Huff Post Repost: Time to Reform that Other Insurance Industry

We all depend on reasonably-priced insurance to function and I'm not talking just about heath insurance. Without affordable property-casualty insurance, we couldn't drive cars or own homes, doctors wouldn't be able to practice medicine, small businesses like day care centers wouldn't exist and local governments couldn't function. Having insurance is not an option. For better or worse, the property-casualty insurance industry is a critical sector of the U.S. economy.

It's also one of the least regulated, and most influential, profitable and unaccountable industries in the nation, answering to no federal agency and regulated by a nation of mostly weak state agencies. It is exempt from federal anti-trust laws. Most state insurance departments have little ability to control insurance rates. With few exceptions, these departments have neither the funding nor political will to exercise proper control over this industry, save its main regulatory job - to prevent a company's insolvency. Policyholders have very little protection otherwise. The result is an industry that can make extraordinary claims and demands on lawmakers that go nearly unchallenged.

Indeed, it is an industry capable of threatening major damage to a state's economy. It usually gets what it wants.

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