Louisiana’s Insurance Crisis Demands Bold Action

Article originally written for Bayou Progressive. Check them out and give them a follow on Instagram and Facebook. Image credit above to Bayou Progressive.

All across Louisiana, families are feeling it: the sharp squeeze of insurance premiums rising faster than our paychecks, pricing people out of their homes and choking our economy. It’s no longer just a coastal crisis. It’s hitting every parish, every income level, and every generation.

This is the biggest economic emergency in Louisiana right now. Not immigrants, chemtrails and DEI. It’s insurance—especially homeowners insurance. And while our legislators debate around the edges, the storm is already overhead.

Let’s be honest: our Republican leaders don’t have a plan. They are ideologically incapable of offering a real solution because doing so would mean accepting the reality of climate change, relying on government for collective action, and raising revenue to pay for it. So it’s no surprise their answer—again—is tort reform, for the umpteenth time. Notice how they’re focusing solely on auto insurance to buy time and distract attention. It lets them pretend they’re “doing something” by dusting off old scapegoats like trial lawyer billboards, all while whittling down our rights to be made whole. That might lure a few raggety insurers in, but it’s not a solution. It hasn’t worked before, and it won’t work now.

Some in our own party are doing important work—defending your right to sue when insurers don’t pay, exposing big insurance corporate profits while homeowners drown in bills. These are good and necessary fights. But they’re still not enough. We’re missing something bigger: a bold, clear vision to actually bring premiums down—substantially and fast.

That’s what we need right now. It’s not enough to slow the bleeding. We have to stop it—and start reversing the costs back to what they were years ago.

Here’s the truth: insurance rates are skyrocketing because Louisiana is one of the riskiest states in America. Not because of our people—but because of where we live and what’s been done to it. For a hundred years, massive corporations—especially in oil, gas, and chemicals—have extracted our wealth, offshored their profits, and left us with the fallout: coastal erosion, stronger hurricanes, more flooding, and now skyrocketing insurance bills.

And now regular people are being told to pay for it. Worse still, instead of admitting why premiums are rising, they’re blaming us—claiming we sue too much when we get hurt or shortchanged.

It’s time to build an Insurance Premium Relief Fund—a bold, state-level program designed to drive premiums down fast. At the heart of this fund would be direct cash transfers to homeowners, putting money back in people’s hands to help cover the soaring cost of insurance—without waiting on insurers to “pass along” savings. This is real, immediate help. The fund could also create a public reinsurance market—buying coverage in bulk and offering it to insurers at a discount, but only if they provide affordable policies to everyone and pay fair claims on time. It could fund home fortification grants so families qualify for discounts, and restore our coastlines to reduce future risk. This isn’t just a patch—it’s a plan to take control of the crisis and deliver relief where it’s needed most.

To do all this, we’ll need billions in funding every year. But that money shouldn’t come from working families—it should come from the industries that helped cause the crisis. We need to pass a fair pollution fee or climate risk surcharge—a comparatively small cost for large corporations that would barely dent their profits. A $25 fee per metric ton of CO₂ could raise $5–7 billion annually. These companies make hundreds of billions in profits each year. This would be a drop in the bucket for them—and a lifeline for us.

This isn’t about punishment. It’s about fairness. If a multinational corporation helped make Louisiana nearly uninsurable, they should help fix it. If a company made billions extracting our resources and shipping the profits out of state—while Louisiana families now pay thousands just to keep a roof over their heads—it’s time to help bring those bills down.

We can’t afford timidity anymore. Democratic leaders in Louisiana can’t wait for Washington. We must lead now. We must show voters—Black and white, rural and urban, left and right—that someone actually has a plan. One that’s honest about the scale of the problem and bold enough to solve it. Let’s give people something real to believe in—a blueprint to fix this crisis and rebuild trust.

This isn’t radical. This is survival. It’s a path to stability, fairness, and prosperity. It’s how we protect the Louisiana we love—from our neighborhoods to our natural heritage.

In the coming years of MAGA rule—when their only agenda is to take even more from Louisiana families—we have a chance to make this fight the centerpiece of a new movement. One that finally gives back what was unrightfully taken.

Let’s start building something bold.

Article originally written for Bayou Progressive. Check them out and give them a follow on Instagram and Facebook.