Gov. Edwards is willing to meet with Tim Temple over insurance reform ideas

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Governor John Bel Edwards says he is open to meeting with incoming insurance commissioner Tim Temple about some of Temple’s ideas related to the insurance crisis.

Temple recently won the race by default when the only other candidate dropped out of the contest. Longtime Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon decided not to seek re-election this fall.

In an interview with FOX 8 last week, Temple talked about the need for Louisiana to be more welcoming to insurers and to make the regulatory environment friendlier.

RELATED STORIES

Louisiana’s new insurance commissioner wants to scale up competition

One-on-one with Insurance Commissioner-elect Tim Temple

Temple was asked if he favored allowing insurers to raise rates more than once a year in Louisiana.

He replied, “The law says an insurance company can go and seek rate relief, rate change as often as they want as long as its actuarily sound justified, that it’s not excessive, that its rate adequate and it doesn’t discriminate. So the law says you can do that as often as you want. The current administration says you can only do it once every 12 months.”

When asked what his administration would do in that regard, Temple said, “We’ll follow the law.”

FOX 8 asked Edwards about that idea during his stop in New Orleans on Wednesday (Sept. 6).

“Tim Temple is someone that I’ve known for a while, he is very serious and he’s very thoughtful and I guess like all of us that doesn’t mean he’s always right. I would be very concerned about some of the things that he is saying would help with the insurance market in Louisiana,” said Edwards.

Edwards went on to say, “It seems to me it would tilt things too much in favor of the insurance companies and away from the insureds, the consumers in Louisiana who have been left high and dry too often by their insurers. But I’m certainly somebody who’s willing to sit down with Tim and get his ideas.”

Temple wants the legislature to hold a special session in January to tackle insurance reform.

After serving two terms, Edwards has a few months left in office as governor. But he said he will continue to be a Louisiana resident after he leaves office in January, and he cares about what will be done to address the insurance crisis.

“It doesn’t mean that I stop caring because I’m going to continue to be a Louisiana citizen and resident, I have homeowners’ insurance myself so I would be paying real careful attention but some of the things he’s saying I think probably make sense, some other things were actually considered and rejected by the legislature appropriately this year,” said Edwards.

See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Click Here to report it. Please include the headline.

Subscribe to the Fox 8 YouTube channel.

Copyright 2023 WVUE. All rights reserved.