In partnership with NonDoc, The Frontier fact-checked some claims by the four Republican candidates for Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner, Chris Merideth, Marty Quinn, Greta Shuler and Bob Sullivan, during a June 8 debate at the Tower Theatre in Oklahoma City.
The Frontier used interviews, public records and news archives to verify information.
Claim: Even with Oklahoma’s limitations on punitive damages, insurance claims for property worth tens of thousands of dollars can balloon into the millions.
Shuler said: “Punitive damages are already capped on most of that, but then the actual damages are unlimited, so it can go over to the millions.”
Fact check: Mostly true
Oklahoma law allows juries to award actual damages to cover costs and punitive damages as a way to punish bad actors. These punitive damages are capped in all but the most serious cases.
Actual damages like the cost of repairing a roof, lost wages, medical bills, business losses and other related expenses do not have a cap, said Sen. Brent Howard, R-Altus. But Oklahoma did institute a $500,000 cap on non-economic damages last year, which
can include mental anguish and pain and suffering.
In the last several decades, juries across Oklahoma have awarded millions of dollars in actual damages to plaintiffs against insurance companies that were acting in bad faith. This includes a $92-million total award in 2024 and an early 2000s case where homeowners were awarded around $13 million. Both cases were eventually dismissed and settled.
-Kayla Branch
Claim: California’s insurance market has collapsed because of over-regulation and insurance is difficult to obtain, while Florida’s has brought insurers back to its market and lowered costs by implementing lawsuit reform and building requirements.
Merideth said: “California tried to regulate out of it. Their market collapsed. You can’t find insurance. Now, Florida, they went into fortified roofs, they changed how they build to fight the weather that they’re having, and then they passed litigation reform. Prices dropped, and new insurance companies came on the market.”
Fact check: Mixed
Many insurers have stopped writing new policies in California or have left the state in recent years, citing the cost of devastating fires, as well as state regulations. The state has experienced more than a dozen massive wildfires since 2017, causing big financial losses for insurers, according to a 2025 report to Congress. California passed a law in 1988 that requires insurers to seek approval from the state for property and casualty rate increases. The approval process is typically supposed to be completed within 60 days, but a spokesperson for the state’s insurance department said in 2024 that some approvals have taken more than a year. Companies like State Farm and AIG have cited challenges like increasing wildfires and heavy insurance regulations in their decisions to limit operations in California. The California Department of Insurance also filed an enforcement action against State Farm in May for allegedly violating the law in handling hundreds of claims from the Los Angeles wildfires last year, and is seeking up to $10,000 per wilful violation of the law and a potential license suspension for up to a year. Farmers Insurance said last year it would remove caps on the number of insurance policies it offers in the state after Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara announced plans to return to the 60-day approval deadline and allow insurers to use models that help them predict natural disasters like wildfires and floods when setting rates.
Between 2020 and 2022, about a dozen insurance companies in Florida were declared insolvent or left the state, with some in the industry blaming the cost of “runaway litigation.” A 2021 report from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation indicated that homeowner’s insurance lawsuits in Florida accounted for more than 76% of all litigation against insurers across the country that year. Florida passed legislation in 2023 that reduced the statute of limitations for general negligence cases from four years to two years, and eliminated a way for plaintiffs’ attorneys to collect fees from insurers if they win a case. Florida Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky credited the reforms for helping new insurers enter the market and keep rates competitive. The state also requires insurance companies to offer discounts for taking steps to mitigate damage from hurricane-force winds. But a 2025 study published by Insurify, an insurance-comparison website, found that Florida was still the most expensive state for home insurance, following an 18% spike that year. Matt Brannon, an economic analyst for Insurify told WPTV in Florida that “in 2026, we expect rates to go up but maybe not at the same pace as they’ve gone up in the past.”
-Ari Fife
Claim: California’s regulation of insurance rates caused some major insurance companies to flee the state.
Merideth said: “You’re not learning the lessons of California. If you’re going to over-regulate the insurance companies, they will leave, and they don’t care. They don’t care.”
