Insurance Regulatory News

The Florida Senate's insurance committee passed a broad property insurance bill Wednesday that would essentially allow additional property insurance rate increases and reduce fraudulent claims and discounts that can drive up insurance costs.

Under the bill this year, insurers would be allowed to include inflation-related costs and costs for financing products that replace backup coverage in the 10 percent increase.

Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, said some insurers' losses may have to do with Florida's record foreclosure rate.

Southern Oak Insurance Co.'s high profits and management fees are limiting its ability to build claims-paying reserves, according to the Office of Insurance Regulation.

Regulators threatened to suspend or revoke the company's license by the end of the month if it doesn't address their concern that its management agreement with its affiliate -- Southern Oak Management -- is "unfair and unreasonable" to its policyholders, according to an order the Office issued Tuesday.

Regulators say Southern Oak is one of several companies with management fees that are under scrutiny but they said they can't release the names of the other companies yet.

RICHMOND -- The Virginia General Assembly has given final approval to a bill that would make it illegal for the government to require individuals to purchase health insurance, a measure intended to conflict with Democratic efforts to reform health care in Washington.

But Virginia is the first state to complete legislative action on such a bill.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Wednesday that he intends to sign the legislation.

WASHINGTON, March 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Harvey Rosenfield, author of California's landmark insurance regulation Proposition 103--recognized as the most successful insurance regulation in the country--was joined today by people struggling to pay for health insurance in calling on President Obama and Congress to impose a national freeze on health insurance rates as part of the final round of votes on reform.

Consumers must have a breather from yearly premium hikes like the 39% increase planned by Anthem Blue Cross, said Consumer Watchdog, which Rosenfield founded.

"The audacity of Anthem Blue Cross caught everyone's attention, but other major health insurance companies are raising rates just as high or higher, forcing more Americans to go without insurance or settle for skeletal policies," said Rosenfield.

WASHINGTON - Labor union members, religious leaders and other activists protested in the nation's capital against what they call an abusive health insurance industry.

Organizers with Health Care for America Now say thousands came in from across the country for Tuesday's march.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean addressed the crowd, calling on Congress to take a final vote on the proposed health care overhaul.

The White House is mounting a stinging, sustained broadside against health insurance rate increases as President Obama and his aides enter what they hope will be the final stretch of a year-long political war over health-care reform.

The messages are part of a strategy that Obama and those around him have begun to employ lately, to ratchet up the pace and the populist appeal of their rhetoric against the health insurance industry.

The near-daily demonization of the insurance industry is an attempt by the White House to play to Americans' anxieties about the health-care system -- and about the prospect of changing it.

WASHINGTON, March 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Members of the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents will bring Main Street to Capitol Hill when they convene March 17-18 in Washington, D.C. for their 2010 PIA Federal Legislative Summit.

"We will be meeting with our Members of Congress as they debate regulatory reform, healthcare reform, natural catastrophe policy, flood insurance issues and proposed revisions to the crop insurance industry's Standard Reinsurance Agreement.

Our members will be addressing all of these issues with lawmakers."

Some agents have given up selling travel insurance since the FSA tightened up regulation in January last year, Abta members were told.

Others are now acting as appointed representatives of an insurance company, or are paying over pounds 500 a year to a company called ITC Compliance so that they can sell insurance by more than one provider.

Jon Cunningham, owner of Key Holidays, said agents had to go through a lot of paperwork with ITC, and with market conditions being tough, they could not get a return on their investment.

I wrote editorials and opinion columns for 32 years before I retired in 2007, so I seldom feel the need to write a column.

My younger colleagues in the World Editorial Department do a great job.

For several years, I have been on Medicare, that oft-reviled health insurance plan for old-timers.

Getting new regulations to govern Wall Street boils down to this: If everybody hates a compromise, can it still work as a deal?

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a committee member, thought they had the makings of a bipartisan solution with a plan to place a beefed up consumer watchdog entity inside the Federal Reserve.

He had called for a freestanding Consumer Financial Protection Agency.