Rick Scott says next Governor will have to fix insurance problem of the ‘last six and a half years’

Rick Scott, Jeff Merkley file bill to stop U.S. funds for Chinese forced labor.

Sen. Rick Scott didn’t use the name, but he made it clear Ron DeSantis was to blame.

On Monday, Florida’s former Governor, who was in office at the time, said the next one will have to fix the current insurance mess that started when he handed over the keys to the Governor’s Mansion to now-Gov. DeSantis.

“Since I left as Governor six and a half years ago, property insurance has almost doubled. Car insurance has gone up … I think clearly, in the next Governor’s race, a big issue is going to be, who is going to fix the property insurance issue in Florida,” the Senator told talk show host Charlie Kirk.

Scott’s complaints about the insurance market are nothing new.

Last October, he said rates had “skyrocketed” since he left the Governor’s Mansion at the end of 2018. Before that, he said high rates were “bankrupting” the state, described the state’s insurance marketplace as a “disaster,” and said the departure of Farmers Insurance was a “wake-up call” to the state.

Polling shows Florida Republicans are most worried about insurance costs.

For his part, DeSantis has talked up reforms in the property insurance sector, which he says is the “most complicated homeowner’s insurance market in the country, maybe in the world.”

DeSantis said earlier this year that the market was stable after previous turbulence. Key to that effort has been the ongoing offloading of policies from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a process commonly referred to as “depopulation.”

The state’s insurer of last resort has fewer than 780,000 policies issued, which is the lowest number since February 2022.

Meanwhile, Michael Yaworsky, the Commissioner of Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation, said earlier this year that the market is in a good place.

He told the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee in January that “most people are managing to afford insurance,” the cost of which has stabilized around $3,700 per household.