Martin Weiss has by no means been bashful in his assessments of Florida’s troubled insurance coverage market.
The Palm Seaside Gardens founding father of Weiss Scores has additionally been completely happy to take a seat down with insurance coverage regulators, right here and in different states, to put out the idea of his critiques.
In spite of everything, he mentioned, everybody has the identical aim of “an enchancment within the expertise of common policyholders.”
Possibly not everybody.
Weiss, who has been writing about finance because the Seventies, just lately wrote that Florida owners are at a “excessive danger” of not being paid for his or her claims from hurricanes Helene and Milton. He warned that some insurers are “getting ready to a collapse.”
How did Florida’s Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation reply to this regarding information from
Weiss? Did it ring him as much as see if his knowledge supported his conclusion? Did it maintain a sit-down with its personal analysts to look over their very own intensive information? Did it politely disagree and go about their enterprise?
No. The state company sicced its attorneys on him.
Florida’s thought police
In a wide-ranging subpoena, the Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation ordered Weiss to show
over enterprise and analysis information supporting his opinion.
It’s solely to assist us assist Florida shoppers, the company indicated in its demand to know
why Weiss thought what he thought and mentioned what he mentioned.
The state needs to crawl although his textual content messages, rifle by means of his invoices and take a look at his appointment books. Don’t mistake these calls for for something aside from yet one more Tallahassee assault on unbiased thought.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has turned Florida right into a petri dish for a few of Undertaking 2025’s most noxious targets, together with quashing any reality contradicting the federal government’s official line.
On insurance coverage, Florida’s official line is that the owners’ market is recovering. The state sticks to its story at the same time as Floridians are transferring away as a result of they will not afford to insure their houses.
Whilst state-supported Residents Property Insurance coverage Co. shed a whole bunch of 1000’s of house owners’ insurance policies and requested for permission to jack up premiums by a mean 14%.
Weiss is hardly the one critic who has seemed on the knowledge on Florida’s insurance coverage quandary
and sees crimson.
A critic with a lot of firm
Enterprise journalists, economists, congressional committees have all mentioned the disaster is much from over.
“Florida’s insurance coverage market is totally screwed up,” mentioned U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
“Florida is first and worst in what local weather change is doing to property insurance coverage charges,”
mentioned U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the Senate Price range Committee chair.
“One thing terrifying is occurring within the Sunshine State — one in 5 seniors I speak to
are planning their transfer or at the very least exploring choices,” mentioned Alex Schlesinger, CEO of
Lively Mutual, a life insurance coverage concern.
Then there are Hurricane Milton and Helene house owner claims which were denied or stay unpaid. As of this month, that quantity topped 185,000, in accordance with the identical Florida Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation which is demanding to know why Weiss is writing imply issues about unpaid claims.
It’s the identical Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation that posted knowledge displaying Residents denied 77% of Hurricane Debby claims, reported NOTUS, a nonprofit information group.
If state officers wish to parse Weiss’s reasoning with out selecting up the cellphone and asking him, a lot of the info they search from him is already at their fingertips.
Scorn without spending a dime speech
However the sweeping subpoena means that what they really need is for Weiss to maintain his politically incorrect opinions to himself.
Scorn for the First Modification isn’t a glitch in an administration that gave us guide bans and scrubbed the phrases “local weather change” from official paperwork. It’s a celebrated characteristic.
And Tallahassee will brook no criticism. After Sen. Whitehouse singled out Florida for its
failures, Florida Chief Monetary Officer Jimmy Patronis tried to silence him with a smear
accusation concerning the senator’s spouse floated by a hard-right group.
Whitehouse, unimpressed, saved on speaking. Patronis, in the meantime, floated the laughable accusation that the “wokeness” police had been ruining Florida’s insurance coverage market as a result of insurers had been factoring local weather dangers, also called hurricanes, into their enterprise mannequin.
Weiss mentioned he’ll cooperate with the subpoena.
“Our function has all the time been to offer goal evaluation with the aim of figuring out the issue, causes and penalties and utilizing that analyses as a guidepost for taking the fitting steps to hopefully enhance issues,” he mentioned.
It’s a worthy aim. Tallahassee ought to cease its ridiculous strongarm ways and comply with swimsuit.
The Solar Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. To contact us, electronic mail at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
