I think some politicians in Trenton are still upset with New Jersey auto insurance customers having been exposed to modern multivariate auto insurance ratemaking.
From the Courier Post:
Drivers without college degrees or better-paying jobs pay more for car insurance from GEICO, according to a study released by an advocacy group Wednesday in advance of debate on a bill that might ban such an actuarial application.[...]
“It’s not just a poor-person’s issue here,” said Gill, whose bill is scheduled to receive committee attention on Monday. “It goes directly to the middle class.” She said 73 percent of New Jerseyans lack a college degree.
Gill said her bill would eliminate using education levels or job status, items she said did not figure in actuarial decisions by some other insurers. “You don’t need it to be competitive,” she said. “You need it to be exploitive.[...]
The advocacy group New Jersey Citizen Action said it had gone to the Web site for GEICO, famous for its ads with the animated gecko, and sought rates for 449 phantom drivers where the lone differences were educations and jobs.[...]
The group said a 51-year-old professional woman from Camden driving a U.S.-built sedan paid $1,063 if she possessed a doctoral degree, but $1,712 if she had nothing beyond a high-school degree.
I’d say that the appropriate response to such an analysis is to go into a discussion of what the loss cost differences are for those phantom drivers…after first asking a few questions about any biases in study methodology.
However, somehow, I don’t think such thoughts would go over all that well with that crowd.