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HAC Minutes:
Saturday, September 9, 2006
NPR Public
Library
Pledge of Allegiance. First I want to thank all the people who worked the polls this past Tuesday in the heat and on and off rain. We know there was a poor turnout of voters but if we even reached a few that a good thing! A Treasury report will be available on the website as soon as possible. Our treasurer’s computer crashed and she is working on the report by hand. We had a guest speakers: US Congressional Candidate - Phyllis Busansky. Gave her background of tackling the health care crisis by creating a program that saved local taxpayers $44 million per year. She also gave her platform for running, and information on the insurance crisis and took some questions. She handed out a flyer that could be filled out by everyone with his or her personal Insurance Crisis stories. On the pamphlet it sates: JOIN PHYLLIS BUSANSKY’S PLEDGE TO MAKE IT ILLEGAL OR INSURANCE COMPANIES TO DOUBLE AND TRIPLE OUR HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE RATES. Following that we had an update from Nicole Deg about the upcoming Rally on October 7th at the Pasco County Government Center. She let us know that she is looking for local and state speakers and already has a conformation from two people to speak. She is also looking for decorations, chairs, and a sound system for the meeting. Michael Cox who is running for County Commissioner offered a sound system for the rally. NICOLE-RALLY INFO! Board member, Wil Nickerson gave an update on the e-mail update system, phone, and address lists he and his volunteers have been feverishly working on. They have created it so that all HAC members that have given us their e-mail address can be kept up to date on anything new and will now be e-mailed when we have an upcoming meeting or event. He and his volunteers have also been working hard and sent out letters to each of the Insurance Reform Committee members. The also created an e-mail with information on where members can send letters along with a sample letter, e-mail and snail mail addresses on the Governor and legislator’s addresses. Thank you Wil, Chris Schnapp and Susan Buys for all your hard work! Ok on to some more news. Chris and I had the opportunity to speak on live radio last Saturday. We were invited by Gary Jones who hosts a talk radio show every Saturday. We were broadcast in Tampa, Ocala, and Orlando. The radio show went very well and we talked a lot about our group, how we got started, and our plans for the future. I also let people know some new information I have found out like the fact that According to the Office of Insurance Regulations website, Florida is a GREAT place for Insurance companies to do business. The website boasts that there re over 3,000 licensed insurance entities that generate a total of 84 billion in annual premiums in Florida. It also states that an insurer may use a rate prior to having it approved by the office of Insurance Regulations. If that rate is letter determined to be excessive the company refunds a portion back to the consumer. On the same page it states that the 2006 legislature approved a “Speed to Market Initiative” which allows insurers to increase rates up to 10% per territory and up to 5% statewide without requiring normal rate approval. (Florida is one of the only states that allows this) Also decisions made by the Office of Insurance Regulations regarding insurer rate increases have been favorable. Since 2004 69% of ALL requests for rate increases have been approved. In 1996 the Florida Legislature created a three-person panel, which includes representatives from the Insurance Industry to provide Insurance Companies the ability to challenge decisions made by the Office of Insurance Regulations. Since 1996 insurance companies have challenged rating decisions made by the Office of Insurance Regulations for only 12 out of 5,000 filings and 10 of the 12 were successfully overturned. So in essence only two times in 10 years were the not allowed to have the rate increases they desired. That makes Florida an Insurance friendly state but defiantly not a consumer friendly state! One last thing I want to mention about the Office of Insurance Regulations website. It believes that since property insurance carries greater risk that insurance companies should get a greater return on their investment. The insurance industry was compared to investing in the stock market! Please again read it for yourself at www.flains.org all the information I gave you is in there in a PDF form. Now that the primaries are over HAC is going to change focus a bit. We want to focus on solutions to help lower our skyrocketing insurance premiums. If we can get laws into place with some of these changes we will believe we will see significant lower premiums. Some of the first laws that need to be changed are: A. The law must be changed that states that Citizens Insurance must be at least 20% higher that the highest Insurance premium. We feel that if this law can be rescinded it will stop the “ladder” effect of increases. B. The “Speed to Market” initiative that allows Insurance Companies to raise rates without requiring normal rate approval must be changed. Florida is one of the only states that allow increases to be given without prior approval