INSURANCE AND MORE THAN DUMB TV ADS!

Monday, August17th, 2026

Baton Rouge  Louisiana

INSURANCE AND MORE THAN DUMB TV ADS!

Like most of you, I’ve had my fill of political ads and trial lawyer solicitations that seem to be constantly appearing on TV.  But you know what bothers me even more? I’m sick of seeing that goofy commercial of some dumb and disheveled looking guy talking to an ostrich.  “You only pay for what you need,” so it goes.  So just how much automobile insurance do you really need?

Let’s say you’re driving down the road with your family in the car and are broadsided by an illegal immigrant with no insurance. There are many such unlicensed drivers in Louisiana today. The other driver is at fault. Your car is totaled, and both you and the other passengers in your vehicle are seriously injured. The medical bills alone could add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And what about pain and suffering as well as loss of income. We’re now talking into the millions. Let’s ask the stupid guy with the mustache and his ostrich friend. How much do you need?

Year in and year out, Louisiana drivers pay more for auto insurance than any other state in the nation.  So the real question is not how much you need, but just how much you can afford. The cost to many policyholders is staggering.  The Louisiana Legislature recently completed a wide-ranging special session.  Yet there was not one proposal or even a discussion about the outrageous cost of car insurance.  Like the ostrich in the TV commercial, legislators stuck their heads in the sand and ignored the problem that is costing Louisiana drivers more than three billion dollars (not million but billion) in additional costs.  And most of that additional premium is sent to insurance companies located outside the state.  So local disposable  income and spending in the state is reduced by this three billion dollars.

Drivers in Louisiana need major financial coverage for all the numerous dangers of driving a vehicle in the Bayou State.  But the failure of the legislature to see that current laws are enforced, and that penalties for dangerous driving are increased, makes affordable insurance way out of reach for the average policyholder.

Louisiana’s insurance mess is the result of numerous factors that include poor drivers, lax DUI enforcement, inferior highways, and speeding that all play a role in the state’s high rates. And the Governor needs to be involved, working closely with the insurance commissioner.Under the regulatory system in Louisiana, the governor and the insurance commissioner are both independently elected. So unless the insurance commissioner aggressively pushes the governor to become involved, the chief executive keeps a distance. He figures he has enough on his plate.  In a majority of states, insurance commissioners are appointed by the governor. So there has to be a close working relationship.

Let me give you a few examples of the insurance commissioner and the governor working together. Some years back, I went to the North Carolina Mountains over Mardi Gras. On many cold mountain mornings on my way to fish, I would stop at Faye’s General Store in Linville, North Carolina to catch up on the local gossip and pick up a neatly tied Stonefly or G-Nell fly. Then it would be off to a local stream with my Orvis two-piece, two weight, six-foot long graphite rod that I borrowed years ago from an old New Orleans friend, David Voelker.

I was at Faye’s drinking coffee around 7:30 a.m. when the phone rang. One of the locals picked it up and told me that Louisiana Governor Mike Foster was calling.  Now, remember, it’s 6:30 a.m. in Louisiana, and it’s Mardi Gras. I thought it was my wife Gladys playing a joke on me.  But, no, it was the governor on the line. “Jim, Mike Foster. Got a minute?”

“Morning Governor. You sure know how to run a fellow down, don’t you?”

“I called Gladys, she told me you’d gotten out early. I don’t want to disturb your fishing, but I just want to talk a little insurance with you.”

My coffee drinking companions at Faye’s had a hard time believing that the Louisiana governor would call me up in the North Carolina Mountains at the crack of dawn on a state holiday to discuss insurance business.  Simply put, it was the governor and the insurance commissioner working together.

So when you see the TV ads with the ostrich and the weird insurance salesman, remember that what you need in Louisiana is a heck of a lot more than most of us can afford.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.