TALHASSEE – Florida legislative leaders have vowed to investigate the benefits of this year’s session and will hold the industry accountable if they fail to pay the claim.
The House Committee held an unusual hearing to burn the state’s current and previous insurance regulators. Republicans and regulators have proposed several pro-legal bills.
But after 105 days it wasn’t that much. After one of the longest and most controversial sessions in memory, lawmakers left Tallahassee late Monday night and took important action without reducing premiums or increasing scrutiny in the insurance industry.
“We didn’t make as much of it as we wanted,” said Rep. Brad Yeager, a Richie Republican from the new port who heads the House Insurance Committee.
Lawmakers are pledging more actions in the next session. The committee is expected to begin meeting again in October.
They spent $280 million to update the popular My Safe Florida Home program. However, lawmakers have limited future eligibility to homeowners with low or moderate incomes.
Legislative leaders began their sessions with harsh talk about industry control and received standing ovations in the House and Senate.
Miami Republican House Speaker Daniel Perez ordered an unprecedented hearing of research by the Florida Department of Insurance Regulation, revealed by the Times/Herald a few weeks before the session.
The survey showed that insurance companies claim to lose millions of dollars at the start of the state’s insurance crisis. The study was not shared with lawmakers until the Times/Herald reported on it.
Jaeger’s committee held two hearings in which regulators said they “flew a red flag.” However, they said the report was not shared with lawmakers because it was not completed. The government contractor, author of the report, testified that the report has been completed but regulators will never follow her.
The hearing was within the scope of the House of Representatives’ public inquiry.
Lawmakers also did not suggest replicating investigations or spending money to approve the law to enhance regulatory oversight.
Yeager said the hearing “examined our concerns” about profit-changing companies, but said there are prominent questions about the data underlying the report. He said the home is considering hiring a forensic accountant this summer to analyze the complete dataset.
“We’re not finished. This wasn’t a single session project,” he said.
Florida insurance executives have earned incredible pay for years by shifting premiums to businesses and shifting premiums away from the eyes of state regulators. Later in the session, The Trade Public Insurance Journal revealed that the CEO of Tampa-based Slide Insurance and his wife have made $50.3 million over two years.
Perez said the family’s work, which is considering a profit shift, will continue.
“I don’t like that,” he said of compensation.
“Internally, we’re debating what we can do to look into it,” he said. “That’s what we’re working on. It’s not what we put on the back burner.”
Lawmakers cited various reasons for the stagnation of legislation this year.
Fentris Driskel, a House Minority Leader for Tampa Democrats, said the session was distracted by Republican inscribers, including Florida. The programme created by Gov. Ron Desantis was investigated by lawmakers during the session to direct people from government assistance.
“I think we lost momentum in terms of big policies and big ideas because we had to solve a lot between our personalities,” Driskel said.
Sen. Blaze Ingoglier, a Republican from Spring Hill who heads the Senate Insurance Committee, said the law has largely failed because some were “trying to revoke reforms that stabilized the insurance market.”
These reforms have made it mostly difficult to sue insurance companies. Some Republicans, including Donald Trump, were critical of these recent changes.
In this session, the House of Representatives introduced a bill that would allow homeowners to recover legal costs when suing insurance companies.
Desantis repeatedly opposed the idea, and the law failed.
“This will lead to increased costs and higher fees for everyone,” Ingoglia said.
