a long article which was little more than a 'these were such great people' piece, never contradicting the facts at hand - that they chose to ignore the evacuation order and then left the residents to die while they saved themselves. When they got around to going back for them, after the storm had let up, everyone was already dead.

That's not the part that pisses me off at the moment (though it doubtlessly does). The nursing home owners' defense attorney (who, I might add, blames the deaths of the residents on the Army Corps of Engineers and every government official from Mayor Naggin to President Bush but feels that those who actually ran the nursing home aren't to blame in the slightest) started out the conversation with the reporter doing the piece with a long rant about how the government and every insurance company completely screwed over everyone who suffered losses. He's ticked that his insurance company isn't paying for the damage to his house. Later they visit his house - it was destroyed by the flood. Like the vast majority of people, he didn't buy flood insurance. However, despite the fact that he didn't buy flood insurance he expects his insurance company to pay for flood damage. That's like going out to a high-end restaurant, buying an appetizer, and then getting ticked that you didn't get the fillet and lobster tossed in for free. It's not the insurance company's place to pay for his fillet and lobster. If he can't afford to eat at the restaurant, he should go to a frickin' Big Boy instead. Why is that so hard to understand? Why do people think the insurance company or the government should pay for his fillet and lobster when so many of us have to eat at Big Boy?

Maybe I took that example a little too far...