TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WFLA) — House lawmakers gathered at the statehouse Friday for a hearing to look into a bombshell report that Florida insurance companies were “ripping off” Floridians and misleading the legislature, claiming to be broke.

In a three-hour long hearing during the House Insurance and Banking Committee, the state’s current and former OIR commissioners stood before the legislature.

Lawmakers continuously begged the question, “Why was this report never brought to their attention?” In response, the current commissioner explained the report was imperfect and was still in draft mode.

“I will make myself, my team, whoever available to you, to go over any report we have,” said OIR Commissioner Michael Yaworsky.

Insurance is a top concern for Floridians statewide, which sparked the call on lawmakers to press insurance leaders.
“Our purpose today is to find out if insurance companies have been allegedly ripping us off, ripping the citizens of Florida off,” said State Rep. Mike Caruso, R-Delray Beach.

Lawmakers called on the OIR to complete and release the so called “secret study,” questioning them on who stopped the progress in the first place.

“We have looked hard and fast, I do not know,” Yaworsky said.

Both Democrats and Republicans continued to press the commissioner’s, all wanting to get to the bottom of this uncertainty.

“Why did the investigation stop? Why didn’t we get a completed report? What happened? Who made that decision to say this isn’t important enough?” said State Representative Susan Valdes, R-Tampa.
In response, Former Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier said, “I would say nobody made that decision, and candidly, when I was asked to come and speak here today, that’s the one question that I haven’t been able to come up with an answer to.”

Altmaier added that he thought the work was continuing after his resignation and knew how important this report was.

“Was the governor’s office ever notified? Especially since we were in an insurance crisis at the time,” asked State Representative Dianne Hart, D-Tampa.

After the hours of back and forth, current Commissioner Michael Yaworsky shared with lawmakers that he does not consider the product of the report good, but rather highly imperfect.

“As I said earlier, if the legislature says they want this, we will conduct the evaluations again,” Yaworsky said.

Firing back, Representative Caruso said, “I think we want it, I think we are all screaming for it. I can see everyone’s heads nodding.”
Lawmakers assure this is only just the beginning of the investigation. State Representative Brad Yeager, the Insurance and Banking Chair, shared with reporters that the committee will meet further on the matter as needed in the weeks to come.