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| Actions Taken By The Texas Department of Insurance To Increase Texans' Cost Of Insurance | ||||||||||||||||
| Contact Your State Governor And Your State Senator To Share Your Opinions About The Texas Department Of Insurance. | ||||||||||||||||
| Governor Rick Perry and Eleanor Kitzman | ||||||||||||||||
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If you search the Internet for "Eleanor Kitzman", you will find a lot of information that suggests that Governor Rick Perry selected her as the Commissioner of Insurance for the Texas Department of Insurance solely to advance his presidential efforts. You will also find that many people, including Texas Senators, believe that Eleanor Kitzman used her short stint at the Texas Department of Insurance solely to help insurance companies increase their profits so that they would give generously to her future public election campaigns. Under pressure to remove Kitzman from her post, Governor Rick Perry did not reappoint her for Commissioner of Insurance and her term ended May 27, 2013. But she apparently has left a path of destruction for Texans as she used her position at the Texas Department of Insurance for personal political gain. However, Governor Perry intentionally by-passed the Texas Constitution when he appointed Kitzman's replacement. Governor Perry appointed Julia Rathgeber on May 28, 2013, after the last day of the Texas Senate's session. The Texas Senate will not meet again for two years. So, Rathgeber will have been working as the Commissioner of Insurance for nearly two years before the Texas Senate has a chance to check her qualifications and to decide if it wants to confirm her in 2015. Many people oppose Governor Rick Perry using his authority to appoint the Texas Commissioner of Insurance after the last day of the Texas Senate's session to circumvent the Senate's constitutional role in selecting the Commissioner of Insurance. But it is widely discussed that Governor Perry's presidential aspirations guide his decision-making more than what is in the best interest of Texans. | ||||||||||||||||
| The following information was taken, in part, from an article posted by Faith Chatham of DFWRCC on September 5, 2012 on http://www.ppphi.blogspot.com:
Texas State Senator Wendy Davis responded to constituents complaints about arbritary actions by the Texas Commissioner of Insurance, Eleanor Kitzman, by asking Governor Perry to remove Kitzman. Governor Perry had appointed Kitzman in 2011 when Mike Geesling left his post. In a letter to Governor Perry Friday, dated August 30, 2012, Sen. Davis calls for transparency and accountability in the Texas Insurance Commission and cites anti-consumer actions by Kitzman which cost Texas taxpayers money. | ||||||||||||||||
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Texas Senator Wendy Davis sent this message to constituents:
"From day one, you have heard me talk about the importance of government accountability and full transparency. Some recent decisions made by Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman were anything but transparent. Over the course of just a few months, Ms. Kitzman has proven that she is only concerned with protecting insurance companies and has shown complete disregard for protecting Texas consumers. That’s why I’ve called on Governor Perry to remove Kitzman from her appointed post. Kitzman has already managed to roll back years’ worth of consumer protection for Texans: •Without asking the opinion of taxpayers or elected officials, Kitzman arbitrarily announced she would remove important rules that protect health insurance policyholders from being charged certain fees that could otherwise be avoided; •Kitzman removed from TDI’s website a list of insurance companies found to have used deceptive or illegal practices against policyholders; •She refused to disclose emails received and sent between her agency and an insurance oversight group; and, •Kitzman fought against giving policy rebates to consumers as required when insurance companies spend too much money on advertising and corporate bonuses and too little money providing health care coverage to policyholders. Texans deserve an Insurance Commissioner who works for them and not against them. Eleanor Kitzman should be protecting Texans’ household budgets rather than making it easier for insurance companies to fill their own pockets. Please know that I will continue fighting to protect the rights of Texas consumers by working to see that failed and irresponsible appointed officials like Commissioner Kitzman are not allowed to stay on our state’s payroll. Your friend, and proudly, your state senator, Wendy" Senator Davis updated her website and included this background: Following her request to Governor Perry, Senator Davis said, “Commissioner Kitzman’s actions reflect a pervasive anti-consumer, closed-door culture at the Department of Insurance. And, unfortunately, this hostility toward consumers spreads beyond TDI and into the Legislature.” In 2009, and again in 2011, legislators were tasked with performing a constitutionally required “sunset review” of the Department. Unfortunately for policyholders, special interests carried the day. More concerned with lining their donors’ pockets than protecting consumers, dozens of State House members, including Fort Worth’s Mark Shelton, repeatedly voted against the constituents they were elected to serve. Shelton and his cohorts voted to protect insurance companies by: •Allowing them to raise rates on consumers without State oversight; •Blocking full accountability at the Department of Insurance by allowing the Commissioner to continue being a Perry appointee, versus an elected official chosen by voters at the ballot box. •Allowing insurers to deny coverage based on applicants’ credit scores; •Allowing insurers to deny coverage for losses incurred when residents evacuate during natural disasters. Unlike her opponent, Wendy Davis