Floridians Will Only Continue to Pay More For Less Under Donalds and His Congressional Record and Campaign Donations Confirm It
WASHINGTON, DC – Florida homeowners pay more for home insurance than anywhere else in the country, an average of $8,292 in 2025 after an 18% single-year jump. Republican gubernatorial nominee and current congressional representative Byron Donalds claims he has some fixes, but his proposal, record, and words prove he will not fight for policyholders to lower risks and costs in Florida. In fact, he’s made it worse.
Donalds’s latest proposal defends the status quo, ignores growing risks, and will continue insurance corporations’ pattern and practice of profiteering off of Floridians as they pay more for less coverage. Donald’s suggestions are out-of-touch with the reality on the ground: Florida’s homeowners’ insurance crisis is hammering homeowners, small businesses, renters, retirees, affordable housing developers, and disrupting the state’s housing market. Donalds confirmed he is fine with insurance corporations passing the costs and risks associated with climate change onto policyholders, while continuing to underwrite and invest in the same polluters responsible for the crisis.
“Byron Donalds has had many opportunities to fight for and stand with Florida families paying the highest home insurance bills in the country, but he hasn’t. Donalds continues to stand up for the same home insurance industry profiting off Floridians,” said Jayson O’Neill, spokesperson for Unlocking America’s Future. “He wants voters to believe that he’ll do something after all his time in Congress. Don’t buy it. Insurers are making massive profits but Donalds falsely claims they can’t afford to give policyholders relief. His status quo proposal that the insurance lobby will love will only worsen this cascading crisis hammering Floridians pocketbooks, home values, and the state’s housing market. Floridians don’t need more empty platitudes to go with their empty wallets. They need politicians willing to fight and fix what’s broken instead of protecting the same corporations breaking it.”
Myth: Insurers can’t afford to give homeowners any relief.
Reality: Florida’s home insurers turned a $207 million underwriting profit in 2024, and property and casualty insurers nationwide made $405 billion in profit over the last three years. Florida is worst in the nation on claim payment delays, with 4 in 10 homeowners waiting over 60 days. Insurers make millions by delaying payments. A Florida-based insurer famously made headlines for awarding a $50 million bonus and many others are getting big bonuses and salary hikes.
Myth: Keeping the draconian tort reform law in place will finally bring rates down.
Reality: It hasn’t, and only slowed the rate of premium increases. The legislation did empower insurers to deny or lowball claims filed by policyholders. 14 Florida insurers closed more than half of homeowner damage claims with zero payment in 2024, and Floridians are being forced to sue their insurers at a higher rate than before the law took effect, more than ten times the rate anywhere else in the country.
Myth: Donalds’s proposal actually provides more consumer transparency.
Reality: An insurer scorecard duplicates a rate-comparison tool Florida’s insurance regulator already operates and other ratings analysis by private entities. Addressing this crisis will require more than republishing opaque and deficient data already provided by the very insurance corporations working to maximize their profit margins by avoiding transparency and hiding behind ‘trade’ secrets.
Myth: A state catastrophic fund, which already exists, would raise costs on Floridians.
Reality: As it stands, the current fund only provides reimbursements to insurers. The proposed fund targets the actual driver of runaway premiums, the escalating cost of hurricane risk, and is projected to cut premiums by as much as 60%. The fund would be bolstered by collecting home insurers’ taxes. Donalds has offered nothing of comparable scale and is defending the state’s de facto ‘home insurance corporations profit tax.’
Myth: Donalds’s proposal helps consumers.
Reality: He voted for a March 2025 spending package that cut FEMA’s budget by nearly $300 million, and he has taken more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from the property and casualty insurance industry over his career. He supports Trump’s failing economic policies, and has not acted to oppose Trump’s tariffs, driving up construction and rebuilding costs. His proposal does not lower a single premium or hold insurers accountable for delaying, denying, and defending claims.
Florida homeowners need elected officials who are not beholden to the industry, lobbyists and campaign donations for once. They need someone who will fight for real solutions to lower their costs and risks, including commonsense solutions like advancing the state-backed catastrophe fund with excessive insurance corporation profits. If Donalds was truly serious about lowering home insurance bills he would immediately use his congressional position to:
- Fight to restore the NOAA hurricane-forecasting and FEMA disaster-relief funding Donalds and Florida’s Republican delegation voted to cut;
- Require insurers to disclose profits, investment income, and claims-denial rates alongside every rate-hike request across the nation;
- Reject harmful and draconian litigation “reforms” that allow insurers to abuse the legal system and shield them from accountability for denied and underpaid claims;
- Fully fund and fix the National Flood Insurance Program;
- Prevent insurers from using credit scores in premium pricing; and
- Hold congressional hearings and conduct investigations into insurers’ pattern of delay, deny, and defend practices harming policyholders.
Unlocking America’s Future has documented Florida’s home insurance crisis extensively, including in an April 2026 report on the state’s congressional Republicans failing to act, and released a comprehensive fact sheet on the state of Florida’s homeowners’ insurance crisis, with numerous common-sense solutions to help lower costs and risks for policyholders.
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