In the News
ICYMI: ‘How property insurance premiums shot up when Rick Scott was governor’
This week, Floricua highlighted how property insurance premiums “shot up” while Rick Scott was Governor. Thanks to Scott’s cozy relationship to Florida’s insurance industry and sweetheart deals for his donors, Floridians now face the highest property insurance rates in the country – with premiums nearly four times higher than the national average.
Click here to read the article. See key excerpts below:
- As Scott continues to cast blame for the state’s property insurance crisis on “the last five years,” a look at his time as governor reveals that premium costs increased dramatically while the amount of coverage declined during his tenure.
- What Scott fails to mention when he talks about the crisis, is that the problem has been longer than a decade in the making.
- For this reason, in his first year in office, Scott signed Senate Bill 408, despite critics’ warnings that the legislation allowed a reduction in overall coverage limits, shortened the window for filing sinkhole and storm-related damage claims, and limited claims for damage caused by sinkholes to primary structures, among other things.
- Insurance companies and business groups praised the bill, which also made carriers file requests with the regulation office for rate increases up to 15 percent to account for higher reinsurance costs.
- The controversial bill made changes to the insurance industry and allowed rates to increase and coverage to be restricted.