Who do you want in charge of your home repairs?

If the homeowner insurance companies get their way,you will lose your right to control who and how your home getsrepaired.

Related: Update on homeowners' insurancemarket

Recently, Barry Gilway, president and CEO of Florida's state-runinsurance company, wrote an opinion piece in a South Floridanewspaper. His editorial created a rosy picture about the recentsteps Citizens has implemented to force homeowners to allowCitizens to control repairs to their home.

Hire contractors to repair homes

Many other insurance companies are riding Citizens' coattailsand hoping to use the strength of Citizens' political influence toget their way. If the insurance companies convince insuranceregulators to approve similar plans, the insurance companies willbe allowed to hire their own contractors to repair your home,deeply affecting multiple industries and stripping you of yourrights as a homeowner.

It certainly seems like the insurance companies are looking tofind yet another way to take advantage of its policyholders all inthe name avoiding their obligations to pay covered claims.

Reduce amount of average claim

Insurance companies admit that they are implementing theserepair programs to control homeowners' options and to reduce theamount of the average insurance claim. Citizens claims that thisprogram is necessary, citing broad and unsupported references tofraudulent contractors and unnecessary litigation.

What the insurance companies really want is for no one toquestion their claims decisions, and if they unreasonably deny aclaim, the insurance companies do not want to suffer anyrepercussions.

Related: Top 15 homeowners' insurance carriers for 2016, asranked by NAIC

There is no better way to explain how misguided Citizens'comments are than to provide an example of what is unfortunately anall too common case. Headed into a new hurricane season, many ofthe problems caused by Hurricane Matthew (Oct. 7, 2016) stilllingered.

Our clients, like many others, were still dealing with thedamage to their New Smyrna Beach, oceanfront home. Ceilings in twoseparate areas of the home collapsed during Hurricane Matthew's14-hour barrage of wind and rain. The house was badly damaged.Their insurance company refused to pay the claim.

Lawsuit filed

For nearly a year, our clients fought and fought. They hired anarchitect and a licensed contractor to support their damages, buttheir insurance company still would not pay. Instead, the insurancecompany rolled the dice, and forced these homeowners to hire us tofile a lawsuit. The company's position was not in line with thelaw, and was so unsupported by the facts, they settled the case inless than two months.

Related: 10 states with the highest and lowest homeowners'insurance rates

Insurance companies, just like Citizens, want to eliminate thelaw that provides homeowners access to the courts. If it were up tothe insurance companies, they would no longer have to pay ahomeowner's attorney fees in order to force the carrier to pay aclaim that is clearly owed.

Under such a scenario, it is unlikely that our New Smyrna Beachclients, and tens of thousands of other homeowners, would have beenable to find an attorney willing to help them. In all likelihood,they would have been forced to make the repairs without any benefitfrom the insurance policy they paid for.

'Level the playing field'

There are reasons why laws exist, and Florida's law that forcesan insurance company to pay for its insured's attorney is nodifferent. For decades, insurance companies took advantage of theirpolicyholders and wrongfully refused to pay claims that wereowed.

The legislature took action to discourage carriers from playinggames with its insured. Florida's Supreme Court said it best, "itis clear to us that the purpose of this provision is to level theplaying field so that the economic power of insurance companies isnot so overwhelming that injustice may be encouraged because peoplewill not have the necessary means to seek redress in thecourts."

The hope is that the prospect of having to pay for attorney feesshould prompt the insurance companies to process and pay its claimsin a timely manner. This is so, because the insurance companieshave a long history of refusing to do so.

Take away a basic safeguard?

Citizens and many other insurance companies want to take thisbasic safeguard away so they can continue to increase premiumsunder the guise that it is protecting a homeowner fromuntrustworthy repair companies. If that happens, who is going toprotect the homeowners from the unscrupulous insurancecompanies?

Related: 15 preventable homeowners' insurance claims and howto avoid them

Certainly, Florida's Supreme Court and the lawmakers of the pastbelieved that policyholders would be left without any protectionfrom an insurance company's whim. Insurance companies have thebudget to lobby our legislature, and hopefully, common sense andthe past will prevail so we do not need yet another example of howhistory has a tendency to repeat itself.

Anthony Tinelli is a partner at Mase Tinelli in Miami. He representedCitizens Property Insurance Corp. and Heritage Property Insurance& Casualty for 12 years and now represents policyholders insuits against insurance companies.