Dear Friend,
I just got home from Tallahassee where Republican leaders rushed through a 72-hour special session in order to pass a property-insurance bill demanded by Governor Ron DeSantis that guarantees no immediate rate reduction for Floridians.
Unfortunately, the governor’s bill is an unprecedented giveaway to giant insurance companies like State Farm and Allstate – at the expense of everyday Floridians who are struggling just to stay in their homes and apartments amid soaring cost of mortgages, rent, utilities and insurance.
The DeSantis insurance bill gives Floridians far less time to file a claim after a hurricane. It makes it much harder to sue an insurance company that refuses to pay a claim. And it will force hundreds of thousands of Florida homeowners currently covered by Citizens Property Insurance Corp. to pay dramatically higher prices and will be mandated to purchase flood insurance (something that won’t be required for private policy holders). In some cases, people will be kicked out of Citizens altogether and compelled to pay a higher price to a private company.
At the same time, the governor’s insurance bill does *nothing* to crack down on the accounting games played by insurance companies that take billions of dollars in premiums paid by working folks and move the money to out-of-state parent and sister companies, where the money is then used to pay bloated salaries to executives and giant dividends to shareholders. The Tampa Bay Times just published a must-read investigation exposing this disgusting profiteering.
My fellow Democrats and I fought hard to make this bill better. I offered an amendment that would have forbidden any insurance company that raises rates from then giving bonuses or pay raises to its executives. But my Republican colleagues in the Florida House voted it down. They also voted down Democratic amendments to cap premiums for a temporary period of time, alongside other cost reduction measures.
As Democrats, we also offered our own Property Tax Reform Bill — but it was ruled out of order right in the beginning of Special Session.
So in the end, I voted no on this really bad bill. And so did every other Democrat in the Florida House. Two Republicans in the State Senate voted no, with only one Democrat voting yes.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this: Governor DeSantis has decided that the solution to Florida’s property insurance crisis is to hand insurance companies a blank check – to give them more power to raise rates, delay and deny claims, and grind Floridians down into accepting low-ball offers that won’t cover the repairs they need to make to their homes.
But my team is always here to help. If you run into problems with your insurance company, contact my office and we’ll help you in whatever way we can. In fact, there were two other bills debated and passed during this Special Session that were not as controversial. One is large disaster relief bill that came through the Ways & Means Committee and the other is a toll road discount program. I voted yes on both of these bills, and you can learn more here.
I promise that we’ll keep fighting for changes in Tallahassee that help consumers instead of insurance companies – and that keep Florida a place where everyday folks can still afford to live.
Onward,
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani