A.G. Gancarski
After March’s Consumer Price Index report showed a 3.8% year-over-year increase in inflation, Gov. Ron DeSantis blamed federal spending under President Joe Biden, saying it’s “the wages of Bidenomics.”
And he seemed to blame Washington for a problem particularly affecting Floridians.
“The No. 1 individual itemized increase for inflation was auto insurance. This print today for just a month had a massive increase and that’s really, really difficult,” DeSantis said.
The Governor made the comments in St. Petersburg. They come after months of media scrutiny on rates that are as high as anywhere in the country.
According to Bankrate’s True Cost of Insurance Report, Florida has the second-most expensive “true cost” of auto insurance in the country, trailing only Louisiana. The average annual premium is just shy of $4,000 and is approaching 6% of people’s wages, a burden up nearly 0.8% year over year in terms of income allocation.
Florida’s 5.69% year over year increase in terms of wages spent on insurance far exceeds every other state indexed. Arkansas, which is No. 2 on this miserable metric, only saw a 3.95% hike from one year to the next.
Accidents, speeding tickets, DUIs and other motorized mishaps raise those rates further.
The burden is reflected in three major cities tracked as well, which are near the worst ones of the 25 metros indexed in terms of insurance burden.
While Orlando is below the state average in terms of premium costs, both Miami and Tampa are above that threshold, with the average hit to motorists being over $4,000 a year.
To put that cost burden in perspective, Seattle drivers pay less than $1,800 per year on average, the cheapest rate of the 25 major metros tracked by Bankrate.
While another report from Insurify smooths the numbers more in Florida’s favor, even by that generous accounting, Sunshine State drivers pay the third most expensive rates in the country, in what that site calls an “insurance crisis.”
That crisis isn’t helped by the 6.45% of Florida drivers who are on the road without even minimum levels of coverage, according to figures from the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
“Florida’s No-Fault Law requires motor vehicles registered in Florida be insured with at least $10,000 in personal injury protection (PIP) and $10,000 property damage liability (PDL) coverage throughout the motor vehicle registration period. Failure to maintain the required insurance coverage may result in suspension of the registrant’s driver license/registration and a reinstatement fee of $150-$500,” the Department says.
In short, the penalties for driving without insurance are light, especially for those people without assets vulnerable to expropriation in court cases. And as anyone who has car shopped or has gone to a hospital recently can attest, $10,000 is a fraction of the costs incurred by car accidents.
28 comments
PeterH
April 10, 2024 at 1:35 pm
Fun Fact:
Per capita Florida has one of the highest automobile fatality rates in the USA. Couple that fact with Florida’s huge number of ambulance chasing lawyers and you can begin to research why Florida has high automobile insurance rates.
Impeach Biden
April 10, 2024 at 1:41 pm
I agree with PeterH. How about that?
Dont Say FLA
April 11, 2024 at 10:46 am
And I agree with IBSL IBS does seem to agree with PeterH! :ROFL:
Why can’t Floridians drive. It’s not like there’s hills or curves around hills like in Tennessee and the rest of the SouthEast where drivers are of similar upbringing and ancestry.
I think Florida’s problems is the visibility and lines are so dang good, people get overconfident and when they’re impatient or late they do the squiggly zoomies thru traffic, thinking they’re incredibly great drivers who could be probably even race car drivers, but then they zoom in the tiny gap between two cars where at least one driver in one of those two cars was not paying attention and did not drive predictably and cooperativly for accommodating the dipstick in a hurry who has no clue his driving is being accommodated by everyone else on the road and then this one person does not notice and does not accommodate and BOOM
Dont Say FLA
April 11, 2024 at 10:52 am
Well, plus there’s lost tourists and lost elderlies driving all over the place.
The lost tourist are probably 50/50 in an unfamliar rental car using an unfamiliar GPS and their stupid kids are screaming and hollering about all the mini-gold and alligator places while the partner is screaming contrary to the GPS and/or contrary to the driver decisions.
And then there’s the elderlies. Their cars are 20+ years old. The elderlies are 3 or 4 inches shorter than when they bought their cars and their eyesight and reaction times have both diminished from age. But they still gotta drive, because if you try to walk, you get run TF over, dead, because it’s not worth the money to design roads for humans, giving priority to bare humans on foot over the humans encaged (and also often enraged) within metal boxes with airbags and computerized collision avoidance systems that may or may not care about bare human on foot or bicycle or scooter
Floriduh
April 10, 2024 at 2:01 pm
And dui (that includes all substances and there are a lot of people on pills). And uninsured. And people who drive without a license. And number of large heavy vehicles people are incapable of driving responsibly. And crotch rockets who don’t follow the law. And people from other places who drive super aggressively. And and and. Florida loves to paint itself as law and order state but when it comes to driving, it’s crickets.
Dont Say FLA
April 11, 2024 at 10:41 am
Do insurance companies pay when a crash was DUI? I think there’s normally exception clauses that include their insured breaking the law breaking the law breaking the law which means they don’t have to pay. I could be wrong but I’m sure I’ve read that in, at least, my own policy. If i breaking the law in a semi-serious way when i crash, my insurance company says they don’t pay. Maybe they still have to pay somebody I crash into. Maybe they just don’t pay me for damage to my own car? I dunno and I’ll never find out ’cause if I’m being that bad one day, I will be going out in a big ole blaze of glory and won’t be alive to see what happens with the insurance
Tjb
April 10, 2024 at 2:00 pm
Little Ron blames others for his own shortfall to address issues affecting Floridians.. Personal accountability does not exits in Little Ron’s world.
Yup
April 10, 2024 at 2:04 pm
State keeps approving huge price increases yoy but refuses to address root causes and punishes safe drivers because they won’t address the bad. A lot like home insurance. I detect a theme.
Dont Say FLA
April 11, 2024 at 10:22 am
Right? Is Bidenomics the name of the guy in charge of Florida’s PSC? And if it is, did the G0P pay for their name change from whatever it was to Bidenomics just so they could blame Bidenomics?
G0Ps and their lines are sad jokes that don’t hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. How do people fall for it? Or is the policy talk all wink wink nod nod because the whole MAGA platform is just white Christian Nationalism and everybody knows it?
Eric Marks
April 10, 2024 at 6:30 pm
Amen. What does Biden have to do with Florida’s high insurance rates? Nothing.On the other hand, ask yourself how have insurance rates been influenced by High Heals DeSantis. Count the pieces of recent legislation that favor insurance companies vs. insurance consumers. I think you will have a different tune, unless you are scared of facts or you only get “alternative facts” from Fox News. Compare Pre Florida Power and Light electric bills to your present electric bill, then ask yourself why would FPL donate $18M+ to Desantis and his rubber stamp legislature. Don’t take my word, look it up for yourself. I don’t have a dog in the fight, but I’ve damn sure got common sense.
MH/Duuuval
April 10, 2024 at 8:00 pm
Legislators in Florida have not written their own legislation since the Old He-Coon presided in the mansion. Lobbyists write the bills, proofread and amend them, then give tutorials to the Legislative “presenter.” Big Money greases the wheels …
Dont Say FLA
April 11, 2024 at 10:24 am
Not to mention the Rhonda Campaign crashing State of Florida’s entire fleet of black SUVs into each other up in Tennessee the first time any of the drivers ever encounter a crest in the road that limited their view of what was ahead which was a slow or stopped bunch of traffic?
Impeach Biden
April 11, 2024 at 11:23 am
These are the same cats and dogs that defend “Bidenomics” and his energy policy and the high price of
fuel. They tell you Slo Joe has no impact on the price while Joe depletes our Strategic Petroleum Reserves trying to influence the price.
MH/Duuuval
April 11, 2024 at 8:15 pm
The US is producing more oil than the next two competitors, but exporting much of it and keeping the price high at home. They put their outrageous profits ahead of the people who live and work here, and expect us to deify them.. Always have and always will.
MH/Duuuval
April 10, 2024 at 2:24 pm
Florida is number 3 for pedestrian deaths in the US w/ CA at 39M residents coming in first at 1100 deaths; Texas at 31M residents nipped Florida at 23M residents, 834 to 824 — according to the latest figures available from the Governors Highway Safety survey (2022).
Michael roberts
April 10, 2024 at 3:45 pm
nice try ron, try how litigation happens here.There is the same problem concerning property insurance.Try looking in the mirror for a solution.ron loves dealing with meaningless issues to smoke screen all the huge problems here.
Dont Say FLA
April 11, 2024 at 10:25 am
Rhonda went to Ivy League law school. Apparently Florida law is completely different from whatever’s covered in Ivy League law school considering Rhonda cutlure war legislation’s failure rate that approaches 100%
Michael roberts
April 10, 2024 at 7:50 pm
Eric Marks. you have that right. so pleased that big gov ron had his ass handed to him in the last cycle
Michael roberts
April 10, 2024 at 8:07 pm
the southern tier red states seem to take the brunt of the fly back from bad public policy including cost of living items. any president,,,who ever. has no control of local mistakes. people in floriduh. where we are currently has every problem under the sun yet there is a focus on limiting education and access to healthcare and all other issues that really matter.
