The US Treasury Department’s recent multi-billion dollar bailout of major insurance companies including Allstate, Texas’s second largest homeowners insurance provider, reminds us how much reform is needed in the insurance industry. With respect to insurance, Texans are already paying too much and getting too little, and are now being billed twice. On the front end, homeowners pay increasingly steep rates—the highest in the nation, in fact—all the while, insurance companies seems to be in a race to the bottom in terms of coverage. And now, on the back end, Texans are seeing their tax dollars used to rescue the very companies that charged the skyrocketing rates of their dreams.

This double robbery is depleting Texas families’ pocketbooks, and in turn, hurting the state’s economy. If we are to ever rise from the current economic downturn, the Legislature needs to usher in some accountability. By implementing policies requiring companies justify rate changes before they go into effect, lawmakers can better ensure that insurance is affordable, available and adequate. By failing to pursue this fundamental element of real insurance reform, however, lawmakers will be party to a system that zaps the income of everyday Texans, further hamstringing our economy. And the price of that, both monetary and political, would prove to be too expensive for everyone.