Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Blames 'Wokeness' for Fragile Insurance Market

But I thought Florida is where woke goes to die or some dumb shit like that?

So in a twisted way he’s right? Florida’s is where insurance goes to die?
- I think insurance leaves, Florida dies. Or at least submerges.

If we say he's right and just pretend to go along with it, will he dismantle the insurance industry for us?

Fingers crossed he'd give his best attempt
No they'll just find a way to make it legal to arrest liberals for merely disagreeing with them

Yet another rich, entitled, white moron with power.

Ugh, I only have one of those qualities. :-(
- i wish whiteness brought us all the riches but it just don't work enough :(
  with that being said these rich entitled morons should be put into FEMA camp staffed by Obama death panels. That election promise was never delivered.
- Sorry, dummy.
Yikes, insult people for things they can change, not things they were born with
- How about folks like that stop hoarding their money, use their white, rich entitlement to help others for a fucking change, not sleep through their education that was handed them, and learn to give a fuck? Seems to cover all the bases you're worried about, sport.

Same old story from republican politicians. Don’t have any answer to a problem? Blame wokeness / gay or trans people / whatever minority you feel like scapegoating today.

These insurance companies that are pulling out of CA and FL have done business in those states for ever, but now they can't afford to stay because something changed. In California, it's that we're having a lot more frequent and severe fires. In FL, IIRC, it's more frequent and severe storm damage. What would have changed that would cause these things? Gosh, I feel like it's on the tip of my tongue.

You're not wrong, but it actually gets worse than that. Florida specifically has made an ever increasing hostile environment for home owners insurance companies specifically. The way the Florida laws work make it very easy for rampant fraud to happen. Florida home owners basically know that you should never pay to replace your own roof, that's what insurance is for. Every time there's the lightest hailstorm or tropical storm you'll have storm chasers handing out fliers in neighborhoods promising to get your roof repaired at very low prices. These companies then turn around and essentially sue the insurance companies. This is just one of the ways that it's become unprofitable to run insurance in FL, but there's many and FL legislature is fighting to make it worse every day.
- Yeah it’s wild, the week following a thunderstorm with hail I would get 3 or more door to door roofers every day trying to assess the roof to get insurance to pay for a replacement. I don’t know anyone in Florida who paid out of pocket to replace their roof.
- Floridiot here, thanks for the succinct explanation. There's definitely more at play here than just climate change and (lack of) policy. We recently passed legislation to resolve the frivolous lawsuits but it only went into effect recently and as you can imagine, there was a massive influx of suits filed right before the deadline. It will take years or more to sort them all out so insurers are just like fuck Florida then, we're out.
So CA is a bit different. The state rules require the premium be priced basically looking back at the last 20 years of actual sustained losses in the area. That seems like a good consumer rule to prevent price gouging but State Farm are (probably quite reasonably) saying that with the increased risk due to climate change and the increased rebuild cost, they can't square those numbers.
I do wonder about Farmer's decision though, because as I understand it, in FL, they aren't similarly restricted and could price their policy however they need to balance the numbers. Perhaps PR-wise it's easier to leave the market than double everyone's prices. It's definitely a vicious cycle though, as more insurers leave the market, this risk will get concentrated on fewer and fewer players and their catastrophe models will show their increased risk and so on..

That's the beauty of a concept like "wokeness." It means whatever they want it to mean.

Yeah, fascism needs an enemy to function and the brilliance of "wokeness" is that it is so versatile.
"Insurance companies are leaving Florida, it absolutely is the fault of those leftis. They probably cancelled their own insurance policies, and the insurance companies were forced to cancel Florida. Don't be mad at us, be mad at them."

So he's saying that insurance companies are putting political ideology ahead of profit. I wonder if those companies' shareholders agree. I suspect they do not.

It's pretty on-brand for any insurance company to fiercely reject liberal ideology. I mean, liberals endorse socialized medicine and a wealth tax, which directly threaten the existence of the health insurance sector and threaten record profits across the board for insurance companies.
But, "wokeness" isn't why their leaving Florida, they're leaving Florida because the full blown climate crisis caused by the candidates and policies they endorse that has made it impossible to make any meaningful profits in the state.

