Implementing Proposition 103
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Around and around we go. Prop. 103’s mandated rate rollbacks have failed to be implemented not because of Gillespie’s ineffectiveness (‘Gillespie Won’t Seek Post on Insurance Commission,” Part A, Dec. 5), but because its author, Harvey Rosenfield, didn’t understand--and apparently still doesn’t--that insurance corporations, like any person, have constitutional rights of due process. The California Supreme Court recognized these rights and changed the wording of the initiative to allow the insurance companies a “fair and reasonable profit.”
Now Rosenfield is offering a new ballot initiative for 1990 that would establish a state-run insurance operation. But insurance companies would be allowed to continue operation if they “voluntarily” do the “unconstitutional.” To me, this sounds like more bait-and-switch tactics to make the initiative seem reasonable and acceptable to the layperson, but would again bring no solution to California’s insurance problems.
I will be very interested to see how Rosenfield explains that the British Columbia plan is so effective, but that it has never been adopted by all of Canada.
This is the person that the California public is entrusting with the power to lead us out of this insurance chaos? Who is this guy?
JEFF ROBINS
Mission Viejo
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