EDITORIAL: Look hard at insurance in La.
The Daily Advertiser (excerpt)

The upcoming Louisiana legislative session is a general-purpose one, not restricted to taxes and other fiscal matters. So, typically, the Legislature will take on every topic imaginable.

We're glad one of those topics is insurance, the subject for an upcoming series of hearings by a joint legislative committee. Something is clearly wrong with our system, especially where homeowners insurance is concerned. The best look would come from the broadest field of view — the kind you get without ideological blinders. That may seem to be stating the obvious. After all, Louisiana was clobbered by Katrina and Rita not quite five years ago, and then by Gustav and Ike.

Of course our premiums are high, you might think, because insurers have been forced to pay out so much in claims. Yet there's more going on than hurricanes. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina and Rita, Louisiana had the second-highest average annual homeowner premium in the United States — just less than $1,100. The average U.S. homeowner premium was less than $700. The highest premiums were next door in Texas, where they had hurricane and other natural disaster problems as well, at more than $1,300. Hurricanes we certainly had here, but we might have expected a break because our average home value was ranked 43rd — not quite $96,000. The U.S. average at the time was about $151,000.