Op-Ed: On insurance plans, why is Jolly embracing the DSA?

Audio By Carbonatix

In a year in which we would expect Democrats to want to have a stronger chance in the Free State of Florida, it begs the question: why is David Jolly, the guy at the top of their ticket, taking a page from the Democratic Socialists of America playbook when it comes to his insurance policy plan?

I have lived in the Sunshine State for more than 30 years and spent more than two decades working in public policy. Insurance, particularly property insurance, is an incredibly thorny issue in Florida to navigate. It’s an area of policy I have spent way more time on than any sane person should. And on this one, the last thing Floridians need is Jolly’s socialism-lite approach.

Most people recognize this, but maybe Mr. Jolly needs a quick refresher. Florida is a big peninsula with 1,300+ miles of coastline jutting out into the heart of hurricane alley. We can’t control our geography, and we can’t control our weather. What we can control is the crazy litigation landscape – and that’s exactly what we did. While he was making a name for himself on cable news and spending time in DC cocktail parties, Floridians were dealing with a roller coaster of challenges in the insurance market, driven mostly by out-of-control litigation. In 2019 alone, Florida comprised seven percent of the population, eight percent of the homeowners’ claims nationwide, but more than 75 percent of the litigation. This frenzy led to a near-death spiral of insurance carriers leaving the state, abandoning Floridians, and leaving the Florida taxpayers in the lurch. 

Thankfully, Florida legislators and Gov. Ron DeSantis brought the system back from the brink, passing needed reforms in 2022 and 2023 that are now showing tangible results.

In just one year, rate filings turned the corner: ten of the state’s insurers filed for no increase and at least eight filed for outright decreases. By late 2025, Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation had 73 rate-decrease filings and 94 filings for no increase. One specific carrier even requested a more than eight percent decrease for homeowners and 12 percent for condo owners in mid-2025. Policymakers should be doing exactly this -- correcting imbalances in the industry where they can, using conservative reforms to expand competition and increase the marketplace, and getting government out of the way. 

Which again begs the question – why does Mr. Jolly want to reverse course on reforms that are working?

Mr. Jolly is proposing an idea so awful, the only people who would benefit would be insurance company CEO’s, the extremely wealthy, and socialists. You have to hand it to him for bringing together such a motley crew. His idea to take hurricane insurance out of the private market and create a state-run “company” that would “spread the risk across all Floridians” reads like it came straight out of Das Kapital. It would pad the wallets of every insurance company CEO and do it on the backs of Floridians.

I am sure insurance companies love this idea. Why wouldn’t they? It allows them to offload the single biggest uncontrollable risk factor they face – onto every single Floridian. You know who else would welcome it? Anyone with a multi-million-dollar beach house. You can let everyday Floridians – those feeling the most pain from the Obama-Biden years – bear the cost of replacing the roof on your 20,000 square foot gulf-front property. Under his proposal, the nightmare scenario is highly likely.  With one massive storm, or series of storms, the damage could be so severe the state would face the impossible Sophie’s Choice – a massive hurricane tax on every Floridian to recoup the damage, or outright insolvency. This is precisely the Democratic Socialists of America wish list – make sure everyone feels the misery and make sure it’s exponentially worse than we need to bear.

Floridians are feeling pressure. They’re feeling it from the Biden administration inflation in which the Consumer Price Index rose more than 20 percent across his four years in the White House. They’re feeling it from local governments gone wild, where city and county revenue (that’s money from taxpayers) outpaced inflation by anywhere from 10 to 50 percentage points. If David Jolly has his way, they would feel it again from his desire to turn Florida from the Free State to the DSA State with his poorly cooked up hurricane tax plan.

Floridians should not be fooled – this idea should be rejected as forcefully as possible.