Posted On: May 13, 2008, 11:53 am CDT

Posted By: IIABNY employee

If you look at the IJ article and the text of the bill, you will see that nothing in the bill addresses commission. This bill is about making an insurance provider subject to the same regulatory authority that oversees private insurers. If the State Fund wants to compete on price, great! Just make them submit their rating plans to the NY Insurance Dept. for approval, like the private carriers have to.

And the 30-day cancellation notice requirement is NOT friendly to NY businesses. It actually ties their hands and makes it harder for them to exercise choice in the market. Every other insurer must cancel upon the insured giving advance notice. No other insurer has a 30-day advance notice requirement written into law. It serves no useful insurance buyer protection purpose.

No one wants to deny low-cost insurance to NY employers. We don't want *no* competition, we want *fair* competition. Yes, brokers want to be paid for their services, but current law allows them to charge service fees for that. Just remember that a broker does more than help an insured fill out the app. The broker is the insured's advocate when there's a loss or an audit problem.

This is not about *greedy* brokers, as some posters want to believe. It's about fair competition, no more, no less.