Jolly Insurance Proposal Facts
Byron Donalds is lying to scare people with invented numbers. There is no “$1,000 hurricane tax” in the plan. Here is the plan to cut Florida homeowners insurance by 60 to 70 percent, in plain English, and the facts behind the ads.
Floridians are paying the highest home insurance prices in America. The private insurance market has collapsed. It's time for a real solution to this major crisis.
Byron Donalds is lying.
“Losing campaigns lie. What Byron is doing is using fear to try to stop progress, because he knows there's a coalition of voters across the state ready to elect a Democratic nominee.”
Byron Donalds is lying to scare people with invented numbers. Ads from Byron Donalds lie and claim Jolly's proposal creates a $1,000 “Hurricane Tax.” The two “sources” the ad gives are a study that does not review Jolly's proposal (which the ad misspells) and an opinion blog post. Confronted about the invented “hurricane tax” figure, Donalds pointed reporters to an unrelated, existing Florida law that allows Citizens Property Insurance to charge a “hurricane tax” of a few hundred dollars after a storm hits.
Byron Donalds thinks you should pay an extra $4,500 a year for insurance. A state catastrophic fund would lift the overwhelming cost burden of hurricane and wind coverage off of Floridians' backs, reducing the cost of property insurance by 60–70%, or around $4,500 in average yearly savings. Currently, a Floridian seeking property insurance with wind and hurricane coverage on a $300k home pays an average of $7,136 a year. Without having to pay for that coverage, the yearly bill would drop to just $2,557 a year, a whopping 64% savings. (Based on Insure.com's Florida home insurance calculator, comparing rates for $1,000 deductible plans with and without hurricane coverage.)
Byron Donalds has no plan to actually lower insurance costs. His sole idea is “transparency.” Transparency doesn't save you money; it just shows you why everything is so expensive. Remember, the insurance industry that has given Byron Donalds more than a million dollars in donations wants Floridians to spend more money on insurance, not less. Insurance special interests paying for Byron Donalds' campaign appear to include Slide Insurance Holdings Inc ($503,000), Florida Insurance Council (FIC) Political Committee ($231,000), United Group Underwriters Inc ($153,000), The Baldwin Insurance Group Holdings LLC ($115,000), Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company ($100,000).
Jolly's model to fix homeowners insurance, in plain English. Hurricane and wind risk can make up 60–70% of a homeowners insurance bill. So instead of forcing every Florida family to pay private insurers to take on that enormous risk: Florida creates one strong, state-backed hurricane fund. We build that fund to a financially sound level and buy backup insurance for catastrophic storms. We fund it by making insurance companies pay the taxes they currently avoid, along with other revenue sources that don't put the burden back on homeowners. Private insurers no longer have to price that hurricane risk into your policy, which has the potential to cut homeowners insurance costs by 60–70%.
This is a model that works. We know it works because Florida already created a catastrophic fund, and Republican legislatures have run it for thirty years. But right now, that fund only bails out insurance companies. We want it to cover actual Floridians.
This will lower costs for Floridians. It can be funded through a mix of forcing insurance companies to pay the taxes they currently avoid, a fee on real estate transactions, or existing tourist taxes. The fund can be rolled out responsibly, with coverage becoming available after a fiscally sound amount of money is set aside and backup reinsurance is in place. The Legislature will be involved in creating the specific policies, including the funding.
In the end, the costs will be lower for Floridians, or we won't do it. Simple as that.