Action News Jax is digging into the Florida Gubernatorial candidates’ property insurance plans after Republican Candidate Byron Donalds began airing ads claiming his Democratic opponent David Jolly’s plan would result in a $1,000-a-year hurricane tax.
In simple terms, Jolly wants the state to take over hurricane insurance and move the coverage out of the private sector.
“We’ve seen this before. I remember when the Affordable Care was being talked about. We were told that you could keep your doctor, you could keep your plan, premiums were gonna go down,” said Donalds.
Donalds points to a Florida State University study that found if Citizens Property Insurance, Florida’s state-backed insurer of last resort, were to take over all hurricane coverage, major storms could result in assessments averaging $1,000 per-household.
“Anytime the government takes over an entire industry, especially insurance, it almost never works,” said Donalds. ”The premiums go significantly higher than what was promised and the benefits actually go down.”
But in an interview with Action News Jax, Jolly claimed his plan to use state’s $12 billion hurricane fund to replace private hurricane insurance would decrease premiums by as much as 70 percent.
“The bottom line is if you’re comfortable with where homeowners insurance is in Florida right now, then listen to Byron Donalds. He’s promising exactly more of the same,” said Jolly.
Jolly also said he wants to hold insurance companies more accountable by limiting their ability to hide profits by shifting earnings to affiliate companies.
It was recently revealed dozens of insurers paid more than $1 billion combined in affiliate fees, all while reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in losses that pushed lawmakers to pass reforms that made it harder for policyholders to their insurance companies to court.
“The reason the market has stabilized is because they gave away even more to insurance companies,” said Jolly. “Talk to the family in Pinellas County that lost their home in Helene who is still waiting to be compensated by their insurance company.”
When asked whether Donalds would undo any of the insurance reforms passed in recent years, he said he would not.
Instead, he proposed publicizing an insurer score card, so the public could spot bad actors and avoid doing business with them.
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