The most exciting idea to emerge from Monday's Murrells Inlet and Myrtle Beach forums on galloping insurance premiums came from the inland senator who leads the S.C. Senate Banking and Insurance Committee. Sen. Dave Thomas, R-Greenville, told local audiences Monday that the state should set up an insurance cooperative under which S.C. residents could insure themselves as an alternative to the private insurance market. The senator promised to put his committee to work on such a bill this fall, for consideration next year by the General Assembly.

Cooperatives, group efforts to solve economic problems, are as American as town meetings and neighborhood watches. In South Carolina, for instance, residents of small towns and rural areas pooled their money to form electricity and telephone cooperatives because private providers had deemed them too small to serve at affordable prices. Horry Electric Cooperative and Horry Telephone Cooperative got their start in just that fashion.

In the national insurance market, South Carolina, with its coastal and inland expanse of storm-prone terrain and small population, is like a small town. When insurers fear that large future claims could squeeze profit margins, maybe even force them into the red, they stop writing policies here.

Their withdrawal leaves the S.C. market to nontraditional insurers that the state doesn't regulate. Such insurers write policies here only if customers pay draconian rates - such as those with which condo associations and local businesses now are being hit.

Condo dwellers and business owners now footing the resultant sky-high premiums worry about their ability to remain here and/or remain in business. The future understandably seems frightening to them.

Thomas was right Monday to say it shouldn't be "left to market forces to determine your future." Were S.C. legislators to form a statewide insurance cooperative financed with premiums from home and business owners - pooled money from which storm damage claims could be paid - the future would become rosier because insurance would be affordable again and stay that way.

South Carolinians have a long tradition of taking care of their own cooperatively. Thomas did well to propose harnessing that tradition to deal with the insurance crisis.

Wind pool not long-term answer

At Monday's insurance forums, S.C. Department of Insurance Director Eleanor Kitzman said she would move the coastal wind pool line in Horry and Georgetown counties from U.S. 17 Business (U.S. 17 south of Murrells Inlet) westward to the waterway. Such a move, under which the state would require insurers writing policies elsewhere in South Carolina to write wind policies inside the wind pool boundary, would likely prevent condo and commercial building premiums from going higher. But it doesn't really solve the problem.

Many of the rate-hit condo buildings are west of the waterway. Moreover, as Kitzman implied, the expanded wind pool, which would take effect in mid-October, could ignite political resistance in other parts of the state. Insurers forced to participate in the wind pool can raise rates statewide if coastal storm claims exceed the premiums participants pay. Folks in Greenville or Rock Hill rightly would wonder why they should pay higher rates to buy down rates for folks on the coast. That's why Thomas' insurance cooperative idea has greater potential to be a long-term insurance solution for local folks.