Proposition 103 barely passed on November 1988 with a confusing menu of insurance propositions on the ballot at the same time. The key to its passage was the promise to cut all insurance rates by 25 percent which never happened. The bill came with many details including awarding consumer groups (usually trial attorneys) a significant fee to intervene in rate filings and changed the California Department of Insurance from an efficient regulator to a large expensive bureaucracy run by politicians with little insurance knowledge. The author of the bill along with some other trial attorneys and actuarial firms made several hundreds of dollars an hour in intervening fees over the past 32 years.
I am not sure that pure democracy is wise in establishing rules for any regulatory agency. If it were up to a pure vote, a majority of people might vote to cut the price of any designated industry such as clothes, food items and medicine even if it ultimately restricted supply by making it unprofitable for manufacturers and retailers to continue. With most competitive industries, competition has been the best price regulator with government intervening in the quality of the product as well as enforcing promises.
Proposition 103 barely passed on November 1988 with a confusing menu of insurance propositions on the ballot at the same time. The key to its passage was the promise to cut all insurance rates by 25 percent which never happened. The bill came with many details including awarding consumer groups (usually trial attorneys) a significant fee to intervene in rate filings and changed the California Department of Insurance from an efficient regulator to a large expensive bureaucracy run by politicians with little insurance knowledge. The author of the bill along with some other trial attorneys and actuarial firms made several hundreds of dollars an hour in intervening fees over the past 32 years.
I am not sure that pure democracy is wise in establishing rules for any regulatory agency. If it were up to a pure vote, a majority of people might vote to cut the price of any designated industry such as clothes, food items and medicine even if it ultimately restricted supply by making it unprofitable for manufacturers and retailers to continue. With most competitive industries, competition has been the best price regulator with government intervening in the quality of the product as well as enforcing promises.