Again, they are just messing with you

They just passed new laws that say insurance companies don't actually have to, you know, provide insurance. 

Gov. Jeff Landry on Tuesday signed a series of bills that make it easier for insurance companies to drop policyholders, raise rates and have more time to pay claims after a storm, a controversial plan that aims to attract more companies to the state.

Hilariously, they say this is supposed to make it easier for you to buy insurance. It won't.  But more importantly, they don't actually believe that anyway.  What they do believe in is holding a big public signing ceremony for this farcical legislation just to rub it in everyone's face. In addition to ripping you off and putting your home in danger, they are also messing with you. Seems bad.

It's called a bribe

Appreciate the legislators asking very good questions about all of this. But, at the end of the day, it will be Tim Temple and, to a lesser extent, Jeff Landry (via bully pulpit agenda setting) who will make the decision.*  So... the deal guarantees Temple a seat on the board of the new entity created by the sale.  And Landry gets this.

They called special attention to a curious provision in the plan to create Accelerate Louisiana, which will be a $3 billion foundation focused on addressing poverty and health inequity in the state. The provision prohibits the foundation from giving money for health research purposes to any higher education institution in the state except the Pennington Biomedical Research in Baton Rouge.

“You have $3.1 billion and the only institution that can receive funding is Pennington?” asked Sen. Adam Bass, R-Bossier City. “Why is that?”

Tim Barfield, a former Blue Cross member who is now board chair of the Accelerate Louisiana Initiative, said the stipulation was a condition imposed by Gov. Jeff Landry and his staff.

“That was a requirement of the attorney general, now governor,” Barfield said.

*Blue Cross policy holders also have to vote on the sale but that may be, in the bag, so to speak.  

Lawmakers also grilled Blue Cross about potential irregularities in the voting process and the way proxies are being collected. Under questioning, Blue Cross officials acknowledged that the same outside firm tabulating proxy votes is also soliciting members by phone to make sure they vote.

“The same group that can take a proxy vote over the phone is the same group calling to say, ‘Did you get your ballot?’” said Republican Sen. Thomas Pressly of Shreveport. “I am blown away.”

The bribes have been negotiated and they are surprisingly small

I think I said this around this time last year, but I really have got to get back to posting here (or writing longer form in some other way) more often. It's the only way I'm going to be able to keep track of the things that happen and hold them in my mind for any longer than it takes to flush them down Elon's Twitter toilet. 

For example, yesterday when I read this story about the deal Elevance and Blue Cross are offering Jeff Landry and Tim Temple so that they will bless the non-profit insurer's sale to the for-profit company, I thought, oh look, all it took was a just a couple of little bribes. They really bought them off cheap.

Many of the major elements of the proposed acquisition are largely unchanged from the original proposal announced in January. The sale price remains the same, as does the percentage of the sale's proceeds that will go to Blue Cross' 92,000 official policyholders.

But the new deal includes changes to the nonprofit foundation that will be formed as part of the transaction and is set to receive 91% of the sale's proceeds. The Accelerate Louisiana Initiative will now have an expanded board of directors that includes an appointee of Gov.-elect Jeff Landry. It will also include a nonvoting "observer" appointed by newly elected Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple.

But it took me a while to be reminded that I'd already flagged this in September when the writing was on the wall about Landry and Temple's intentions prior to the election.  This happens to me all the time now. If I don't deliberately stop and write about something, I'm liable to lose it. I try to keep little notes in draft but it's not the same. There's something about completing the thought here that makes it stick. There's just been less time lately to finish thoughts. That can't be good.

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a post about me. Elevance is about to take over the state's largest insurer in a deal that will make some very wealthy administrators even wealthier. Meanwhile, Blue Cross policyholders are facing a precarious future. But hey, I'm sure that $3,000 will make up for it. 

Blue Cross first announced the deal with Elevance nearly a year ago. But as the deal came under closer scrutiny before its approval by regulators, critics expressed concerns about the effect of the sale on customers and questioned the structure of the foundation.

Two reports by independent consultants prepared for state regulators raised questions about some of the deal assumptions. More recently, a Metairie attorney has filed a suit in federal court seeking class action status on behalf of the 92,000 policyholders, arguing that as members of the mutual indemnity company who have paid into it over the years, they, not the foundation, are entitled to the sale proceeds.

Under the terms of the current deal, policyholders will split some $276 million, receiving approximately $3,000 each.

Why does Tim Temple hate Metaire?

Louisiana's next Insurance Commissioner is preparing to ascend to that office next year without having had to campaign for it.  No one ran against him for the open seat (Jim Donelon decided he didn't want it anymore) and so voters haven't really had to think about him much yet.  Would you like to meet him now? His name is Tim. 

