Just say no to flawed, secretive insurance plan | Editorial [Orlando Sentinel]

The more we learn about the property-insurance legislation that Florida’s lawmakers are considering during the special session that started Monday, the more we’re convinced: There’s nothing special about the proposals under consideration — and no good reason to pass them. The lawmakers who negotiated the terms of these bills have said as much, without saying a word.

Hidden negotiations

The identical House and Senate bills (HB 1A, SB 2A) were negotiated in secrecy — some insurance company lobbyists were clearly in the loop, but many lawmakers were not. The legislation wasn’t made public until after 6 p.m. Friday. Members of the public who took time to digest the 100-page bills and travel to Tallahassee to share their opinions — including some people who suffered devastating losses from Hurricanes Michael in 2018 and are still fighting with their insurance companies to be made whole — were shoehorned into a few brief hours of testimony in Senate committees and can expect to run the same gauntlet today when committees in the House consider the bills. “I expect we will be done by 6 p.m. on Wednesday,” House Speaker Paul Renner told his members in a bland, confident tone Monday morning, before leading his chamber in a voice vote that bluntly shut down an attempt by Democrats to bring any additional ideas up for discussion.

An inadequate plan

What do they plan to do? The plan starts by adding $1 billion in taxpayer-backed reinsurance to the $2 billion they approved earlier this year. That’s money meant to bail out insurance companies that couldn’t manage to build proper surpluses (at least on paper) despite benefiting from nearly a decade of relatively quiet storm seasons and premiums up to three times the national average.

What will Floridians get for that money? Not much, if past giveaways are any indication. Legislative leaders have acknowledged that individual homeowners are unlikely to see lower premiums any time soon. Meanwhile, industry experts we consulted say the changes in the House and Senate bills are unlikely to rescue those insurance companies already identified as on the brink of failure.

Why, then, are legislative leaders so set on speed and secrecy? It seems to us that the best course of action is to lay out a schedule of public meetings around the state over the next month or so, listening for ideas that are achievable and might make a difference — then taking the best of those ideas and running them through the more inclusive, collaborative process of the regular legislative session that starts in March.

That would also give state officials time to get a better read on the impact that massive, back-to-back Hurricanes Ian and Nicole did to Florida’s economy and insurance market.

Here’s our prediction: That won’t happen. Instead, House and Senate leaders will ram through legislation that makes it easier for insurance companies to deny claims — and harder for consumers to fight those denials. Many Floridians will end up paying more, for coverage that offers less protection. Insurance companies will be required to respond to claims a little faster (in some cases, as much as a month) but consumers will see their time to file some claims cut by as much as a year. And it will get riskier to protest a denial. In some cases, consumers who fight for coverage will be putting themselves at risk of paying their own insurance company’s legal bills.

Blocked reforms

Meanwhile, nobody will be talking about the real reforms that Democrats tried to bring forward, some of which looked like good ideas.Among them: A guarantee that any giveaways or legal tweaks that benefited insurance companies’ bottom lines would flow back to consumers in premium reductions. We also agree with the emphasis on fraud, which insurance companies have long complained about, but Republican leaders clearly don’t plan to spend one additional dime rooting out and prosecuting. We’re not particularly excited about restoring voters’ ability to choose Florida’s insurance commissioner — because we remember how shady those elections could get. But we would like to hear more about a plan that would require big-name, out-of-state insurance companies that write profitable auto policies in Florida to also cover homeowners.

We won’t, because Republican leadership took the unprecedented step of refusing to allow Democrats to even file their bill. That strikes us as petty and mean.

We get it. This is a huge, complicated issue, warped by years of bad decision making and the same kind of arrogant secrecy that is driving lawmakers this year. So we’ll make it simple for our readers to send a message to lawmakers:

Tell them to stop. Let Floridians get a look at what they’re doing. And then get in their cars, come home and prepare to listen before making Florida’s messed-up insurance market even more of a liability for the people who live, work and want to do business in the Sunshine State.

Stop. Look. Listen. It’s not too much to ask, and it’s what Floridians should demand.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com

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