By rssfeeds-admin The commissioner says the legislature is trying to address why premiums are so high in the state of Louisiana.
“When we do get into an accident, we have more than twice the frequency of bodily injury claims. More than twice the national average, we claim we had an injury. And we’re more than- I see four times, I see three times, I know it’s a solid more than two and a half times the national average, to litigate on those bodily injury claims,” said Temple.
The commissioner says this equates to higher claims costs. For this reason, there are bills working through the system with the hope of disincentivizing people from abusing the legal system.
“If we can be successful doing that, then you’ll start to see the claims, the number of claims that we have, abusing the system, go down. And when those go down, rates will follow. Most of the bills are designed to tackle that, to disincentivize, ” said Temple.
He believes there are bills coming out of the House under concurrence, which means the House agrees with amendments by the Senate.
Some of the bills include House Bill 431 by Representative Emily Chenevert, which provides relative to modified comparative fault, and House Bill 436 by Representative Gabe Firment, which prohibits the recovery of certain damages for unauthorized aliens.
However, Commissioner Temple says there is one bill that gives “heart burn” and he does not support, House Bill 148 by Representative Jeffrey Wiley.
According to text on the State Legislature website, the bill “requires insurers to provide prior premium amounts with renewals of certain insurance policies and repeals the distinction between competitive and non-competitive markets with respect to the regulation of insurance rates.”
“It’s not right. It’s not a good bill. It shifts blame. It also removes confidentiality that insurance companies enjoy when they do business here, like every other business gets to have some confidentiality; it removes some of those protections,” said Temple.
The commissioner continued, “I think that it’s going to send a message to the insurance market that Louisiana is not a state that you want to do business with, despite a lot of the reform that we’re passing.”
The commissioner says that during the session, a group of legislators has opposed passing reform because they say insurance companies are making billions of dollars.
“Whether you look at five years or 10 years, insurance companies whether it’s auto, or it’s property, have historically lost money in the state of Louisiana,” said Temple.
The commissioner says that in 2023 and 2024, there were not many catastrophes, premiums were high, and companies made about 3%. However, the years 2020 and 2021 had large loss ratios due to storms and hurricanes.
Commissioner Temple says several other reform bills will be introduced to Senate Judiciary A on May 28th, unfortunately a member of the committee will be absent.
Temple says those bills will most likely die outright or die in a tie vote. “I would say that after today, I think that a lot of the legal reform efforts are going to be done with. Which is not good for you and me as citizens and rate payers of Louisiana.”
Temple says that on May 28th, Governor Landry will hold a press conference and perhaps a bill signing on legislation coming out of the House.
“We did not get into this insurance crisis overnight, and we’re not getting out of it overnight, but we are going to get out of it if we continue to do what needs to be done which is make some hard decisions, rebalance the playing field, the legal field here in the state of Louisiana, and make it so that people don’t abuse the process. That’s when you have a claim, it’s a just claim, when you have an injury, it’s a just injury, and when you have medical bills, they are just medical bills. Insurance is about being made whole, not being made better,” said Commissioner Temple.
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