DeSantis’ Attempts to Lower Insurance Prices Yield Small Savings but Undermine Key Safeguards for Homeowners
WASHINGTON — Despite Floridians facing some of the highest insurance premiums in the country, and the state’s insurer of last resort grappling with a broken and fundamentally unfair arbitration process, Governor Ron DeSantis this week claimed the state’s legislative overhaul of the insurance industry, including a slate of measures to make it harder to sue insurers for denying claims, is bringing relief to policyholders. The average 8.7% decrease in Florida Citizens’ insurance rates comes after years of sharp increases. DeSantis’ announcement comes after the end of a 2025 hurricane season where no hurricanes made landfall in the United States. In response, Rick Morris, insurance campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, issued the following statement:
“What do you call a pig wearing lipstick? Ron DeSantis calls it insurance reform.
“These so-called reforms have taken an important safeguard for people’s homes and turned it into little more than a mob-style protection racket, good for little else than lining the pockets of insurance executives and shareholders.
“DeSantis’s dip is nothing more than the temporary effect of giving insurance companies the legal protection to unjustly deny your claims, delay your payment, reduce your coverage, and abandon your community. These so-called reforms render it nearly impossible for you to contest an insurance company’s denial.
“If you do need to actually use your insurance, you’re out of luck. Insurers in Florida are now closing nearly half of all claims without any payment whatsoever. And good luck if you want to take your insurance company to court to get what you’re justly owed. Now, insurance companies don’t have to cover your legal fees even if you’re awarded a recovery, and if you lose at arbitration against Citizens, you can be on the hook for their attorney fees, too.
“Citizens’ policyholders are blocked from a fair court. After facing damage to your home and a denied claim, if you seek relief you’ll be forced into an arbitration system staffed by judges paid by the insurance company whose decisions favor the insurer a whopping 90% of the time.
“Any meteorologist will tell you that climate change is driving more severe weather, and that just because a hurricane didn’t hit Florida this year, doesn’t mean one won’t hit the state next year. Extreme weather from climate change has driven Florida’s property insurance rates through the roof. The only way to reduce rates and protect people is to take climate resilience and mitigation seriously, not erase the words ‘climate change’ from state laws and strip Floridians of their rights.”
Further Reading: The “Tort Reform” Racket: How the insurance industry is stripping your rights and making historic profits
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