What a homeowners insurance bill of rights could do

Summary

Marketplace Morning Report: "What a Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights Could Do"

Date: October 28, 2025
Host: David Brancaccio
Main Guest: Sarah Enright, Senior Director of Safety and Sustainability, Consumer Reports

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the mounting crisis in homeowners insurance, focusing on rapidly rising premiums, the impact of climate change, and potential solutions. Highlighted is a new initiative from Consumer Reports: a proposed Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights. Guest Sarah Enright elaborates on the need for more transparency and fairness in the industry and how their blueprint aims to address these pressing issues.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Homeowners Insurance Crisis

• Survey Data: Consumer Reports surveyed tens of thousands of people regarding their homeowners insurance.
• Rising Rates: Over half of respondents reported that their premiums increased in the previous year.
  • Quote:

    “Home insurance rates have been skyrocketing across the country, particularly in areas facing extreme weather events.”
    — Sarah Enright [04:37]

• Causes Identified:
  • Increased construction costs (up 40% post-pandemic)
  • Inflation
  • More frequent and severe extreme weather events
  • Expansion into regions not accustomed to such risks

2. Balancing Costs: Insurers vs. Consumers

• Host Perspective: David notes that rising costs aren’t entirely the fault of insurance companies since their expenses are also escalating.
  • Quote:

    “It’s not that insurance companies are across the board making this up… their costs are certainly going up when they pass them along to consumers. It almost seems understandable.”
    — David Brancaccio [04:54]

• Nuanced View: Enright agrees and clarifies that insurance companies aren't "entirely the bad guy," pointing out the complexity of the situation.
  • Quote:

    “This is not a story where insurance companies are entirely the bad guy.”
    — Sarah Enright [05:22]

3. The Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights

• Purpose: To offer clarity, fairness, and accountability in homeowners insurance.
• Major Elements:
  • Policies should use clear, plain English about what is and isn't covered.
  • Increased transparency so consumers fully grasp exclusions—especially regarding common disasters like floods.
• Consumer Confusion: Many homeowners don’t realize most policies exclude major weather events.
  • Quote:

    “…many homeowners are not aware that the majority of policies don’t cover major weather events like floods. And that leaves a lot of people vulnerable.”
    — Sarah Enright [06:39]

4. Implementation & Impact

• Path to Adoption:
  • Urges insurance companies to voluntarily adopt these rights.
  • Simultaneously, Consumer Reports is working with state regulators to use this Bill of Rights as a “roadmap” for state-level reforms.
  • State governments are described as “hungry for solutions” to mitigate rising costs.
  • Quote:

    “We wanted to give them a comprehensive roadmap of options that they could deploy in their state to better reflect the needs of consumers in their region.”
    — Sarah Enright [07:14]

5. Additional Related Segments

• Quick mention of Apple’s stock reaching a $4 trillion market cap and UPS making significant job cuts. (No further in-depth coverage in this summary as focus shifts to the insurance topic.)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On skyrocketing costs and consumer frustration:

  “We’ve heard just a flood of stories and frustration coming in from consumers around the country suggesting that rates are rising to an extent that's unaffordable.”
  — Sarah Enright [04:46]

• On the need for clear policy language:

  “We want to ask in this time of crisis for insurers to step up to provide greater fairness, transparency and accountability to their paying consumers... The first right... is that we’d like to see insurers clearly explain in plain English what’s covered in a policy and what is not.”
  — Sarah Enright [06:24]

• On the broader goal:

  “We wanted to give them a comprehensive roadmap of options that they could deploy in their state to better reflect the needs of consumers in their region.”
  — Sarah Enright [07:14]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [03:53] Introduction to rise in homeowners insurance premiums and Consumer Reports’ survey
• [04:23] Sarah Enright joins to discuss findings
• [04:37 – 05:37] Causes of the insurance crisis and the industry’s position
• [06:20] Explanation of the Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights
• [07:00] Discussion on how the Bill of Rights could be implemented
• [07:22] Where to find Consumer Reports’ full blueprint and wrap-up

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Tone & Speaker Style

The tone is brisk, factual, and solution-oriented, typical of Marketplace’s business reporting. David Brancaccio maintains a probing but fair approach, while Sarah Enright is empathetic, advocating for consumers but balancing the realities faced by insurers.

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Summary Takeaway

The episode shines a spotlight on the urgent issue of spiking homeowners insurance costs—driven by climate change, rising construction prices, and severe weather—and introduces a potential path forward with Consumer Reports’ Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights. Their proposed reforms seek to empower consumers with clearer information and push for industry-wide accountability, partnering with regulators and hoping for company buy-in. For listeners navigating confusing or expensive coverage, this segment offers both explanation and a dose of advocacy-driven hope.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Take the word Wikipedia, remove the WIC and swap in Grok. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Now you know Wikipedia, a vast online encyclopedia written, revised, repaired by volunteers around the world. Well, entrepreneur and activist Elon Musk has come out with a rival called Grokapedia that's powered by an artificial intelligence model developed by one of Musk's companies. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer joins us now. You give it a whirl.

[C]

I did. And, you know, it's pretty bare bones at this point. Grokopedia is just a search bar against a black background. There are no pictures that I could see, just white text against the black.

[B]

Now, Musk has argued that Wikipedia is too woke. What's he saying?

