For all CAHU Members who responded to our AB 1521 Operation Drumbeat E-Mail Action Alert...THANK YOU SO MUCH! We can't thank you enough for taking the time to respond to CAHU's Operation Drumbeat. YOUR pressure made all the difference in making it possible for CAHU to succeed in totally changing this bill! This past week, AB 1521 was gutted and amended to remove both the commission disclosure and additional fiduciary duties for Health insurance agents.
On Tuesday April 14th, 2009, the author, who is also the chair of the Assembly Health Committee, presented AB 1521 to his committee. The first vote left the author short of the necessary votes to move the bill out of committee and was put on call. After much personal lobbying of committee members by the author, the bill passed out with 10 votes which is just the minimum necessary to pass in this committee. Surprise!! The conventional wisdom had been that this bill would get out on a strong party line vote.
CAHU next met with the author at his request of CAHU on Friday morning, April 17th, to see if we could reach agreement on amendments to remove our opposition to the bill, but we concluded we could not. The bill was set to be heard in Assembly Insurance Committee on April 22.
On that same Friday in the afternoon, the authors office emailed a new proposal to CAHU- offering to remove all the language in the bill and submit new language on controlling commission payment practices by carriers in the individual and group market and additional disclosures by agents - IF CAHU would support this total new bill language. The proposed amendments were less harmful than the original language but still caused us a problem. But the author and sponsor, Health Access - a liberal advocacy group, indicated they were open to working with us on the language.
Negotiation continued over this past weekend (April 18 & 19) and right up to the hearing in Assembly Insurance on April 22, 2009. At last count we had met three times, gone through 15 plus different drafts, and finally had an acceptable deal. In the end the bill will put in statute some of the current commission payment practices of the carriers in the individual market only, which have been in place for years.
CAHU's Legislative Advocate, Steven Lindsay, persuasively debated with them that the language in their proposed new version unnecessarily included the small group market and that this language should be removed...and it was. Steven also was responsible for pointing out to them that their proposed new language would unintentionally have increased agent commission payments (in dollars), and thus also premiums, for "rated up" individual health polices, and he helped them rewrite that language (part of the reason for 15 drafts of this revised bill).
So this totally revised version of AB 1521 contains no additional duties or disclosures beyond what we currently are required to do and all references to the group market were stricken. Thus CAHU can now support passage of this revised version of AB 1521, which did pass out of the Assembly Insurance Committee on April 22nd.
CAHU Members - this is another in a very long list of great legislative advocacy accomplishments that CAHU is responsible for over the years.....and why your membership support (and renewal of your membership each year) is such a very worthy investment in protecting your clients and your careers in the health insurance industry!
