You got conned. Home insurance costs still rising in Florida | Commentary

Scott Maxwell, Orlando SentinelOrlando Sentinel

Two years ago, with insurance costs skyrocketing, Florida legislators called a special session, vowing to provide relief.

Their plan was shady from the moment they announced it.

The Republican lawmakers who control the state had spent years ignoring warnings from industry experts who had begged them to spend serious time on this complicated issue, opting instead to wage culture wars with everyone from Disney to drag queens. Yet now that the insurance crisis was evident and voters were getting mad, lawmakers announced they would hold a special session on this incredibly complex issue that lasted all of five days. Drunk spring breakers spend more time in Cancun.

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

Making things even more suspect, their “reform” plans consisted of primarily helping the insurance industry — not homeowners.

The main thing I noted at the time was that GOP legislators were doing all sorts of financial favors for insurance companies, but providing absolutely no guarantees that any of the industry savings would trickle down to consumers.

Well, unsurprisingly, they have not. As the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported this past weekend, the average insurance premium in Florida has increased for nine consecutive quarters since Gov. Ron DeSantis signed this “reform” measure into law.

In other words: You got conned.

Home insurance costs in Florida spiked in third quarter. Are more increases on the way?

I think most of you already know this. When I took to social media Monday to ask if anyone’s costs had dropped in the last two years, the responses went something like this:

No.

Hell no.

My latest renewal had a premium increase of 85%.

In fact, of the first 38 responses, only one person said they’d seen a decrease.

Those anecdotal responses were backed by the cold, hard facts that our insurance writer, Ron Hurtibise, uncovered when he studied the latest stats, concluding that average premium prices have jumped 31% since Florida enacted “reform.”

And there’s little reason to believe costs will drop going forward. Why? Because most of the same legislators who gave the insurance industry precisely what it wanted two years ago — without guaranteeing price reductions for homeowners — were re-elected.

Local lawmakers like Susan Plasencia and Rachel Plakon both ran campaign ads that claimed they would stand up to the insurance industry right after doing the industry’s bidding.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Donald Trump, who called the “reform” bill that both reps supported the “biggest insurance company BAILOUT to Globalist Insurance Companies, IN HISTORY.”

It has been said that, in politics, voters get what they deserve. The problem is that the rest of us get what they deserve as well.

The best thing that can be said about Florida’s post-“reform” insurance market is that premium increases may have slowed a bit and that more insurers have entered the market, thanks partly to lawmakers spending more on reinsurance programs the companies can tap.

But we’ve seen no evidence that premiums are consistently dropping. In fact, the latest quarterly report showed an even larger average policy price hike than the previous two.

Now, to be fair, the price of virtually everything has gone up in recent years, from bread to milk. But here’s the difference: Government didn’t do massive favors for the bread and milk industry the way Florida did for insurance.

The governor and Legislature made it tougher for homeowners to sue their insurance companies when those companies deny them benefits — a dream come true for companies hoping to stiff customers.

And take a wild guess what happened next? We read reports that insurance companies were denying homeowners’ claims more often in Florida than anywhere else. What a surprise.

Insurance companies deny Florida claims while rates go even higher | Commentary

There have been legitimate concerns about Florida being the land of fraudulent claims, driving up everyone’s costs. The problem is that Florida lawmakers never really aggressively cracked down on the fraudsters. They went after you, the homeowner.

I’ve long argued the state should massively beef up fraud investigation and prosecutions. Instead, the governor and Legislature made it tougher for homeowners to sue for benefits to which they were legitimately entitled.

Lawmakers argued that, if insurance companies spent less on lawsuits, they could pass those savings along to consumers. It was trickle-down fiction.

The reality is that tackling Florida’s costly insurance problems is complicated and costly. This state is basically a bullseye for hurricanes and uniquely vulnerable to flooding and rising seas.

The only real way to drive down costs would be for the state to spend more.

Either by expanding the state-run Citizens Insurance program so that it becomes something like Medicare for property insurance, a state-subsidized program most everyone can access.

Or the state can use more tax dollars to subsidize the private insurance market even more. But those gifts to the industry would have to be accompanied by demands for rate reductions — something Florida lawmakers have never demanded of their insurance-lobbyists pals in the past, which is why most homeowners’ costs continue to rise.

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