Florida insurance crisis threatens DeSantis’ 2024 bid as hurricane season intensifies

This summer, just days after Farmers Insurance bailed on Florida’s risky property insurance market, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a bit of advice to his state’s residents: “knock on wood” and hope that the state is spared from a major hurricane this season.

It hasn’t panned out that way.

Hurricane Idalia tore through Florida’s Big Bend late last month as a Category 3 storm, bringing with it maximum sustained wind speeds of 125 mph and record-breaking storm surges for some parts of the state. In the days since, Hurricane Lee has taken shape in the Atlantic, though current forecasts show that it doesn’t pose a direct threat to Florida.

With nearly three months left in the official 2023 hurricane season, the storms have shined a spotlight on Florida’s property insurance crisis at a critical moment for DeSantis, who has put his record in the governor’s mansion at the center of his 2024 presidential bid and touted the so-called “Florida Blueprint” on the campaign trail.

While the governor received praise from many Republicans for his swift and decisive response to Idalia, the looming uncertainty in the state’s homeowners’ insurance market could open him up to criticism.

Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nod, has already taunted DeSantis for months over Florida’s property insurance woes. Last week, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Idalia, Trump re-upped that line of attack, saying that DeSantis “gave up the store” when it came to his approach to the insurance industry.

The state’s property insurance crisis has also drawn the attention of “Fox & Friends,” a normally friendly program for DeSantis. In an Aug. 30 segment recorded as Idalia made landfall, one of the show’s co-hosts Brian Kilmeade said that “insurance in Florida is through the roof.”

DeSantis’ campaign did not respond to the Miami Herald’s request for comment on the criticism he’s received over the property insurance crisis.

Florida tops the list for the most expensive homeowners’ insurance in the country. According to the industry-backed Insurance Information Institute, Floridians are paying an average of $6,000 a year in 2023 — a 42% increase over 2022. By comparison, the average home insurance premium in the U.S. sits at $1,700, which is up just 11% from last year.

The rate hikes in Florida over the past few years have been particularly steep, rising by 128% since 2020, the Insurance Information Institute’s data shows. While climate-related risks, like hurricanes, factor into those increases, Mark Friedlander, a spokesperson for the institute, said that the biggest drivers of rising premiums are litigation and claim fraud.

“We analyzed the Florida market very closely and determined that the factors that have generated the Florida property insurance crisis were man-made factors,” Friedlander said. “Florida had many years of legal system abuse and insurance claim fraud.”

That claim — that legal abuse and fraud are the primary drivers behind skyrocketing premiums — has drawn pushback. Critics argue that other factors, like bad business practices and climate risks, have contributed to the crisis.

Florida’s property insurance market troubles long predate DeSantis’ governorship. Still, homeowners’ insurance premiums have more-than doubled in the four-and-a-half years that he’s been in office, adding to growing financial pressures in a state that has seen its cost-of-living skyrocket in recent years.

Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, DeSantis’ predecessor in the governor’s mansion, called Florida’s property insurance crisis “devastating” for homeowners and renters, and said “there’s clearly more than has to be done” by state officials to tame the rising premiums.

“It’s way too expensive to insure homes in Florida right now,” Scott said on CNN last week. “And so we gotta work with insurance companies, we gotta recruit them to come back to the state, we gotta get more competition and we gotta solve the problem so they can drive their rates down.”

“Until it’s completely solved, you know there’s more to do,” he added. “We still have companies leaving, we have less competition.”

DeSantis has already signed several bills aimed at reducing the costly litigation and fraud issues. State lawmakers have also sought to reduce the number of policies held by Citizens, the state-backed insurer of last resort that a rapidly growing number of Florida homeowners have had to turn to in recent years.

Friedlander said that the legislation signed by DeSantis included “necessary stepping stones” to stabilize Florida’s tumultuous insurance market. Since those reforms were put in place, Friedlander said, five new insurance companies have been approved to do business in Florida.

Still, he added, “the market isn’t stable yet, and we’re not making any predictions about when it’ll be stable.”

“There’s still a lot going on in the market, a lot of turmoil, a lot of litigation passing through the system,” Friedlander said.

DeSantis said during a hurricane briefing last week that he wanted the Florida Legislature to go further in last year’s special sessions reforming the property insurance market than it did. When asked a day later what reforms he wanted to see, however, DeSantis declined to provide details, saying that he was focused on responding to Hurricane Idalia and that it wasn’t an appropriate time to have policy discussions.

“Right now, we’re focusing on the response, protecting people and then getting what we need to go there,” he said. “This is about execution right now. We obviously can have different policy debates when the time is appropriate.”

Others argue that the efforts to rein in insurance lawsuits only tackle part of the problem. Florida Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani argued in a recent op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel that the governor and state lawmakers have ignored deeper problems in the market, while focusing their attention on insurance industry-friendly policies and culture war issues.

“This is a governor who has made it crystal clear that he would much rather spend his time trying to divide Floridians with fake culture wars rather than trying to solve the real cost-of-living challenges that impact all of us,” Eskamani wrote.

Democratic former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who launched a bid for Scott’s Senate seat last month, demanded that DeSantis and legislative leaders call another special session to address the property insurance crisis.

“Property insurance costs are a crisis,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “I’m calling on leaders in Tallahassee to convene an immediate special session to pass common-sense legislation to lower costs for Florida families and small businesses. We need action, not tomorrow, but right now, to save Floridians who are struggling with massive rate increases.”