‘Shared Data,’ a short story from an alternate future(4)

“Oh yes,” Toba agreed. “I hate it. You know, we have a new brand here, they call it simplified insurance, and they just saw, oh, if a fire crosses the highway you get a payout. If an earthquake is stronger than x and closer than y you get a payout. They don’t check your house or anything, just immediate pay.”
“Huh.” Genevieve sipped her tea and tried to imagine how that would work for hurricanes.
“The payout isn’t as much, but the premiums are cheap—they don’t have to employ all the assessors. But,” Toba’s voice deepened a little, and Genevieve imagined her leaning in towards her microphone, “I’m going to do that this year, and not because it’s cheaper. I just can’t stand…”

“I know,” Genevieve said, when the pause lengthened. The details, the calculations that the insurance companies were always going to be better at than you were, the loopholes, the paperwork.
“Coupla years ago we had some pretty bad smoke damage, and some property stuff—fence got burned.” Toba sniffed. “Lucky not to lose the house, really. And Gen, let me tell you, watching the insurance company do its business was almost worse than the losses themselves. Poking at everything, asking whether we were sure that the damage was from that exact fire and not something we did accidentally with the barbecue, as if it even could have been! Sneering, prodding, looking for lies. It was like they were trying to make our lives harder, like we didn’t deserve their help, even though we’d paid for it.”