Louisiana Progress 2026 Affordability Agenda

BATON ROUGE, LA | March 3, 2026–With 16 bills already filed, and few more in the queue to file once the legislative session begins, Louisiana Progress is working with Democratic and Republican legislators to provide concrete solutions to address Louisiana’s affordability crisis.

Consumer Rights & Protections

Who hasn’t been trapped in a subscription, paying monthly fees, long after they wanted out? It should be just as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. HB750 by Rep. Vincent Cox (R–Gretna)
We’re all tired of choosing to buy a product or service for one price, only to find that price significantly increase due to hidden (aka “junk”) fees. We can require companies to disclose those junk fees to consumers before they make a purchase with HB617 by Rep. Mandie Landry (D–New Orleans).
Anyone who’s been to the grocery store knows those prices have skyrocketed in recent years. There are many reasons for that increase, and one of them is corporate consolidation and control of the industry, which gives a small cadre of corporations outsized control over pricing. We need to protect smaller, independent grocers from being shut out of the industry, create greater competition among grocers, and ultimately drive down grocery prices with HB800 by Rep. Alonzo Knox (D–New Orleans).
Companies, especially those who sell products and services via apps, are increasingly using AI to collect and evaluate people’s personal data to determine each individual’s “pain-point price,” which is the highest price they will pay for something before walking away. This is one hidden way that price-gouging takes place. We need to regulate this practice, while also protecting rebates, before it gets completely out of hand with SB362 by Sen. Royce Duplessis (D–New Orleans).
The news has been full of stories of people, especially children, having harmful interactions with AI chatbots, including being induced into self-harm. Beyond those headline-catching stories, chatbots are also capturing people’s private information to serve them ads and influence purchasing decisions. We need common-sense consumer protections for this rapidly evolving technology with HB791 by Rep. Delisha Boyd (D–New Orleans).

Government Fines, Fees & Debt Collection

Louisiana’s Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV) traps people in cycles of debt by fining people when they can’t afford auto insurance and miss one payment. We can decrease those fines and extend the “grace period” when someone’s auto insurance lapses before those fines get charged with HB582 by Rep. Mike Bayham (R–Chalmette).
The OMV also refers those insurance-lapse debts to the state Office of Debt Recovery (ODR), which adds more fees on top of the already unaffordable fine and often revokes driver’s licenses, making it even harder for people to pay. Let’s stop referring those debts to ODR with HB762 by Rep. Mike Bayham (R–Chalmette).
For very low-income earners and homeless people, getting a driver’s license or state identification can be one of the biggest barriers to finding employment and housing. By eliminating the cost to them for these essential documents, we hope to help mitigate the homelessness crisis and make it easier for people to get up on their feet with HB712 by Rep. Delisha Boyd (D–New Orleans).
If we want to lower OMV penalties related to poverty and lack of affordability, we need to offset some of that lost revenue by increasing penalties related to poor driving behavior. According to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, our state’s DWI reinstatement fees are among the lowest in the country. We can prioritize penalizing poor driving behavior instead of poverty with HB845 by Rep. Mike Bayham (R–Chalmette).
When people can’t afford to pay criminal debts, the government should work with them to find realistic ways for them to pay, not destroy their credit score by reporting those debts to credit agencies or referring those to debts to the state Office of Debt Recovery, which charges an additional 15% collection fee. Eliminating these counterproductive collection practices with HB153 by Rep. Mandie Landry (D–New Orleans) will be a boon to public safety and help reduce Louisiana’s criminal recidivism rate.

Healthcare Cost & Access

Health insurers are increasingly relying on AI to review insurance claims, without disclosing that to patients or requiring meaningful human review of those claims, and those AI systems have been shown to erroneously reject claims at up to a 90% rate. We need to protect patient care and ensure no claims are rejected without human review with SB246 by Sen. Jay Luneau (D–Alexandria).
You can price-shop for almost any product or service in your life, except for the products and services relating to the most important thing in your life–your health. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have attempted to force hospitals across the country to be more transparent with their pricing, but compliance is still very low in Louisiana. We can attempt to improve compliance by barring non-compliant hospitals from collecting debt with HB946 by Rep. Mandie Landry (D–New Orleans).

Housing

Due to a lack of supply and soaring property insurance rates, housing, one of our most essential costs, is becoming increasingly out of reach. That rising cost is a huge burden on most people and it’s driving the increase in homelessness. By freeing up surplus state property and dedicating it to affordable housing with SB301 by Sen. Royce Duplessis (D–New Orleans) and HB809 by Rep. Delisha Boyd (D–New Orleans) we can help address this vital problem.

Worker Protections

Louisiana already protects artists, including our musicians, from many kinds of copyright infringement, and now we need to update that existing law to account for advancements in AI, so an artist’s original material can’t be used to create new material without the artist’s consent, with HB157 by Rep. Vincent Cox (R–Gretna).
Companies are increasingly turning to AI to handle their human resources operations, without disclosure or meaningful human review. We can simply require disclosure and human review with HB421 by Rep. Vincent Cox (R–Gretna).

Starting next week, on Monday, March 9, when the 2026 Louisiana legislative session gets underway, Louisiana Progress will be advocating for a broad agenda to address the growing affordability crisis in our state. We developed that agenda in concert with numerous in-state and national partners, including the Louisiana AFL-CIO.

“Across the United States, and especially in Louisiana, people are struggling to afford everyday life,” said Peter Robins-Brown, executive director of Louisiana Progress, a public policy and governmental relations organization that advocates for poor and working-class Louisianans. “Prices are rapidly increasing and wages aren’t keeping pace. The economy simply isn’t working for most people, and we need our elected officials to focus their attention on solving that problem above everything else.”

“For years, we’ve seen and felt the constant, growing cost-of-living and the squeeze of inflation,” according to Merrilee Montgomery, policy & operations director for Louisiana Progress. “We’ve also seen politicians talk about how much they value the working men and women of this state, while offering few solutions. Our 2026 Louisiana legislative agenda is an attempt to put forward concrete, detailed, effective solutions to those problems.”

“This year, Louisiana Progress is trying to address the affordability crisis in a number of ways,” according to Angelle Bradford Rosenberg, campaign strategist for Louisiana Progress. “We researched and developed proposals that protect consumers from corporate abuses, address high housing and grocery prices, require disclosure and human review when artificial intelligence is used to evaluate health insurance claims or make hiring and firing decisions, reduce the burden our government puts on citizens through excessive debt creation and collection practices, and more.”

Along with the above 15 proposals (broken out into 16 bills) that have already been pre-filed for the upcoming legislative session, and at least two more bills we hope to work with legislators to file once the session begins, our team will advocate for several other related measures, including regulating how healthcare providers use AI, creating a drug pricing advisory board, and reigning in third-party medical debt collectors.