from the Office of Insurance Regulations. It’s like give them the raise and ask questions later and that is NOT acceptable to the people! C. Laws must be changed that any rate increase be justified and the insurance companies need to open up their books to do so. That includes not just the “Florida” only companies. D. Another ridiculous law that needs to be changed is the law that states you must insure you contents for ½ of the replacement value of your home. I don’t know one single person whose contents of their home is equal to halve of the “replacement” value of their home. E. There must be a law in place that doesn’t allow for Insurance companies to write the very lucrative Car, Boat, Annuities, etc without writing for some homeowners policies. Remember the 84 Billion they are making!! We are not asking Insurance Companies that don’t write homeowners policies in other states to write homeowners policies here, however if a company does write homeowners policies in other states they need to be writing a certain amount of policies here or take their business out of Florida. There has been much talk about a “Cherry-picking” bill and those who oppose it say it will drive up car, boat, and other insurance or force companies out of Florida. Do the really think that these companies are going to leave Florida, which is the third fastest growing state in the Country? F. Another law that must be put into effect is a loyalty law. People who have been paying their insurance for years without any claims have been ripped off! There needs to be a law written that states if you have been with a company for 3 years and are in good standing, pay your bill and have not had any claims they should not be allowed to cancel you. Right now there is a company called Homewise Insurance out of Tampa who has been taking over high-risk policies from Citizens Insurance through Citizens “Takeout Program” This company has declined taking the bonus money from Citizens offers which in turn doesn’t require them to hold on to policies for a certain amount of time. So in essence they can take your policy from Citizens without your approval, then raise your rates which are usually double what Citizens Insurance is charging you, then a year later dump you. And what’s even worse once you are cancelled from them you don’t have the ability to go back on Citizens Insurance because of the law that states once you leave Citizens you can NEVER go back! Which is another law that needs to be changed.
So this is what we are going to focus on. We are still working with State Representative John Legg in getting an appointment with the Governor but due to the hurricane that wasn’t were put off for another week. We have heard that there will be a special session called probably in November. We want to have these laws changed in that special session. We are looking for a lawyer to help us properly word these so when presented to the Governor they can be used in the special session. If you know or are a lawyer please see me after the meeting today. On to some other news….HAC is still desperately seeking a Secretary so if you can help out please contact Ginny Stevans, HAC President. This person must be able to take notes, be at the public and monthly board meetings, have good typing skills, and good communication skills. Please keep checking out our website. Vic has done a wonderful job on it and has updates and new information almost daily! We did put a Blog on it but have found it is not as user friendly as we thought it would be so we are going to keep the yahoo Group for now and look into some new Blogs. We think the blog is a good idea because it can be used get information on current events in the insurance industry and be a more focused area of chat. So keep looking it will be there soon! Vic announced that the petition drive has bee extended to October 31st and our current petition count is 17,000. Now in the new HAC tradition we have brought you another great guest speaker. We have invited John Kowicki with Bankers Mortgage. John gave the group some creative ways to save money n their homeowners insurance by having a current appraisal done or to save money on your mortgage you may want to re-finance while rates are still low. His ideas do greatly surpass the mere pittance of savings offered to you by the grant program or the new “average” discount of “up to” 14% decrease in your sinkhole coverage that was mentioned in Thursday’s St. Petersburg Times. Thank you John Kowicki for your informative talk and if anyone missed his handout he can be reached at (727) 819-1950 Our open discussion consisted of further Rally information and the fact that everyone needs to spread the word of HAC so we can grow in size and get our voices heard throughout the state! We let everyone know that we have people wanting to start chapters in Clearwater, Sarasota, and Tampa. HAC is looking for donations of cash, business supplies, and printing to increase our voice! Special thanks to the officials who came from Oldsmar, Tampa, and Madeira Beach to back us in our efforts to band together for fair and reasonable insurance rates in Florida! We are sorry that no Pasco officials attended our meeting and we are looking forward to getting them on board the train to lower rates!
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