Cheesy Floridian
April 10, 2024 at 8:07 pm
Ron DeSantis our great supreme leader knows all! How dare anyone question his huge brain. Ugh he sucks
Mark miller
April 11, 2024 at 6:59 am
So called governor is more worried about flying immigrants and use fl tax money to do it to make him look better. How was that presidential run doing mr pudding?
Sol Beloy
April 11, 2024 at 9:06 am
I went to law school and have 20 years in the insurance industry. What Governor Puddin’ Fingers claims is absolute lies.
Our auto and homeowners insurance industry has been a mess for about 25 years, the same amount of time we’ve had the GOP in power in Florida.
Moreover, 6.45% uninsured is a lie. It’s been well known in the auto insurance industry that it’s about 1/3 uninsured, 1/3 with state minimum coverage, and 1/3 who are responsible, carry proper coverage, and pay for everyone else who doesn’t.
We need MEANINGFUL legislation to curb the fraudulent and frivolous lawsuits, full stop.
Dont Say FLA
April 11, 2024 at 10:36 am
Company car insurance is a pretty good deal in Florida. That’s because Florida is “Good for Business.” When a state picks winners, it also picks losers. Businesses are the winners. Residents/workers are the loser.
Businesses in Florida can offer competitive sounding wages to attract workers, but the workers don’t know most of their wages will go to pick up the costs of their employer whose costs have been externalized to their workers via state policy that’s “good for business” … meaning bad for residents.
The work van you drive has relatively low insurance rates enjoyed by the business (and van) owner, and that’s because the employee driving the van pays their own private vehicle insurance at 3x the rate which picks up the money their employer isn’t paying directly for work var insurance, but instead pays it indirectly via their worker,c calling it wages, but then the insurance companies take 3x as much of it as they should for the one private vehicle owned and operated by the worker.
It’s called ‘”externalizing costs.” It’s why companies moved overseas and south of the board. Now these companies are coming back due to popular demand, but they are being offered incentives for coming back, and those incentive include continuation of externalized costs, so the burden of carrying the externalized costs also comes back, falling squarely onto the heads of the workers here in USA.
Sure, you got your job back, and it kinda looks like you got decent pay too, but the pay mostly is just funneling business expenses through you, the worker, to the industries that give employers incentives but still want their profits too, and the profits come from you, while you think you got yourself a good wage but nope. You got yourself barely minimum wage and now you’re a laundry facility that funnels money to industries you patronize that are also patronized by employers.
Ralph Gonzalez
April 12, 2024 at 10:26 am
Republican Governor Crist tried to go after the insurance industry but there was no support from his Republican legislature. That industry knows it has a great friend in Ron as he gave them sweeping legislation to limit claims and Ron looked the other way when rates still went up. I feel remorse for my Republican friends who are being lied to by their party many of whom know they are being lied to.
Michael roberts
April 12, 2024 at 7:34 pm
we have 3 children that went to Ivey league schools. there is fluff at all schools including the Ivey league. Rhonda going to a good school is no proof of intelligence.
Andy
April 12, 2024 at 7:52 pm
Hypocrite is the only word for DeSantis and all of the ‘Big Government’ FREEDOM CAUCUS’. Congress voted in 1963 to allow ONLY State regulation of insurance. That should appease the so called freedom caucus and its members like the Governor. But now that he is in control and CAN’T stop taking insurance campaign and lobby money for book tours and failed presidential aspirations, he wants to blame the President who did win!
Rick Whitaker
April 12, 2024 at 7:53 pm
if biden was the governor of florida it wouldn’t be screwed up like it is now. desantis has proved himself to be a boy in a man’s job.
Joe
April 22, 2024 at 5:14 pm
How much of a lack of knowledge can exist in a supposedly educated society? Apparently an unmeasurable amount of absolute stupidity. The governor is out in left field with a remark about Biden being responsible for auto insurance prices that are the most abusive that I have ever seen. How about calling the Insurance Regulatory Comission that has approved the massive increase. How about calling the governors office to see why a 24% rate hike was ever granted. How about calling the senators office. How about I have been doing this for weeks with no answers. How about we’re being sold down the river! It’s a state wide discrace!
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