After insurance ‘reform,’ Floridians still face high bills, 100% rate hikes, go ‘naked’ | Commentary [Orlando Sentinel]

A year ago, everyone in Florida knew property insurance rates were skyrocketing out of control.

The insurance industry’s own trade group said homeowners’ rates in Florida were the highest in America, averaging $4,231 a year— nearly triple the national figure.

Most Floridians were feeling the pinch. A disturbing number were opting to “go naked,” meaning they simply wouldn’t have insurance if a storm or fire wiped out their home. Some decided they couldn’t afford to live here anymore.

So, after years of ignoring the mounting crisis to wage culture wars with Disney and drag queens, Florida’s governor and Legislature finally staged a couple of special sessions on insurance, vowing relief.

And they provided some … to the insurance companies anyway, passing laws that make it harder for you to sue your insurance company if the company denies you a claim.

The theory: Shielding insurers from costly litigation would make rates drop. Now let’s talk about what’s really happened.

Some new companies entered the market, but rates are continuing to rise. And not just by a little. Increases of 20% and 30% have become standard. Thousands of customers of the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp. recently received notices that the best private-sector offer they could expect represented a 75 or 80% hike. And that wasn’t even close to the ceiling. The state’s insurance commissioner said some companies wanted to offer hikes of 300% to 500%.

How’s that for “relief”?

We’ll talk more about the efforts to shrink Citizens. But first, let’s get real: Insurance in Florida is still a mess. The “reforms” passed so far are just nibbling around the edges. Real reform — to significantly lower rates — requires the kind of hard work lawmakers have so far dodged.

The harsh reality is that Florida has big insurance problems. We’re a hurricane-prone state surrounded by rising seas.

I trust insurance companies as little as the next guy. But obviously, we’d have have more of them here if they thought Florida was a stable, potentially profitable market.

So the state can do one of three things:

1) Massively invest in and expand Citizens so that it becomes like Medicare for property insurance, state-run insurance most everyone can access

2) Subsidize the market in other ways, like using taxpayer money to underwrite the cost of reinsurance for private companies

3) Just allow rates to continue to skyrocket. And if Floridians can’t afford it, so be it.

Here’s the problem: Nos. 1 and 2 involve serious investment and hard work — neither of which GOP lawmakers have been willing to make or do. So we’re heading toward No. 3.

The last time I wrote about this issue, I huddled with a former GOP lawmaker, Jeff Brandes, who agreed the state hasn’t done enough.

Florida’s insurance crisis: 2 special sessions, little help | Commentary

This time, I consulted Democratic State Rep. Hillary Cassel, a South Florida insurance attorney who’s so well-respected that one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ top aides hired her firm to fight a battle against his own insurance company. (The irony.)

Cassel describes the GOP-led Legislature’s “reform” so far as little more than “a $3 billion handout to the insurance industry” that has done little to help homeowners.

Cassel says Florida homeowners haven’t really had advocates, noting the state’s last insurance commissioner left to become a lobbyist. And she says Republican lawmakers have largely ignored the Florida-specific problems posed by climate change and flooding. “We are ground zero for climate change, for flooding,” Cassel said. “We have to come to terms with that. We can’t continue to live in Fantasyland.”

If you want proof that things in Florida are going off the rails, consider what I think is one of the most disturbing and under-reported trends in Florida — that as many as 13% of all Florida homeowners are choosing to “go naked” with no insurance at all. That’s double the national average.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. People talk of “self-insuring” by putting money aside in case something happens. Well, let’s say you put aside $1,000 a month (way more than many people would and than most insurance would cost). Well, after five years, you’d have a grand total of $60,000 to replace your entire home if it gets destroyed.

Self-insurance is not a solution. It’s a desperate last resort that could end up wrecking lives – and taxpayer wallets if the government steps in to clean up the mess, as it usually does after big storms.

Florida Insurance rates soar to ‘crisis’ level after do-nothing lawmakers piddled | Commentary

The latest nibbling-around-the-edges solution involves Florida’s efforts to reduce the number of people relying on the state-run Citizens program. And the early news was troubling. Residents were getting snail-mail letters that told them they would automatically default to a private insurer charging 70 or 80% more if they didn’t take action, which seemed like an opportunity to gouge. As it turned out, some companies wanted to offer price hikes with as much as 300% premium increases.

The state said many of the higher offers came from Slide, an insurance company run by CEO Bruce Lucas, who generated controversy a few years ago when he ran another company, Heritage, that was jacking up rates while Lucas earned a $27 million compensation package.

Slide has also been funneling massive amounts of campaign cash to Florida politicians lately, including $100,000 to the committee run by CFO Jimmy Patronis, more than $200,000 to the Republican Senate Committee and hundreds of thousands more.

Fortunately, the state stepped in and got Slide to agree not to make any offers that represented more than a 100% increase — which is still massive. And insurance officials have ordered companies to cap future  Citizen “depopulation” offers at 40%.

Ultimately, the state moved about 100,000 customers off Citizens to private insurers with most paying less than 20% more. That seems reasonable. And those who defaulted into higher rates will get another chance to stay with Citizens when their first bills arrive.

But again, this is still mainly nibbling around the edges. A few more companies are coming in. Citizens is shedding a fraction of its 1.3 million policies. But prices are still rising. That’s why we need the big stuff.

Either big solution — investing more in Citizens or market subsidies — should be accompanied by serious restrictions and protections. Subsidies, whether provided through reinsurance or any other way, should be coupled with demands for transparency and lower rates. And any additional Citizens policies should include coverage caps and not go to houses being built in known, high-risk areas.

Still, the solutions are there in a state where the budget has been flush. But only if lawmakers start doing the real, hard work.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

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