$3.5 Million Lobby Tab For Auto Insurance Reform

By Daniel Hays

NU Online News Service, June 16, 4:23 p.m. EDT?The industry coalition that ran a two-year campaign to push through New Jersey's omnibus auto insurance reform law spent about $3.5 million on the effort, the head of the group said.

The extended, but tightly focused effort "in the scheme of things," by comparison with insurance issue campaigns in other states was not particularly costly, said John P. Friedman, chairman of the Coalition for Insurance Competition.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, insurers in California during the 1988 debate over no-fault insurance spent $55.87 million.

The voluminous New Jersey legislation that was signed into law last week includes provisions to gradually eliminate a "take all comers" requirement and expands the level for expedited rate changes from three percent to seven percent.

It also modifies the excess profit law to encompass a wider time period and repeals a requirement for prior approval of a withdrawal plan.

Mr. Friedman, who is also assistant vice president and senior legislative counsel for USAA in Florham Park, N.J., said during the Coalition's effort, they had focused on newspaper, cable and radio outlets and visited countless newspaper editorial boards.

The coalition, he said, had individually met with and lobbied all 40 state senators and the 80 Assembly members to educate them on the issues and the condition of the state's fractured insurance marketplace.

"There's always been a level of skepticism by the average legislator how insurance is regulated. That's why we had to meet with everyone," he explained.

To help push its case, Mr. Friedman said the coalition hired the Princeton Public Affairs Group, Princeton, N.J., a high-powered lobbying concern, and the Newark, N.J.-based Winning Strategies media firm. The group also employed the Sacramento, Calif. firm of Goddard, Claussen, Porter and Novelli, which ran the "Harry And Louise" campaign that help defeat the Clinton Administration health care proposal.

Mr. Friedman, David Smith the Princeton Public Affairs Group's lobbyist for the effort, and Jim McQueeny, who heads Winning Strategies, said a key decision was to avoid issues involving prices, damage and injury reimbursement, and to focus instead on choice and availability.

Mr. Friedman said because of that limited focus, interest groups such as auto body shops and medical providers remained neutral, leaving trial lawyers as the main resistance.

By the Coalition's count, 20 auto insurers have left the state within the past 10 years. Mr. Friedman said legislators were made to understand that "when Progressive and Geico are not interested" in doing business in a state that "something is fundamentally wrong."

Mr. McQueeny commented, "availability and choice?once that message was settled on, it started rolling along." It helped, he said, that the bill was not put in until the end of "a consensus process that reflected a lot of different voices."

New Jersey's Senate is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. In the Assembly, Democrats have a five-vote edge. Mr. Friedman said the effort got an "enormous boost' when Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey made auto insurance reform a central theme in his "State of the State" message, and worked to make it a bipartisan effort.

Mr. Friedman said that among the companies that were active in the coalition were his own firm, Selective, as well as One Beacon, National Association of Independent Insurers, Fireman's Fund, American Insurance Association, Insurance Council of New Jersey and New Jersey Association of Professional Insurance Agents.

He said it now is up to the state to develop regulations implementing the law, which should happen this summer.

Despite the coalition's success, Mr. Friedman said his group is keeping a wary eye on a bill backed by trial lawyers that would revise the state's no-fault system by lowering the threshold for pain and injury lawsuits.

He said that would inflate costs and premium prices, making rate regulation an issue for political debate

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$3.5 Million Lobby Tab For Auto Insurance Reform

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