The last post told how big insurance (let’s call it “BIG-I”) created Insurance Services Office (ISO) as their industry shill. ISO became the “handlers” if you will of various puppet commissioners. Among other things, ISO finessed rate increases and designed trap door policies (“coverage parts”). (Gruesome, I know, but it’s their word not mine). Frankly ISO did whatever Salvatore “BIG-I” said do. Of course ISO was BIG-I cause it was owned and controlled – as a non-profit if you can believe it – by BIG-I. Thing was nobody really seemed to notice or care.
Well remember how that Georgia cracker almost capsized BIG-I, went hog wild and damn near destroyed the Sherman exemption all by hisself? That was a real tipping point in BIG-I history, back in ’44, but thanks to a secret industry formula, lobbyists + cash = act of Congress (L+$=AOC), BIG-I was sitting upright again. McCarran-to-the-rescue in ’45. We’d just finished whupping a boatload of Kraut butt and everybody’s pretty happy. Momma got a toaster, baby’s got a biscuit, and daddy . . . a shy-knee-new Dynaflow.
Another 40 years pass, and this time it’s ISO who almost wrecks the ship. See in those 40 years insurance went from something you might consider taking out if you just wanted, to full blown Jersey style marketing: we got an offer of coverage you can’t refuse. And we couldn’t refuse, but not cause of Bruno. Forty years of running wild, untouched by fed regulation or anti-trust, BIG-I had by now hijacked so many legislatures you couldn’t buy a house, go to the hospital, get surgery, drive a car, get a loan or anything else unless you first bought insurance. (Wonder why it never got reclassified as a special purpose contract or public interest contract, you know, something making it subject to some regulatory terms; it sure ain’t my idea of a negotiated, voluntary contract).
By ’88, ISO had racked and sacked a bushel basket of commissioners but in those days, BIG-I hadn’t yet figured out how to trash state AG’s and get people to buy into it. But some of these AG’s were getting pretty darn uppidy about ISO’s “commissioner handling.” AG’s in those days couldn’t be trashed by paid shills like Robert Hartwig cause BIG-I hadn’t perfected media pimping. BTW, speaking of Hartwig, here’s one of our own judges, third from left, at a 2004 tort reform confab, an invited guest of Hartwig and BIG-I. Continue reading “The ACC Virus Continued”