LOUISIANA, USA — With Governor Jeff Landry’s signature Tuesday, a package of what he called reform bills is now law.
“These bills begin the process of addressing our property insurance crisis,” said Gov. Landry.
Landry and insurance commissioner Tim Temple hope the four bills will drive down costs for folks to insure their homes.
“Louisiana is not healthy and it’s certainly not competitive and these bills were all designed to help create confidence back in the Louisiana marketplace,” said Temple.
After some costly hurricane seasons, many insurance companies doing business in Louisiana went out of business. Others simply stopped writing policies. A lot of homeowners were left with unaffordable policies.
“Every day families are facing financial stresses; many people are choosing to go uninsured. Many businesses are choosing to leave the state,” said Temple.
The first bill repeals the expiration of the fortified roof program. The second will phase out Louisiana’s unique three-year rule, which prevents insurance companies from dropping policyholders after three years of coverage.
“By phasing it out we’re simply creating an environment where insurance companies are going to be attracted to come into the state,” said House Insurance Committee Chairman, Rep. Michael Firment, a Republican from Pollock.
That law also allows insurers to drop up to five percent of policies every year for any reason. The third bill speeds up the approval process for insurance companies to do business in the state. The fourth aims to streamline the claims and payment process.
“Corporate welfare at its finest in the guise of deregulation,” said President of the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance Andreanecia Morris.
Morris supports investing in the fortified roof program but says the other changes aren’t consumer-focused.
“These other bills are a tragedy waiting to happen,” said Morris. “People are actually going to be dropped by their insurance carriers with no warning.”
Morris says poorly managed investments over the years from state and federal levels for safe and secure housing have helped create the current problem. She says these new laws aren’t the way to fix it.
“It’s this notion of us having to be pleasing to insurance companies and have to be pleasing to corporate interests when the fact of the matter is if they’re in business to do business they should care about their customer,” said Morris.
A statewide poll released Tuesday by the Times-Picayune - New Orleans Advocate shows most voters polled disapproved of how the insurance crises are being handled. Temple, a former insurance executive who pushed for the legislation, says he knows some of the changes aren’t popular, but necessary.
“They bring Louisiana back in line to the mainstream where other insurance companies operate successfully in other states,” said Temple.
Governor Landry says if the costs of insurance premiums don’t fall, lawmakers will continue working on a way to make it happen.
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