Iowa Insurance

On April Fools’ Day, the Senate has played a sick joke about Iowa Iowans by choosing File 2555th Already House by house, the law creates a Consumer Advocate Office in the Iowa Insurance Division. This lawyer is compatible with receiving complaints from the public about insurance.

At the first consultation, it sounds like a good thing for the citizens of Iowa. Legislators Iowans say it is. Senator Bill Roth, the stern Waverly, vice-chairman of the Committee on the Senate, sent a press release the portrait of the creation of the legal profession as a positive and innovative.     

It is not - this is not done, anyway. The bill was a little more than a rearrangement of professional titles in a division with a track record of doing too little to be able to help consumers. If the bill lands on Gov. Chet Culver’s office, he should veto.

The law is not once again the division of insurance direct to consumer complaints. With nowhere to turn, but thousands of Iowans file complaints with the agency which, each year, about all that is left to claim denials increases. The division of complaints and employees called for it - but it is too often ends where aid.

Last year, a record of the editorial page of the examination of complaints relating to insurance long-term care of the division was found little or no help in solving the problems of consumers who are sometimes all simply repeat the language of the insurance contract or that they contact an attorney. The Agency has also not copies of complaints easily accessible to the public. In one case, the audit took place in the division said they Iowans money not be recovered.

It is also a conflict of interest for the Department of Insurance consumer complaints, when he was also responsible for the work, insurers and solvents to rule on the companies increases. The same body can not consumer complaints about the increases in premiums for the Agency.

The law provides no extra money for these so-called lawyer, it may be, it turned out he had already Division of Insurance, by Tom Alger, spokesman for the branch. Staffing Office of the Consumer Advocate “by an internal reorganization of skills and positions in an increase in efficiency achieved in the insurance division as a whole,” he wrote in an e-mail.

In other words, a new service of the State, order a lawyer in the insurance contracts Commissioner, the absence of additional resources, and try to Iowans State relating to the protection of consumers.

The legislature had the right. The legislation already provides noted during the meeting, is a defender of the independence of the Insurance Division, as consumers for distribution companies, utilities and complaints is part of the general power of attorney in the office. Instead, the legislature has low legislation by hand, by the division to give themselves the responsibility for investigating complaints.

This law is an example for the legislature not to hear the concerns of Iowans. In the case of the insurance long-term care, these Iowans are often elderly and frail, the sick, and the fight increasingly desperate, as they claim, denials or problems with their insurers.

House File 2555 is a bad joke. However, the protection of consumers’ rights is not laughed. The governor should veto this legislation and legislators.