Insurance Crisis, Floridian Struggles, and the Push for Political Accountability

The clip episode revolves around the insurance crisis in Florida and the urgent need for accountability from insurance companies. 

Our guest, Ashley Brundage, discusses the impact of corporate greed on average citizens, the proposed Insurance Accountability Act, and the societal implications of current legislation. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

really helpful in your state legislator is you want someone that can speak to your experience and understands where you come from, and that's definitely me.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Yeah, for so long we've had these politicians who are nothing more than than rich people's mouthpieces, who have not gone through the experience that so many of us have had to do in getting to where we've gotten in life. Like you, I worked in a tire store, I worked on the farm, I did all kinds of things in order to be able to get my education, in order to be able to expand my possibilities in life, including I joined the Army National Guard in order to pay for law school. So having people like you and me who have these real-world experiences, who've lived paycheck to paycheck, who have wondered where their next meal is going to come from it gives us a certain sense of compassion for people that are suffering right now, and in Florida, I know one of the key issues that is facing everyone is the dramatic increase in costs for insurance, homeowners insurance and other things. People are not able to afford that.

Speaker 1: 1:21

A hundred percent. Yeah, this is the number one issue in my district, especially because my district represents the city of Tampa and all of the waterfront coastline, that is, all of western Hillsborough County. In fact, for those that know the geographical region for Tampa Bay, tampa Bay is an actual body of water, it's not a city. There's Tampa and then there's St Petersburg across the way, and there's three main bridges that connect the two counties, between Hillsborough County and Pinellas County, and my district actually covers half of all the three bridges and so, with the waterfront being right here, obviously my district is disproportionately affected by the property insurance crisis and ironically and I love using this word ironic, because you know you can't spell ironic without Ron and ironically you cannot you know you can't go and have this issue be an issue without recognizing the fact that my opponent in the race, without recognizing the fact that my opponent in the race, karen Gonzalez Pittman, voted for a $1 billion billion with a B $1 billion insurance bailout, with no strings attached and no accountability really attached to it in December of 2022.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Basically, ronnie DeSantis decided to call a special session after he had a runaway election in 2022. And he said hey, you know what I got an even bigger supermajority. Let me call a special session, let me give the insurance company a big bailout and then let's not hold them accountable. And that's exactly what Karen voted for. And since that moment, the insurance has only gotten considerably worse for people in my district, even though we haven't really been hit with as many hurricanes as people seem to think. Yeah, we've had a few and yeah, we've averted some disaster, and yeah, some people were hurt in disaster in this space, some disaster, and yeah, some people were hurt in disaster in this space, but it's not disproportionately such a high amount that should be causing the insurance prices to be going up. Even just in July, they went up 14%, and so they've constantly gone up since this moment in time because the companies know that they're not being held accountable and it's time to hold them accountable.

Speaker 2: 3:43

I mean, how can you give a billion dollars away to these companies and not get some form of payback for the taxpayers who are helping this by requiring them to do reduced rates or whatever it is that needs to be done? But something definitely needs to be done and this is happening in California also because of wildfires and things like that, where we have had our insurance companies stop writing new policies for folks. Some people are getting their policies canceled and it's creating a horrible situation for so many people because you're required by your mortgage company to have a homeowner's insurance, Otherwise you don't get to have your house.

Speaker 1: 4:30

A hundred percent. Yeah, this is ridiculous in so many ways. So I'm actually working on what I call the Insurance Accountability Act, and I've aptly called it that for an important reason, right, because accountability has to be essential to how we solve the insurance crisis, and we have to work together to do this. It's going to take Republicans and it's going to take Democrats working together, and it's going to take the insurance industry, knowing that we have to hold them accountable. It's also going to take the legal industry for their advice and their guidance, because they're connected to this as well.

Speaker 1: 5:04

But, you know, I think we hold insurance companies accountable, but we can also give them a creative way to mitigate their risk by expanding the geographical region where we're riding policies. Can't just do state-by-state policies anymore, because some states are risky at certain times and then other states are risky at other times, right? So during hurricane season, yeah, we might be more risky, but during other parts of the year, other parts of the country are more risky, and if we can expand the geographical region where these companies are writing policies, all of a sudden now they have a way to shoulder some of the risk, aka risk mitigation. Risk mitigation is exactly the pathway to how we can actually drive the cost down for homeowners, and that's what I plan to do for people in my district.

Speaker 2: 5:50

So I have to ask you live in Florida, which is incredibly transphobic with their laws and incredibly anti-trans through the state leadership, through DeSantis, who tried to run an entire political campaign on attacking trans folks and found out that that was not a good political strategy. I'm wondering what is it like on the ground for you meeting potential constituents, talking with them? Are they interested in your story? Are some of them very, I guess, negative towards you? Have you gotten any bad experiences?

Speaker 1: 6:31

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. We're kind of all over the place here. Obviously, yeah, the laws are not great. I mean, like literally, if I didn't already have health care, I might not have health care currently, because there's a bill that criminalizes gender affirming care, which is absolutely mind boggling to me, considering that gender affirming care is something that's applicable to all people, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:57

aka the little blue pill say I mean, do not men realize that taking viagra is gender affirming care for them? Uh it, it blows my mind that they're so outraged that we have gender affirming care. It's like okay, well then, you don't want your viagra anymore.

Speaker 1: 7:15

Yeah, you're cialis right, yeah, yeah so you know I, I love to normalize gender affirming care. It's always a fun thing when I like it into something else. It's one of my, it's one of my most favorite pastimes, but nonetheless and then you know, I think about yeah, my opponent passed the bathroom bill. My opponent passed the criminalization for gender affirming care bill. They passed a trans erasure bill. This is all my opponent's work. I mean literally. She passed six anti-transgender bills.