Today, the Center for Justice & Democracy, through its project Americans for Insurance Reform (AIR), has published the most important study you’ll need next year.
Over the last few months, the insurance industry has set the stage for a new liability insurance crisis in America. The timing couldn't be worse. Rates for businesses will skyrocket and litigation will be falsely blamed, once again. That means trouble for the civil justice system. Big trouble.
AIR’s study, written by J. Robert Hunter and Joanne Doroshow, is called Repeat Offenders: How the Insurance Industry Manufactures Crises and Harms America (Hunter is Director of Insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, former Texas Insurance Commissioner and Federal Insurance Administrator. Doroshow is Executive Director of the Center for Justice & Democracy). This study is the first definitive expose of 35 years of manufactured insurance crises. So far, there have been three. They document how this industry is now creating a fourth. We are certain that when this new "hard market" starts to grip the nation, Repeat Offenders will be essential to counter the industry's attacks on the tort system.
It's an important study, which is why it made the front page of the Huffington Post today!
AIR is calling on federal and state officials to take immediate steps to prevent a new crisis, which the industry has already instigated, specifically calling for:
- Meaningful insurance data disclosure to state authorities, allowing officials examine the financial health of the industry and the civil justice system.
- States to enact stronger regulation and oversight of the industry and to repeal anti-competitive laws.
- Congress to repeal the federal anti-trust exemption and at a minimum, the new Federal Insurance Office (FIO) to review the impact of the McCarran-Ferguson Act on consumers.
We're not kidding. This is essential reading!



