Florida insurance premium costs are dropping, the number of civil lawsuits being filed is decreasing, “nuclear verdicts” are becoming less common and more insurers are entering the Sunshine State, a new study on the impact of tort reforms concluded.
The study from the advocacy group Consumer Choice Center found that the trends affecting Florida consumers in the wake of the enactment of House Bill 837 in 2023 and other reforms have been positive. HB 837 provided more transparency about medical damages during trials, barred plaintiffs who are more than 50% at fault for an injury from recovering damages, eliminated one-way attorney fees in insurance claims and redefined what constitutes “bad faith” by insurers in addressing claims.
The study, which was released this month, found that although there has been an increasing risk of severe weather such as hurricanes, inflation in building material costs and rising litigation costs in recent years, the state is currently enjoying a “a quantifiable reduction and stabilization” in property insurance rates.
“... Data from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation shows that in 2025 over 20% of (the state-run) Citizens Property Insurance Corp. policyholders will have an average of 5.6% decrease in insurance premiums statewide – most of which are in Miami-Dade County – and more than 477,000 individual policies are moving from the state-run insurer to private insurers,” the study states.
In addition, a survey from S&P Global Market Intelligence found that Florida had the lowest average increase in home insurance costs last year (1%), while insurance cost increases in other states, such as Iowa and Minnesota, were 20%.
“In the field of auto insurance, though the data is preliminary, insurers such as GEICO, Progressive and State Farm have filed for insurance rate reductions of 10.5%, 8.1%,and 6%, respectively, marking a dramatic shift from years of increases,” the study reported.
The past reforms provided that medical costs affecting plaintiffs in litigated claims must be what the plaintiff actually paid, not exaggerated “stick prices” that may initially be billed. But legislators now are looking at reversing the reforms in HB 837, and that could unravel the gains consumers have reaped through the current insurance trends, according to a co-author of the report, Yaël Ossowski.
“Reversing course on this particular reform would once again create the incentive for inflated medical costs and projections beyond what is reasonable, leading to higher costs for insurers or health providers that will be passed on to consumers,” Ossowski, who is also the deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, told the Florida Record in an email.
Although some observers have criticized the tort reforms for not bringing down insurance costs as fast as they had hoped, Ossowski stressed that consumers and insurers have benefited from the resulting market stability and reduced litigation.
“It is a net benefit for patients, consumers and Florida residents who want more competition and lower prices,” he said.
The center’s report found that by late 2023, county civil case resolutions in Florida declined by 12%, and year-over-year small claims dropped 27%, based on data from the Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator.
And 2023 data from Marathon Strategies found that based on the number of “nuclear verdicts” (verdicts of more than $10 million) in Florida, the state went from the second-highest venue in the nation to seventh.
Since HB 837 was enacted, the number of new property insurers doing business in Florida has risen by 10, the study said.