We have another election coming up, and if I don't issue some opinions, they may revoke my column heading.
I'm sure you've seen the ads running on TV about Referendum 67. There was the one with the lawyers, huddled in a conference room saying they didn't care if insurance rates went up as long as they made a lot of money.
And there's the latest one showing this John Boy character sitting on the front steps of a Walton-like home, and saying in a soothing tone that if R67 passes, lawyers will get triple damages and your rates will increase. Then a young boy comes out of the front door, and dad asks if he's ready to leave. No doubt, they're going to church, or perhaps to play baseball.
If you haven't figured it out by now, these ads are the work of the insurance industry. The organization paying for these ads, Consumers Against Higher Insurance Rates, is actually a front group entirely funded by the insurance industry. If you look at the state's Public Disclosure Commission Web site www.pdc.wa.gov, this so-called consumer group has received nearly $8 million from large, out-of-state insurance companies. The insurance industry is shattering spending records for our state to try and defeat Referendum 67.
It's important to understand what R67 really says, and what it does. Here's partial text of the referendum passed by our state legislature with my italicizing of key words:
ESSB 5726 would amend the laws concerning unfair or deceptive insurance practices by providing that an insurer engaged in the business of insurance may not unreasonably deny a claim for coverage or payment of benefits to any "first party claimant." The term "first party claimant" is defined in the bill to mean an individual, corporation, association, partnership, or other legal entity asserting a right to payment as a covered person under an insurance policy or insurance contract arising out of the occurrence of the contingency or loss covered by such a policy or contract.
OK, that can sound like mumbo-jumbo. In plain talk, what this referendum says is that if insurance companies either deny or delay payment of a legitimate claim, they can be sued for triple the amount they were supposed to pay the individual or company that's been paying their premiums on time. It simply prevents the insurance companies from holding on to money owed to clients while they pay dividends to their stockholders and bonuses to their executives.
Will there be an increase in lawsuits against insurance companies? Only if the insurance companies try to screw their clients out of legitimate claims.
Opposing ads reference California's nightmare, and voters overturning the law. That's more poppy-cock. The California law, from the 1980s incidentally, allowed "third party" claims. R67 limits its scope to "first party," which means the party paying the premiums, and owning the policy, not tangential parties who think they've been wronged.
Don't be fooled by the term "frivolous lawsuits" used by those opposing R67 (that would be the insurance industry). Our courts and judges do not entertain frivolous suits, or the lawyers who bring them - they throw them out of court. One of the jobs of our judges is making sure those idiotic claims don't waste the courts' time.
Don't buy into the scare tactic about rising insurance premiums. State regulations administered by the Office of the Insurance Commissioner do not allow the use of payments for bad faith claims to be used by insurers in setting rates. Any additional court ordered penalties go to the insurer, and cannot be passed on to consumers.
This is the Bush/Rove brand of smear tactics at its worst. It's time for voters not only to stand up to the insurance lobby, but to send a clear message to those who run this kind of ads that we voters will no longer countenance this kind of political drivel and verbal terrorism. We want facts and honesty in our discussions of politics.
This referendum is backed by nearly every union, consumer organizations, rights organizations, police, firemen, Insurance Commissioner Kreidler and Gov. Gregoire.
The state of Washington has one of the best track records in the country when it comes to protecting its citizens from the abuses of big insurance companies, and the companies are constantly trying to reverse those provisions. This is simply one more example of the insurance industry trying to influence our elections through flimflam political ads on TV.
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