TX SD 10: Brimer Waffles On Insurance Reform

A great press release from Wendy Davis’ campaign in SD 10:

Kim Brimer has been engaging in a great deal of election-year grandstanding on the subject of insurance reform lately, touting his recent Sunset Commission vote on the issue – the first time in his 20-year legislative career he has even attempted to vote in the best interests of the consumer instead of the insurance industry.

Davis Campaign spokesman Bernie Scheffler noted that over the last decade, Brimer has accepted over $130,000 in campaign contributions from insurance interests, according to the National Institute for Money in State Politics (documentation attached). Brimer also made his personal fortune in the insurance industry, and is still part owner of an insurance company today.

Among the insurance industry friendly votes Brimer has made over the years:

· Kim Brimer voted with the insurance industry to prevent the outlawing of the unethical practice of using credit scoring as a guideline for underwriting insurance coverage. (2003, SB 14)

· Kim Brimer voted to kill an antitrust amendment that would have prohibited anticompetitive insurance practices where companies share information such as expense data, profit data, trend factors and other information that helps them control and set universal prices. (1989, SB 255)

· Kim Brimer voted against a temporary rate rollback on homeowner’s insurance rates that would have returned the rates to more reasonable levels and hopefully, help ease the burden on the average Texan. (2003, SB 14)

· Kim Brimer voted against a measure that would prohibit insurance companies from the unfair and deceptive act of discouraging a claimant from hiring an attorney to represent them in the claim. (1999, HB 1553)

In addition, Brimer voted in favor of the file-and-use system (SB14) that insurance companies use to raise their rates without prior approval. This is the very system to which Brimer now says he wants to add a waiting period, hoping to use his position on the Sunset Commission convince voters that he is looking out for Texas families despite his 20-year record to the contrary.

“After 20-years of failed leadership, Brimer’s pandering on this issue is – to borrow the words of Brimer’s own spokesman Jarod Cox – ‘kind of like a hubcap thief that steals the hubcaps and then gets caught, comes back and puts them back on and says there was no crime’,” Scheffler said. “Kim Brimer is an insurance man first and a legislator second – Tarrant County families just can’t trust him to look out for their best interests.”