Louisiana lawmakers look for solutions to high car insurance premiums
BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Louisiana ranks high on the list for most expensive auto and homeowner insurance premiums. While bills are passed each year trying to help with the issue, a group of lawmakers are trying to take a deeper dive into what needs to be done.
Louisiana ranks as the worst for the cost of car insurance premiums, according to Bank Rate. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are at odds over why that is, from having bad roads, to lawsuits or low liability coverage minimums. They hope they can nail down some reasons in this study group.
“Try to identify all of the factors that are driving these costs, so that we can come up with some solutions,” said state Sen. Greg Miller, R-Norco.
The group is made up of the House and Senate Insurance Committee members, and members of the Judiciary A and Civil Law committees.
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Lawmakers are also tasked with looking at states with similar populations, road conditions and poverty rates to see how they compare with insurance costs and determine what is being done differently there.
Over 30 bills were passed in the regular legislative session aimed at property insurance. Some did away with policies that no other state was using, such as the three-year rule.
“This whole narrative about us being an outlier, us being an outlier, us being an outlier, as the primary motivation or rationale as to why we should pass a piece of legislation or why we should repeal a law, to me has been a flawed approach,” said state Sen. Royce Duplessis.
Commissioner of Insurance Tim Temple has made his focus on creating a free market for insurance companies to be drawn to Louisiana to increase competition.
Legislators were passionate in the hours-long meeting that kicked off their fact-finding mission. Speaker of the House Phillip Devillier said he hopes they can come to agreement for future legislation and even a special session focused on insurance reform.
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“I think we’re a long way from calling ourselves into a special session to try to bring more insurance reforms,” Devillier said. “Having the meetings that we’re seeing today just getting started, we would like to put forth a package of bills in a session to try to address the auto insurance premium rate.”
He also wants the new laws passed this year to take time to go into effect to see how it changes things. They will have several more of the joint insurance committee meetings to speak to industry leaders and the public over the course of multiple months.
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