Fact check: Mostly true
For decades, California’s system limited insurers’ ability to set homeowners’ rates using computer models that estimate future wildfire risk and restricted how much they could include reinsurance costs — the cost of backup insurance that insurance companies buy for themselves.
By September 2023, seven of California’s 12 largest insurers had paused or restricted new policies. State Farm, California’s largest home insurer, announced in May 2023 that it would stop accepting new applications for homes in the state, citing “historic increases in construction costs,” “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure” and the rising cost of reinsurance.
Insurers argued that California’s rate rules made it difficult to charge premiums that reflected those rising costs and risks. Allstate, which had stopped writing new California homeowners policies, later said it could return if the state allowed insurers to use catastrophe models.
Statewide median premiums remained relatively low during the period, though some homeowners in high-risk areas struggled to find coverage at all.
In late 2024, the state insurance commissioner changed the rules to let insurers use catastrophe models and include some reinsurance costs when seeking rate increases, while requiring them to write more policies in high-risk areas.
Other rules, separate from rates, may also have contributed to insurers’ pullback from the state. California has barred insurers since 2019 from dropping many homeowners in areas hit by major wildfires for one year after a disaster. The policy helped people keep their insurance in the short term. But some research found that once those protections expired, insurers sharply increased the number of policies they chose not to renew.
-Garrett Yalch
Claim: Passing laws to limit how much money a homeowner or other claimant can be awarded in court if they successfully sue an insurance company on a claim is a proven way to bring down insurance rates.
Quinn said: “USAA just announced, within the last couple of days, a return of almost a billion dollars to its members. How’d they do that? Litigation changes, tort reform. Their cost went from $3 billion to $107 million that resulted in a refund to their members… Oklahoma, if it wants lower rates, in auto or home, the first, the fastest, the quickest way for us to lower that is legal reform, tort reform.”
Fact check: Mixed
USAA announced this year that it would deliver almost $1 billion in savings and returns to eligible Florida policyholders as a result of the legal reforms that have helped lower insurance costs. Quinn told The Frontier he based the claim on USAA’s recent refund in Florida. But The Frontier couldn’t find solid proof that legal reforms to make it harder to sue insurers will always reduce costs.
– Ashlynd Baecht
Claim: The data and methodology Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready used to deem that the state insurance market is competitive were provided by the same insurance companies that have a vested interest in the outcome.
Sullivan said: “The metrics that they’re using to deem Oklahoma a competitive market were metrics handed to them by the American Association of Property and Casualty Insurance Companies. So, the insurance companies that have a vested interest in making sure that the market’s deemed competitive are providing the measuring stick that the insurance commissioner is using to measure.”
Fact check: False
The Frontier was unable to find evidence that the metrics used by Mulready to determine if the Oklahoma insurance market is competitive were directly provided or
suggested by an insurance trade group as the metrics that the state should use in making its determination.The state used a standard economic model, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, and another common measure called the Four-Firm Concentration Ratio, Mulready told The Frontier. The data his office uses, and that is used by many insurance industry trade groups, comes from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Mulready said. But Oklahoma Watch reported in 2025 that these measures don’t take into account a scenario where there is one dominant insurer in the state with several subsidiaries. Mulready told Oklahoma Watch that the calculations are based on individual companies, rather than groups, meaning that even if an insurance provider is a subsidiary of a larger insurance company, those companies are counted separately, possibly pushing up the appearance of a more competitive market. Mulready told The Frontier that the distinction would not cause a significant change in the calculations.
Sullivan said he believes influence by insurance trade groups on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners impacts the methodology used by states to measure competitiveness. “My point remains that carrier influence from APCIA on NAIC is strong and represents a compromised position and one lacking independence,” Sullivan said.
-Clifton Adcock
Claim: Insurance companies won’t leave the state if the state denies a rate increase
Shuler said: “The numbers do not show that they will leave if they are assessed at their rates, it just doesn’t show that. Even on their worst year, the claims were $3 billion less than the premiums brought in. That was when we had 100 tornadoes, and we normally have 50, so we had double the weather in that year, and they were still $3 billion above what their claims were.”
