OPINION: Insurance Scam Causes Skyrocketing Insurance Rates For Florida Home Owners

[rangerrebew]

OPINION: Insurance Scam Causes Skyrocketing Insurance Rates For Florida Home Owners
9:00 AM 12/25/2018 | Opinion
Steve Pociask

Even before hurricanes hit Florida over the last two years, residents were seeing their homeowner’s insurance rates increase sharply for more than a decade year after year. The culprit for these increases surrounds scams by crooked contractors assisted by a cabal of trial attorneys.

Assignment of benefits (AOB) provisions allow insurance policyholders to transfer the right to collect benefits to a third party, usually a home repair contractor, who then bills the insurer directly for services.

While AOB provisions can be convenient for homeowners by allowing contractors to deal directly from the insurance company, shady contractors and their attorneys have abused AOB to submit inflated bills and threaten a lawsuit if the insurer doesn’t pay immediately.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/25/insurance-scam-florida-homeowners/

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

A bit off topic, but I'm one of those FL homeowners who have seen their insurance rates soar.

Just this afternoon I asked my agent about why I had so much coverage on the contents of my home.  I don't have or really want a lot of nice stuff.  Bringing it down to a reasonable level (for me) saved me $1000/year on my flood policy.  Looking a little closer, I can deduce that for every X dollars of coverage on the house, I was paying $3, while X dollars on contents cost $4, which I guess makes sense since houses are tough and cheap compared to nice things.