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(Editor’s note: A cartoon in the Aug. 24 edition of the Business Record featured an opponent of President Obama’s health-care plan saying: “I trust insurance companies. How could I not want them for my future health-care needs … after the way they’ve treated me on hurricane coverage?”)

At one level I enjoyed the cartoon in the Aug. 24 edition of the Business Record regarding insurance companies, health care and Hurricane Katrina. Humor is great and it gets us thinking.

At another level, I had some thoughts far different from those of the cartoonist. First, he confused property-casualty insurance companies, which protect our homes, cars and businesses, with life and health insurance companies, which provide life insurance, annuities and health insurance.

The first help to arrive after Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast actually came from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other big retailers, whose trucks began delivering critically needed supplies to their nearest store sites not destroyed. Next to arrive were hundreds of insurance company adjusters, some of whom lived in trailers and motel rooms 75 miles from New Orleans for a month at a time to help residents get back on their feet. A lot of the first dollars handed out by company adjusters for temporary living expenses went to buy the flashlights, clothes, tools, generators, food and other basics needed for residents available at retailers like Wal-Mart.

It took the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government relief agencies weeks to provide anywhere near the level of help that property-casualty insurance companies were doing within days.

I know from personal knowledge that most homeowners’ losses were settled within 60 days in the Gulf area after Katrina. That’s pretty astounding when you remember the incredible devastation, and that so many of the policyholders were forced to evacuate and couldn’t give the insurance adjusters forwarding phone numbers or addresses for days. The temporary living expense checks started flowing immediately after the adjusters started arriving.

Some of the bad Katrina publicity about insurance companies came from the wave of lawsuits filed by flamboyant trial lawyers. Most of those cases have found that the companies did just what they were supposed to do under their contracts with their policyholders. In some of the cases, trial lawyers were sanctioned by the courts for their improper behavior during the litigation. In fact, some of the very lawyers who filed those cases are now in jail for bribery and fraud for their actions in similar class-action suits. Fortunately, in Iowa most of our lawyers act far more responsibly.

But in Iowa we also have examples of insurance companies delivering that high level of service almost instantly when catastrophes hit. Within hours of the tornadoes that hit Parkersburg last summer, and the tremendous hail and wind that pummeled Eldora and other Iowa towns this summer, the companies’ adjusters were arriving to provide support and aid to policyholders whose property had been devastated.

Insurance companies can’t prevent catastrophes, but they can – and do – help families and businesses get back on their feet, on with their lives and able to laugh again.

Stephen Morain is scheduled to become the executive director of the Iowa Insurance Institute on Oct. 1.