[C]

In a post on X last December, Musk urged his followers to stop donating to what he called Wokipedia until they, quote, restore balance to their editing authority. I compared the Wikipedia and Grokopedia approaches to the issue of climate change. The Grokipedia entry says the Earth's global surface air temperature has increased, but the human role in recent warming may be overestimated. The Wikipedia entry just says there is a nearly unanimous scientific consensus that the climate is warming and that is caused by human activities.

[D]

Hmm.

[B]

And where does this new Grokipedia get its info?

[C]

In some cases from Wikipedia. For example, there's a footnote at the bottom of the entry for MacBook Air that says the content is adapted from Wikipedia. When this was pointed out to Musk on X, he said, I know. Then he added that, quote, we should have this fixed by end of year. A key difference here, David, is Wikipedia uses human editors and its entries are written by people. Grokopedia's entries are generated by AI.

[B]

All right, Nancy, thank you. You can check out for yourself what Musk's Grokopedia says about Elon Reeve Musk. It's a lush entry. I counted 10,800 words with its description of Musk's ugly dispute with President Trump at the end of Musk's tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency this year rendered in very polite terms. Stock in Apple for a moment blipped up to the point that ST times the price market cap was worth $4 trillion for the first time. Now UPS said it's cut 48,000 jobs, more than twice what it had advertised this year. The stock is up 10%. It is management and operations. The cuts so far this year.

[E]

How many times have you wished you could be in two places at once? With wix, you practically can. Wix's website builder is packed with powerful AI tools to make running your business online easier. Build a full site just by talking with AI, get an AI agent to manage your sales and marketing, or work like a 10 person team, even if it's just you. So you don't need superpowers to get everything done, you just need Wix. Try it out for [e-mail] so how.

[B]

Fun is it to open your bill for your home insurance? More than half say their premiums went up in the last year. This from a large survey from the nonprofit consumer advocacy and journalism organization Consumer Reports. Costs for rebuilding and climate change are among reasons Consumer Reports has drawn up what it calls now a homeowners insurance bill of Rights it hopes gets adopted by states around the country. Let's learn more from Sarah Enright, Senior Director of Safety and Sustainability at Consumer Reports. Sarah, welcome.

[F]

Thank you for having me.

[B]

So you surveyed tens of thousands of people. When you collated what you heard, the word you're using is not just crisis, but full blown crisis. It's a crisis because what Sarah Home.

[F]

Insurance rates have been skyrocketing across the country, particularly in areas facing extreme weather events. And we've heard just a flood of stories and and frustration coming in from consumers around the country suggesting that rates are rising to an extent that's unaffordable.

[B]

Right. And it's not that insurance companies are across the board making this up. I mean, their costs are certainly going up when they pass them along to consumers. It almost seems understandable.

[F]

That's right. There's a lot of different reasons for the rising costs of insurance. Right. Construction costs are going up. They've gone up 40% over the past couple of years since the pandemic inflation has had its cut. Extreme weather events are increasingly common and increasingly severe across the country and happening in locations that weren't expected for extreme weather events. They don't have proper coverage. So there's a lot of different factors here that you know. This is not a story where insurance companies are entirely the bad guy.

[B]

Now, insurance companies can't single handedly stop the progress of climate change. They could have a strong voice in policies to mitigate climate change. But there are things they can do to make life easier for their customers. For instance, you, Consumer Reports want in your Bill of Rights clearer language in policies. I've seen fire insurance policies for homes in fire ravaged Altadena, California that say really clearly they'll pay you this number if the house burns down and is a total loss. Then when the house burns down, the company said, oh, but we depreciate that number. So you don't get what we said. You can imagine that some clarity might improve customer understanding of what they're buying.

[F]

Indeed, we want to ask in this time of crisis for interest to step up to provide greater fairness, transparency and accountability to their paying consumers. The first right in the Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights is that we'd like to see insurers clearly explain in plain English what's covered in a policy and what is not. One of the things we found through our research is that many homeowners are not aware that the majority of policies don't cover major weather events like floods. And that leaves a lot of people vulnerable.

[B]

How does your Bill of Rights, how would it get into rules for insurance?

[F]

We'd like to see the insurers voluntarily step up to adopt the Bill of Rights. And at the same time, we are talking to state regulators who frankly are hungry for solutions to help reduce the pain of rising costs in their state. So we wanted to give them a comprehensive roadmap of options that they could deploy in their state to better reflect the needs of consumers in their region.

[B]

You can read Consumer Reports blueprint for a Fairer Home Insurance Market, A Homeowners Insurance Bill of Rights in Consumer Reports. Sarah Enright is senior Director of Safety and Sustainability at Consumer Reports. Thank you so much.

[F]

Thank you.

[B]

And in Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio, Marketplace Morning report from APM American Public Media.

[D]

Imagine a future where chocolate and coffee are rare and expensive, where cheap nutritional staples like corn and wheat are threatened. Sounds unpleasant, doesn't it? Well, we could be heading there if we don't recognize that the climate crisis is also a food crisis.

[B]

I've seen yields drop because of drought and believe me, boy have I seen them drop. We have had dry spells that have lasted years.

[D]

I'm Amy Scott. This season on How We Survive, we investigate how the climate crisis is threatening our most vital food systems and how scientists are racing to develop alternatives that will shape the future of food. Listen to this season of How We Survive on your favorite podcast. Apparently.