While NAIC President Jim Donelon met with President Barack Obama on healthcare policy extensions yesterday, he used the opportunity to raise a subject close to his own heart: delaying steep increases in flood insurance rates.
Donelon is not only president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, he is also the insurance commissioner for Louisiana—a state expected to be hit hard by rate increases when the 2012 Biggert-Waters Act comes to town.
To protect homeowners from premium hikes of up to 3,000% in some areas, Donelon asked the President to exempt Louisiana from the effects of the law.
Donelon used documentation prepared by groups like Greater New Orleans Inc., the National Association of Homebuilders and the National Association of Realtors to convince Obama that such rate increases would be detrimental to home and business owners in the state.
“We have a working coast, not second or vacation homes,” he said. “This is important for Louisiana as well as the rest of the country. We need forbearance from the rate increases mandated by the 2012 law.”
Roughly 49% of flood insurance policyholders in Louisiana receive government subsidies, but Donelon and other state advocates say the subsidies aren’t enough to defend the area from the economic consequences of Biggert-Waters.
Instead, the state needs special “forbearance” from the White House not granted to other states, he said.
The outreach to the President is the latest in a series of efforts Louisiana has made to stall rate increases, including hosting a roundtable discussion with FEMA, supporting a Mississippi lawsuit against the agency and sponsoring congressional legislation to halt the rate hikes.
Obama agreed to read the documentation, but declined to make a commitment to act on it, Donelon said.
