This past weekend’s newspaper carried a blockbuster exposé about how insurance companies — some of which jacked up premiums after claiming they were losing money in Florida — had been playing shell games with their profits.
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Records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel revealed that about 50 companies that claimed to have lost a collective $432 million from 2017 to 2019 had actually sent $1.3 billion to affiliated companies elsewhere.
Theoretically, companies can set up and bill separate companies to do work for them. But the damning detail in this story is that the state’s own consultant determined that least 20 of these companies paid their affiliates more than the “fair and reasonable” amount allowed under state law.
So they were breaking the rules while shifting more than a billion bucks elsewhere and then crying poor here in Florida, according to a report taxpayers spent $150,000 to produce.
But the story got even slimier.
First, the state tried to hide all this information from the public — even while approving rate hikes for supposedly struggling companies and while passing laws that make it harder for homeowners to sue insurance companies that stiff them out of benefits.
Second, after the Sentinel and Sun Sentinel got ahold of this information that exposed the truth, the state tried to stop us from sharing it — with threats.
Specifically, the general counsel for the Florida Senate threatened the two newspapers with “civil or criminal” action if we didn’t destroy the documents and “shred all physical copies.”
We did not comply.
Why? Because unlike the politicians and bureaucrats who run this state, we’re not in the business of hiding information from the people who live here.
How Florida fights to hide insurers’ finances
We’ll talk more about the damning details from the report in a moment. But first, I wanted to share how we got here — what led us to the point where the state was threatening our journalists with third-degree felonies.
It started about a year ago when Florida’s two Tribune Publishing-owned newspapers decided to team up to investigate Florida’s costly and secrecy-shrouded insurance market.
Now, we have quite a few journalists who’ve written stories about the insurance industry through the years, led by the Sun Sentinel’s veteran insurance reporter Ron Hurtibise. I’ve also written a good deal about the issue.
But many of our pieces did more than just raise red flags. They raised more questions.
Yes, about companies using questionable accounting methods. But also about CEOs pocketing as much as $21 million right after the industry claimed it could barely make ends meet.
And about policy prices that rose for nine consecutive quarters right after Florida Republicans passed so-called “reform” measures that they promised would lead to relief.
I was also surprised and disturbed to learn that some companies were peddling policies to homebuyers, even when the state wasn’t sure the companies had the ability to pay all their claims if a major disaster struck. (Even more concerning: The state wouldn’t tell homeowners which companies had failed the state’s financial “stress tests.”)
So the papers embarked upon a year-long crusade for answers.
Maxwell: Florida’s insurance mess — big salaries, missing flood insurance, underfunded companies
The papers’ former editor, Julie Anderson, and her husband, Lars, made that crusade possible by making a grant to help fund the investigation. (Via our “Community News Funds” at orlandosentinel.com/donate and sunsentinel.com/donate)
Anderson said Tuesday that she and her husband had read the brow-raising stories and heard first-hand from frustrated Floridians who wanted answers. “We knew that only community newspapers could do this,” she said.
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Three reporters — Hurtibise, along with Skyler Swisher from the Orlando Sentinel and David Fleshler of the Sun-Sentinel — then started pulling records and doing research.
That’s when, as part of a public records request, the Florida Senate turned over the 2022 report that showed companies were paying excessive fees to their own affiliates.
One company reported $11 million in losses while sending $166 million to an affiliate. Another reported $81 million in losses but paid sibling companies $174 million. It went on and on.
Well, the Republican-controlled state senate didn’t want those numbers shared or that story told. So it threatened the newspaper.
Let’s pause here to appreciate the severity of all this — government officials threatening journalists with possible arrest for publishing information meant to help taxpayers and consumers.
Also, keep in mind: That threat came on the heels of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration ordering the Orlando Sentinel to “cease and desist” from reporting on the governor’s Hope Florida scandal. (Again, we did not comply.)
Maxwell: DeSantis orders Orlando Sentinel to stop investigating his scandal. That’s not happening.
And on the heels of DeSantis’ appointed attorney general, James Uthmeier, suggesting that other Florida journalists could be arrested if they kept reporting on the grand jury report in the scandal.
Do not go numb to these unprecedented, authoritarian attempts to control speech and journalism in the supposedly “Free State of Florida.”
Also, though, do not underestimate the courage or conviction of journalists in this state.
The Republican controlled Senate claimed it made a mistake in releasing the report on the insurance companies’ financial shell games.
But it has little legal or logical ground to stand on.
First of all, this was a report — paid for with tax dollars — that Senate staff freely handed over in response to a legal records request. Also, these aren’t some random internal financial transactions we’re talking about. These were transactions specifically flagged by the state’s own contracted consultant as being made in possible violation of state law. And these people want to protect the rule-breakers?
The editors of both papers stood firm in defending our right to publish. “The First Amendment guarantees our right to publish these findings, and we will not allow the Florida Senate’s threats to prevent us from reporting,” they said in a joint statement. “Homeowners deserve to know this important information that hits their pocketbooks.”
A-freakin’-men.
Listen, there’s no doubt that Florida’s insurance market is a troubled one — or that it makes sense that costs in this hurricane-prone state would be higher than elsewhere.
But when public officials spend public money on reports and supposed solutions, taxpayers deserve total transparency about how and why that money’s being spent.
Imagine if the politicians and bureaucrats in this state went as aggressively after the insurance companies that break the rules and deny valid claims as they do the journalists who expose it all.
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Florida hid insurance profits and did industry’s bidding | Commentary