Today, the Pop Tort announces its first-annual end-of-summer “Whoppers for the Prevention of Progress” award to the property/casualty insurance industry. Yay and congrats! And when we say whopper, we’re not talking about burgers. Think “how many whoppers have you told lately that end up wrecking people’s lives?” There was a lot of competition for the award in 2022. Banks, the fossil fuel industry, gun manufacturers, Lindsey Graham. But we think the insurance industry, which few understand (learn more here), is too often overlooked for the lies it tells and the damage it does. Let’s take two recent examples.
New York’s wrongful death law is the most harsh and backward law in the nation. If you are wrongfully killed, your life is only worth something if someone else depended on you for your livelihood. It means, for example, that a nursing home can kill your parent (or you!) and the owners would be virtually immune. This law is so old and outdated that it pre-dates the Civil War when legislators were entirely white men and the Senate was all white men who owned real property – the only people who “mattered” when this law passed nearly 200 years ago.
For decades, New York lawmakers and courts had refused to do what other nearly every other state had done and update their wrongful death law – until now. The Grieving Families Act finally passed after a three-decade long battle. It sits on the New York governor’s desk awaiting her signature. Incredibly, the insurance industry (sitting on a trillion dollar surplus) is actually trying to stop the governor from signing it, using lies and fear-mongering about cost – and absolutely no actual data - to kill this long overdue law (like they always do.)
Funny story. Back in the mid-1980s, Lloyd’s of London’s started threatening states with the collapse of their state’s economy unless they enacted so-called “tort reform” laws that Lloyd’s wanted. Lloyd’s testified before Alaska public officials, for example, “If you [weaken] your tort laws in Alaska, you will have a market here when the rest of the United States will not. Lloyd’s is pulling out of the United States as a reinsurer – they have already pulled out of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey – and they’re continuing to pull out of more states.” Alaska proceeded to do what Lloyd’s demanded and strip Alaskans of their legal rights. But it was based on a lie. Lloyd’s never pulled out of these places. In fact, within two years, desperately in need of U.S. business, Lloyd’s began attempting to smooth over any evidence of withdrawal and minimize their earlier intimidation of public officials.
Unless state officials start demanding actual data from the industry to back up its fraudulent arguments - which it does not have - this industry will never stop trying to bamboozle state officials. Hopefully New York’s governor isn’t falling for it.
Now turning to the climate crisis, which understandably has been a very hot topic in property insurance circles. Obviously insurers don’t want to pay out more for increasing hurricanes, wildfires, and tornados. The easy and irresponsible solution for them is to simply stop covering properties or price-gouging businesses and residents they do cover. But others have observed, they actually have power to do something to improve our climate future.
But when the American Property Casualty Insurance Association had the chance to honestly discuss the climate crisis in a new report, which begins “weather-related disasters are becoming increasingly common – and costly,” they not only fail to make sensible and productive insurance-related recommendations – they barely talk about it! I am not kidding. They quickly dispense with any climate discussion by saying it’s easily handled since insurers can just “model and price” policies (i.e., make policies unaffordable or unavailable). Then comes the bait and switch, directing readers to their happy place: attacking lawyers, lawsuits, and victims like people injured in catastrophic truck crashes or harmed by dangerous drugs. Huh? And not just that – the attacks are full of deliberately misleading stupidity. They complain about so-called billion dollar jury verdicts without mentioning that judges had already substantially cut those verdicts. They complain about insurance “fraud” by consumers, but cite as back up FBI statistics that highlights insurance company fraud AGAINST CONSUMERS! (Did anyone at this outfit read their own footnotes?) And the “ask” for state legislators and regulators includes stripping victims of their legal rights. Sound familiar?
Thanks for nothing, insurance industry. (You can’t make this stuff up. Oh yeah, they did.)
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