JACKSON, Miss.–The Mississippi Department of Insurance is suing the federal government to try and stop flood insurance rate hikes from going into place.
That’ll happen October 1 under the National Flood Insurance Program unless something is done.
“You’re going to see some policies that are $400 a year and being subsidized going up to $14,000 in some cases,” said state insurance commissioner Mike Chaney.
That type of increase is obviously not feasible for most Americans according to the state.
“A lot of the other commissioners and I are very concerned about how people can stand a 1,600 percent rate increase,” he said. “It’s one that will affect their pocket book.”
In 2012 the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act removed subsidies for properties in flood zones, which equates out to about 14 percent of people in Mississippi.
“What’s causing it is what is causing Obamacare to be so bad,” he said. “They passed a bill they didn’t read.”
The lawsuit filed says that over 17 million people in the U.S. live where flood insurance is mandatory but one of the huge problems is that over 40 percent of them have low to median household income.
Oddly enough there is an affordability study going on currently to look at the possible costs problem, but it’ still not finish.
Mississippi is saying in their lawsuit that FEMA was obligated to give Congress the affordability study this last spring but failed, and is asking the rate increases be blocked until FEMA does so.
“Mississippi and a couple of others states have been totally re-mapped due to Hurricane Katrina,” said Chaney. “This means that Mississippi’s citizens will be among the first in the nation to have these drastic rate increases imposed, and that Mississippi’s citizens will pay for them many years before citizens of other states are required to do likewise.”