Hailing from DeRidder, Tim Temple has been working in the insurance industry for 20 years, with the last 13 years of that as an insurance executive, like his father did before him. There is really little to remark upon about his resume – he was presumably very successful in these ventures, donating nearly $2 million to his two campaigns (about $900,000 in 2019 and $950,000 this year). But otherwise, he seems to be a case of an insurance man interested in becoming The Insurance Man.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to know about Temple is that he also served as the chairman and president of the Committee of 100. While that may sound like a secretive organ of the Chinese Communist Party, it is in fact just another “good government” business and industry nonprofit group that advocates for “economic development.” But it is a useful context; Temple is not some wealthy political outsider who has elbowed his way into power over the wishes of the usual interests. He is firmly enmeshed in that crowd, and has simply ascended from “interested party” to decision maker.

And he has begun to lay out the sort of agenda you might expect from someone running in those circles. Temple’s main solution to Louisiana’s insurance market woes? A special session early next year, to push more deregulation, more tort reform, and more incentives for competition.

Our state is one of several right now that exist on the front lines of an acute insurance crisis. Fewer insurers are willing to write affordable policies in the places seen as most obviously vulnerable to climate change. There's an air of inevitability to that. But the shape of the crisis, though, and the shoulders that bear the worst of its costs are all entirely the result of policy choices. Political leaders at the state, local, national and international levels consistently move to outsource climate to private finance.

 

The least powerful individual victims of the system are purposefully left to absorb the consequences. 

Energy bills in New Orleans are rising at the fastest rate in almost two decades, and outpacing increases in the rest of the country.

Despite living in one of America’s most climate-vulnerable and poorest cities, it is still almost impossible for low-income residents such as Jones to reduce their “carbon footprint”. It’s not easy making green choices when public transit options are limited, and where tax incentives for solar panels and electric vehicles have largely excluded low-income households.

“I would love to get my house weatherized. I’d consider an EV if it was affordable – or even giving up my car. But the public transit here is draconian,” said Jones, a volunteer community activist. “Tax rebates don’t help me, because I don’t file taxes. They make it so hard to do the right thing.”

Climate scientists are clear that the world must transition away from fossil fuels immediately if it has any chance of avoiding the most catastrophic climate effects.

In recent years, the fossil-fuel industry and its allies have pushed the notion that personal choices are to blame for the climate crisis, while at the same time lobbying for policies to ensure their products – and profits – continue to expand.

Americans in every income category have bigger carbon footprints than their counterparts in almost all other G20 nations, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) data shared with the Guardian. But carbon inequality in the US is a complex situation which for many people – particularly those on a low income – has little to do with personal choice.

Tim Temple is fine with all this.  In this interview with Stephanie Grace, he says his main goal is to deregulate the insurers. Maybe then, they will be nicer.  Actually he didn't even promise that. Here he basically says that if you expect affordable insurance rates in Metairie you are shit out of luck and it's your fault for living there

Grace: So I guess the flip side of being able to charge the rates they need is very high prices for customers — perhaps unaffordable.

Temple: It certainly can be. There seems to be an underlying current of well, it's got to be fair: If I, as a consumer, want to go and build a home in the middle of a forest that's 26 miles away from the nearest fire hydrant, or if I want to build my home on the Gulf Coast 10 feet from the ocean, that I should have some type of affordable insurance.

I mean, we don't want it to be a government-funded, socialized type of product. What it needs to be is if you want to exercise your right to build where you are legally allowed to build, then you have to know upfront it may cost you more to build that house on the Gulf Coast than it does to build it in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Grace: When you're talking about the Gulf Coast, are you talking about down in the marsh, or in, say, Metairie?

Temple: Metairie, you can argue, is dang near the Gulf Coast. If you've ever flown into the New Orleans airport, you know that. Again, the concept is to create an environment where companies can come in and be treated at least not any worse than Texas or Florida treats their companies.

Metaire. People shouldn't live there.

All clear for profit taking

 Election's over. No longer any reason to pretend anyone will stand in the way of Elevance. 

Baton Rouge-based Blue Cross officials notified the Louisiana Department of Insurance in late September it was withdrawing its application for the necessary state approval of the deal. The pause came amid growing concerns from policyholders, local politicians and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is now governor-elect.

At the time, the company said it would refile its application with the state later this year or in early 2024.

Landry had expressed concerns about whether the deal was in the best interest of the policyholders and had said he thought the incoming Commissioner of Insurance, Tim Temple, a new governor and a new crop of state legislators should be in office before a deal of such magnitude is approved.

More than 1.9 million people in Louisiana have some form of Blue Cross health insurance. Of those, some 92,000 are policyholders.

Good luck, everybody!