"FUCK, STUBBED ME TOE! It's the god damned leftists again!"

-Conservatives

You gotta love how powerful they think we are, despite there being no major left-wing party in the United States.

And no, our Neoliberal party is center-right. Our right-wing party is just straight up fascist.

The US has a conservative party and a reactionary party.
Having both friends and enemies that don't really exist benefits fascism. That's why they rail against Jewish neo-marxist pedophile cabals and why they defend the unborn but drop actually children like hot rocks. They don't care about reality at all, because reality doesn't serve them. They care about shaping narratives where a powerful enemy is waiting in the wings and you need to give the fascists more power to protect the sweet, delicate babies from the enemy.

Is this guy stupid? Yes he is.

Maybe. But his audience that laps this absurd BS up? Definitely.

Outside of cult worship, random acts of bigotry, and calling anything that they dislike "woke", are the Republicans just completely out of new material?

I'm pretty sure you just wrote down the tenets of conservatism there.
They haven't changed anything since 2016.
- They've lost or barely scraped out a minor win in every election since 2016. There's no indication yet that 2024 will be any different. Their only option at this point is to seize power and never let go.
  They'd rather rule over ashes than stop supporting extremists from the far right.
- They haven't really changed anything since 1980.
Pretty much. Give it about 15 months and the immigrant caravans juuuust across the border about to take your jobs and guns will likely come up again in the song rotation. Oh and they’re bringing child labor back so going with some deep cuts as well.
Why change things up when it's still working for them?

I guess the ability to assess risk is "woke."

The conservative attitude to climate change would indicate as such, yes ;p
- A.k.a. Reality is woke.

Fuckin' woke ass Irma, Michael and Andrew bringing in their other woke ass friend Ian, fuckin' up the goddamned insurance market!

So Florida should be really happy that “WoKE” insurance companies left Florida! Right?

Republicans are brainwashed beyond point of no return

The insurance companies and homeowners have now been fully awakened to the impending disasters that will be caused by climate change. Florida is screwed, and they're getting their wake-up call ahead of most other states.

If we hadn't stopped trump from redirecting that hurricane with a sharpie everything would be fine

A lot of comments are taking this goof at face value. He knows it's not wokeness. But he also knows that the right wing will gobble up that excuse rather than face the reality that thr climate change they've spent the last quarter century denying is starting to affect them.

The part that bugs me is that these are just the annoyances of climate change, we ain't seen nothing compared to what's coming! Admittedly, most of the right wing goofs who denied it for so long will be dead so what do they care?

Lol. Big surprise when an insurance company is going to act like an insurance company. "You aren't taking the necessary steps that our insurance requires, so we're not going to cover you." That's how it goes. Plus if Patronis just seems like he doesn't know the difference between the political and social lines.

So, when thousands (millions?) of people are suddenly homeless there in another month, I'm sure they'll comforted by the fact that this guy is "investigating" the "wokes" who made their free money run away.

It’s always adorable at first- when all the right-wing clowns find a new boogeyman to prop up as then next thing to terrify their base. Until they start weaponizing their hate against it, that is.

Then, sadly people die and oppressive laws get made.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over weaponized hate against huge corporations. At least they are punching up for once.

Here's the true wokeness that impacts Florida's insurance market.

I'm sorry, you seemed to have posted facts. Please be advised that the Florida government is a designated fact-free zone, so those aren't allowed.
So next target will be NOAA. Those evil "Letter People" are obviously using all of the Jewish Space Lasers to send trans hurricanes to attack Florida.

Thanks Wokebama.

Capitalism is woke now.

Start calling things they like woke like Nazis and churches. Once everything is woke, nothing is.

Alt right: stop copying us!

Perhaps he should make consequences instead, no home insurance then no car insurance in Florida. I bet insurance companies would change their tune on rolling out.

Sure buddy, and "anti-woke" magical thinking is going to keep our homes from being flooded or destroyed by the next bout of hurricanes and intense weather.

Oh and then there's how super hot Florida currently is.

This state is being ran by idiots, idiots that I've been voting against for my entire adult life.

What a fucking idiot.

taking a page from the Catholic church, eh?