Still no advocate for insurance issues..

[Aquawind]

Looks like some tough shoes to fill challenging the mighty insurance industry..

State vow weakening to build powerhouse

By Paige St. John
news-press.com capital bureau
Originally posted on February 12, 2007

TALLAHASSEE — At the moment, Florida consumers have no official insurance advocate.

Under former CFO Tom Gallagher, the job was held by Steve Burgess, who in the last two years challenged 16 insurance cases with mixed results for consumers.

Burgess often armed Gallagher and reporters with evidence of over-billing by property insurers. However, without legal standing, he often failed to convince regulators to disallow or reduce rate increases — and was even shut out of some proceedings.

To this day, for instance, Burgess believes regulators grossly erred in agreeing to
give State Farm a 52.7 percent rate hike during private talks he was not allowed to participate in.

Shortly after taking office in January, CFO Alex Sink informed Burgess he did not fit her vision of an advocate “who will be a household name.”

He left in late January, and Sink has yet to find a replacement.

“My vision for the position,” she said, “is to be very pro-active.”

Now, Sink’s promise to build an independent consumer advocate strong enough to battle insurers is weakening.

Sink says she is no longer certain the advocate needs expanded legal powers on par with the Office of Public Counsel, which takes the consumer point against electricity and telephone companies. The public counsel not only can intervene in rate cases, it can challenge regulators, subpoena records and drag utilities to court.

“I don’t know if we need to go that far to get what we think we need to have a fair hearing for citizens,” Sink said this week in an interview.

Sink convinced lawmakers in special session last month to keep the advocate in her office and drop efforts to move the office to the Public Counsel’s office. She promised to seek those same powers within her own office “to dig much deeper into the books of insurance companies.”

“Allowing the advocate to object to (Office of Insurance Regulation) decisions and actually be allowed to challenge their rulings is vitally important,” her lobbyist said in a letter to Senate Banking and Insurance Chairman Bill Posey.

However, this week, Sink drew a distinction between fighting power companies and insurers.

“We need to recognize they (the public counsel) are dealing with a monopoly in effect,” she said. “Whereas, in the insurance market, there has been plenty of competition and competition tends to keep companies honest.”

She gets some disagreement from the Consumer Federation of America, and its own insurance advocate, former Texas insurance commissioner Robert J. Hunter.

“The advocate is no good if it has no authority, it can’t subpoena and can’t cross examine witnesses,” Hunter said.

But the Florida Consumer Action Network, which campaigned loudest for an empowered advocate, expresses confidence in Florida’s lone Democratic Cabinet member.

“When and if (Sink) ever leaves office then we would hope she would help us at that time to make it independent,” said FCAN executive director Bill Newton.

Sink remains committed to an insurance consumer advocate “with more teeth and a bigger bully pulpit, “engaged in swaying public policy and investigating the insurance industry.

“I’ve been using the example of the fact that we have an affordable health insurance challenge in our state. One in five Floridians has no health insurance. I see our consumer advocate being a leader and advocate on behalf of the uninsured …
“Let’s look at Massachusetts, let’s look at California. Let’s be in Washington and testifying as maybe a federal solution unfolds,” she said.

Sink said she is having difficulty finding that person.