The Governator and the Insurance Industry

At Declarations and Exclusions, there is a fine article tackling a lengthy piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.

The whole rebuttal is worth reading, but it is summarized in its closing paragraph:

No matter who is in power at any given moment Sacramento is just like any other state capitol, a bubbling brew of competing policies each with its own advocates. Every group believes that only its view is the “right” one and there is always a tendency to assume foul play when another group gets its way. Sometimes, foul play really is at the root of things and a particular group’s influence on its favored issues becomes “too much” influence. Newspapers such as the Times can and should seek out those instances and expose them. Even under the loose evidentiary standards of investigative journalism, this article simply does not make its case.

I do have two minor quibbles, neither of real substance:

First — “Sacramento is just like any other state capitol”… at a very high level that is true. However, sometimes I seem to think that California has its own brand of nuttiness when it comes to state politics. I don’t know whether that’s because of advocacy groups having managed to secure more power in that state than elsewhere, or just because California is the largest state, population-wise and therefore I hear about it more… but it seems to me that Sacramento is wackier than, say, Bismarck or Des Moines.

Second — I wonder if the Governator’s alleged pro-insurer bias could be forgiven considering the extreme alleged pro-consumer stances taken by the Commissioner as he campaigns for the Lieutenant Governor’s office. A case could be made that having both pro-industry and pro-consumer officials in power isn’t necessarily a bad thing, assuming their powers are roughly equivalent. The two biases should balance each other, creating an environment where only well-reasoned, necessary developments get through, with everything else getting blocked by political gamesmanship….at least in an ideal world.