Fact check: Mixed
A new state law that will take effect in July 2027 will require insurers to submit rate-change proposals to the Oklahoma Insurance Department at least 30 days before the new rate reaches consumers. The state insurance commissioner can reject increases deemed “excessive,” according to the measure.
Shuler told The Frontier there’s no way to predict if an insurance company will remain in Oklahoma if their rate hikes are denied, but argues companies are unlikely to leave if they’re profitable.
During the debate, Shuler cited 2024 as insurance companies’ “worst year,” during which they still managed to make a profit. More than 150 tornadoes swept across the state in 2024 — the highest number of tornadoes in a year since at least 2014 and nearly double the average of 77 tornadoes a year seen over the previous ten years, according to the National Weather Service.
That year, according to an annual report from the Oklahoma Insurance Department, insurance companies in the state took in over $97 billion in premiums and paid out around $19 billion in claims. Shuler told The Frontier she calculated only claims and premiums from property casualty carriers, excluding crop insurers, in 2024 to reach the $3 billion figure she referenced during the debate.
It’s true that the number of insurers in the state remained about the same after 2024’s slate of natural disasters. The Oklahoma Insurance Department oversaw 1,904 foreign and domestic insurers in 2024. That number dropped slightly to 1,882 insurers in 2025.
Still, Oklahoma ranked seventh in the nation for insurance non-renewals — canceling contracts with clients — in 2023 and fifth among states with the highest growth in non-renewal rates from 2018 to 2023, according to a Senate Budget Committee report.
-Maddy Keyes
Claim: When an insurer leaves a state, they’re usually quickly replaced by other companies.
Sullivan said: “I’ve seen what happens when companies leave the state, and guess what happens? Other companies come in the state because they see that as an opportunity to capture market share, write profitable business, and the free market solves this problem.”
Fact check: Mixed
Largely, when an insurance company exits a state, research has shown there are often significant barriers that hamper new insurance companies that may consider coming into the state. Climate change has also exacerbated the extent and expense of natural disasters, causing some insurers to either leave certain areas, significantly increase rates or stop writing new policies or renewing existing ones, especially in states that were already prone to natural disasters. Often, the companies that move in to replace insurance companies that have left a state come with past insolvency issues, extremely high denial rates and much higher insurance premiums. However, other research suggests that other insurers and companies may move into a market as profitability increases, though the process is largely dominated by changing market conditions.
Sullivan responded that the data from his time in the insurance industry does show that there were several companies that moved into the state when other companies moved out, though he was unable to share the data because of client privacy restrictions.
-Clifton Adcock
Claim: An insurance company is planning to leave the state of Oklahoma and other states because of litigation costs.
Quinn said: “I can tell you right now, there is a company that’s leaving the state of Oklahoma. You don’t know about it yet, but there’s a company that’s leaving. It’s also leaving others, and you know why it’s leaving? Litigation costs.” Quinn mentioned the insurers State Farm, Allstate, Farmers Insurance and USAA.
Fact check: Mixed
Despite his comments during the debate, Quinn told The Frontier he didn’t know why the company was leaving and wouldn’t identify the company, even if he did know, but that high litigation costs are often part of a company’s reasons for leaving a specific market.
One of the company’s Quinn mentioned, USAA, told The Frontier it has no plans to leave the state. State Farm declined to comment on “rumors, speculation, or statements made in political debates.” The other companies did not respond by publication time.
Insurance companies in states like Florida have said a high number of lawsuits, along with increased severe weather, can make it difficult to operate. Farmers Insurance, for example, limited coverage in Florida in 2023.
-Kayla Branch
Rating system:
True: A claim that is backed up by factual evidence
Mostly true: A claim that is mostly true but also contains some inaccurate details
Mixed: A claim that contains a combination of accurate and inaccurate or unproven information
True but misleading: A claim that is factually true but omits critical details or context
Mostly false: A claim that is mostly false but also contains some accurate details
False: A claim that has no basis in fact
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