championed legislation that would protect Texas consumers by: •Requiring insurers to refund excessive premiums to policyholders; •Creating an online “apples-to-apples” comparison of Texas insurance rates, which would allow consumers to identify the most competitive rates available; •Allowing voters to elect the Insurance Commissioner; •Requiring insurance companies to give policyholders notice of pending rate increases; •Requiring health insurers to pre-file rate increases with the Department of Insurance for review before implementing increases. Davis is a strong advocate for government transparency and accountability. “Texans deserve better than what they are getting from the current majority in Austin,” she said. “State officials are supposed to be representing Texas’ hard working families, not insurance companies and other special interests.” Davis pointed out the fact that, under the Texas Constitution, the Texas Senate will be responsible for confirming or denying Kitzman’s appointment during the upcoming 83rd Legislature. “Commissioner Kitzman was appointed during the interim, when the Legislature is not in Austin,” said Davis. “Her qualifications have not been reviewed by the Senate. When we return in January and begin the confirmation process, I think the odds are very high that Commissioner Kitzman will not be confirmed.” Petitions to the Texas Department of Insurance from constituents upset by the Commissioner of Insurance requesting exceptions to allow Texas insurance companies to apply more than the mandated 20% maximum of premium costs toward insurance company profit and administrative cost for medicare payments have gone unheeded. One of the reforms passed by Congress (and frequently discounted by insurance industry distractors as "Obamacare") requires that no more than 20% of the premiums paid for health insurance can be diverted from health care costs and pocketed by insurance companies as profit or applied to administrative cost. | ||||||||||||||||
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| Meet Texas' Awful Insurance Commissioner | ||||||||||||||||
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The information below was taken, in part, from an article posted on the Internet by Ben Sherman, at http://www.burntorangereport.com on Saturday September 08, 2012
Eleanor Kitzman grew up in Texas and spent much of her adult life in the North and South Carolina. She worked at a law firm in North Carolina and subsequently started her own auto insurance company in 1999 in South Carolina when the state deregulated its auto insurance market. Kitzman saw an opportunity to cash in from this insurance company free-for-all, providing less and worse service for equal cash. Kitzman's auto insurance company was successful, and in 2005 she was appointed the state insurance commissioner and sold the business. Kitzman served in this position for two years, and then lost a primary for Lt. Governor in 2010. Soon after that, Governor Nikki Haley appointed her to the state's budget and control board. Kitzman is a job hopper whose loyalty changes with the wind. While she has accepted positions as a public servant, she served only her personal goals even when they conflicted with what was best for the public. In July 2011, Governor Rick Perry appointed Kitzman as the Commissioner of Insurance to replace Mike Geesling. Since then, Kitzman has sparked three controversies: 1. In October 2011, Kitzman attended an insurance company fundraiser in Irving, Texas. The fundraiser was for Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, and Kitzman claimed she only attended the fundraiser to see the governor, a personal friend. "[I]f you held a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what insurance companies were there," Kitzman said. Kitzman once worked as a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs. It is not likely that she did not know "what insurance companies were there." 2. In May 2012, the Texas Windstorm Insurance Agency raised premiums by 5 percent. That wasn't enough for Kitzman. She directed the TWIA to hire a private consulting group to look into whether the agency should charge more based on the location of the customer. Unsurprisingly, the private consulting group advised that they should. After all, the private consulting group knew that Kitzman wanted premiums to be raised. 3. In August 2012, Kitzman was criticized state-wide for removing an essential consumer protection backed by her predecessor which "required health plans to disclose online which medical providers were in their network and alert consumers when there was a substantial decrease in the number of contracted providers at an in-network hospital." Removing this protection allows insurance companies to trick their customers into paying more expensive out-of-pocket medical expenses by denying them useful information. "I just don't believe that consumers, the average consumer is really going to be able to use that information in a meaningful way," Kitzman said unbelievably of her decision. Even Republicans scolded the decision. "There are many senators, Republican and Democratic, that are concerned that she's a little too pro-insurance company," said state Sen. Bob Deuell, a physician and Republican from Greenville. In August 2012, the Dallas Morning News penned a scathing editorial titled "Regulator Should Be Protecting Consumers" criticizing Kitzman's clear pro-industry bias: Kitzman has been on the job barely a year yet already has come under fire for pro-industry decisions. She sided with property insurers on rate hikes. Now she's shifting the burden from insurers to consumers. What part of consumer protection doesn't she get? What we need to realize is that Kitzman isn't trying to protect consumers. She's trying, successfully, to do the bidding of the insurance companies, who she clearly has more allegiance to than the State of Texas. | ||||||||||||||||
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